Product: The Fisher King [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 5.0
Good film on consequences of extreme trauma and ego growth
This is one of my favorite films. For the most part it is solid but does take some thought and knowledge about how people deal with trauma. Although it falters at times and has a few artistic distractions it does teach several good lessons. To understand the meaning of the title one must know the story of the Fisher King. There are many variations of the legend and one very simplistic version is sort of given in the film and will not be repeated here. The Legend of the Fisher King deals with a man who was injured as a young man (again many variations of how) and suffered from these wounds throughout his life. His only respite was to be taken fishing. He eventually became the penultimate master of the Grail Castle. Every evening the Grail, Platen and spear would be brought out and those suffering would be healed. That is, all except for the Fisher King. The Fisher King could not be healed until someone asked him a specific question. The Fisher King did not need to know the answer to the question. As the years passed, nobody ever asked the question until one day, on his second visit to the Grail Castle, Percival, asked the question, "Whom does the Grail serve?" The Fisher king realized that the Grail did not serve to make him great but that it served those in need. He was humbled and his wounds healed. (He died several days later and Percival became the last master of the Grail Castle.) The film deals with this dilemma in Jack. Jack can not be healed until he understands "whom the Grail serves." Jack tries to help Parry so that Jack will be healed so Jack can get on with Jack's life. It is only at the end of the film that Jack does the first unselfish thing that he has ever done in his life. Jack is the only character that grows emotionally. Of course, this act has nothing to do with Parry's condition improving. Parry is not crazy and Parry is not demented. Parry was a high functioning person until he witnesses his wife's head taking a shotgun blast. Parry regresses into a fugue state and takes on an alternate identity. He takes on a character that will, in metaphor, deal with what he witnessed. What Parry lost was intimacy and in his psychological struggle to cope with that loss he is both chased by and chases the last image of intimacy he recalls. Any emotional closeness, even with Jack, triggers these flashbacks although the image is distorted through the metaphor of his fugue state and becomes the red knight/ (representing his wife's violent death.) Parry does not become psychotic until Jack replaces Parry's fantasized intimacy with real intimacy and gets him "the date". The distortion is shattered; the metaphor no longer replaces the reality of Parry's last memory of his wife because the intimacy is psychologically too close to what Parry had lost. His Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) flashback is no longer the Red knight but the reliving of the actual trauma. Parry's psyche is forced to regress further and he become catatonic. This is the mind's way of calling a time-out. With time he eventually returns to his previous fugue state and that is where the film leaves him. Although not for everyone and not always consistent, it is an excellent film if you are willing to pay attention and not get distracted by Hollywood smarm.