07-06-2025, 10:00 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-06-2025, 10:11 PM by MercuryZap.)
Tonight, at the mysterious behest of my partner, I retrieved my DVD of The Fisher King from the uncatalogued depths of the abandoned wardrobe come retro styled video library that houses my treasured collection.
We saw this film together on its initial theatrical release at the grand (now long gone) Curzon Movie Palace, Belfast on a rainy Saturday night.
Terry Gilliam was my favourite film director then. I'm posting on a (THE) Terry Gilliam fanzine so I obviously continue to hold his work in very high esteem but hopefully I have a broader and more reasoned appreciation of cinema and filmmaking but back then Terry was the alpha & omega.
The film hit me hard that night. It was something different from the Man. Perhaps I was nostalgically craving a flight of fancy to elevate me from my woes but the film came to me as a sort of reckoning.The Fisher King's themes of disillusionment and the quest for redemption chimed profoundly with my personal situation. The cavernous, psychological depths of that Gotham cityscape were not unfamiliar territory.
On my return to this grubby, romantic world, I was struck by the power and commitment of the performances. Terry brilliantly orchestrates an ever shifting mis-en-scene that dramatically and sympathetically mirrors the ensembles transforming viewpoints and intertwining arcs with his unique, heightened density of vision but this film lives with a fiery, relatable human passion.
I could expound at length about all the four main leads all of whom articulate their positions with humour, personal insight, robust physicality and a sense of jeopardy but Robin William's graces his embodiment of Perry with a raw, enigmatic vulnerability that transcends into something magical and at its crescendo a little heartbreaking.
It seems to me now a very atypical film for the time of its production and one that still flares with tremendous sparks from the unique meeting of the real with the fantastique.
We saw this film together on its initial theatrical release at the grand (now long gone) Curzon Movie Palace, Belfast on a rainy Saturday night.
Terry Gilliam was my favourite film director then. I'm posting on a (THE) Terry Gilliam fanzine so I obviously continue to hold his work in very high esteem but hopefully I have a broader and more reasoned appreciation of cinema and filmmaking but back then Terry was the alpha & omega.
The film hit me hard that night. It was something different from the Man. Perhaps I was nostalgically craving a flight of fancy to elevate me from my woes but the film came to me as a sort of reckoning.The Fisher King's themes of disillusionment and the quest for redemption chimed profoundly with my personal situation. The cavernous, psychological depths of that Gotham cityscape were not unfamiliar territory.
On my return to this grubby, romantic world, I was struck by the power and commitment of the performances. Terry brilliantly orchestrates an ever shifting mis-en-scene that dramatically and sympathetically mirrors the ensembles transforming viewpoints and intertwining arcs with his unique, heightened density of vision but this film lives with a fiery, relatable human passion.
I could expound at length about all the four main leads all of whom articulate their positions with humour, personal insight, robust physicality and a sense of jeopardy but Robin William's graces his embodiment of Perry with a raw, enigmatic vulnerability that transcends into something magical and at its crescendo a little heartbreaking.
It seems to me now a very atypical film for the time of its production and one that still flares with tremendous sparks from the unique meeting of the real with the fantastique.
![[Image: fisher1.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/qY88xjnL/fisher1.jpg)
![[Image: fisher2.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/sv8n4RwQ/fisher2.jpg)