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The Breaking and Remaking of Self
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.
—Frederick Buechner
The Fisher King (USA, 1991)
Directed by Terry Gilliam, written by Richard LaGravenese
A shock jock in love with himself unwittingly goads someone into a mass shooting. In the aftermath of the tragedy, two men find that they need each other to heal each other, while the women they love need them to grow up.
Gareth
Terry Gilliam and Richard LaGravenese’s exquisite fantasy is set in New York in the early 1990s, when the city was still grungy enough to feel around every corner the risk of possibility, of threat or wonder. It’s a hero’s journey in which one of the key things discovered by the hero is that there are no heroes. Or perhaps that we are all invited to heroism, and nobody’s part in that is less important than anyone else’s.
Robin Williams is Parry, a former professor radically traumatized by the murder of his beloved (“radically” because it has taken him back to something primitive: desperate vulnerability and incapacity to protect himself or ask for help, but also childlike wonder and a dream of salvation). He believes that finding the Holy Grail will save him from a terrorizing Red Knight. This may be as good a metaphor for unintegrated trauma as the movies have delivered.
Jeff Bridges is Jack, a shock jock radio host who is amplifying a purgatory where the vocabulary sounds like the demonic child of the National Enquirer and Dorothy Parker. His job entails dehumanization plus stirring up rage with a side of eloquence. At the beginning of the movie, he is so full of himself that he can’t see the prison of his own fame. “Thank God I’m me!” he declares, but we beg to differ. For the “me” that he is represents only selfishness, rage, and a lack of accountability.
Practicing the catchphrase for an upcoming TV show intended to make him even more famous—the phrase being “Forgive me!”—Jack unwittingly names what he needs most.
He also notices that the transition from radio to television means that, for the first time in his life, “I’ll be a voice with a body.” While he is indeed about to experience a transition, it’s not from semi-famous to really famous. He’s going to go on a journey inside himself. This is indeed about becoming a voice with a body. He’s going to learn the deeper meaning of the Pinocchio motif that shows up in the movie: deception doesn’t begin with the lies we tell other people but the ones we tell ourselves. Only when we begin to truly own our story can we write the end of it.
As it turns out, the story Jack is unconsciously living makes him complicit in the mass shooting that took Parry’s spouse and mind. Three years later, Jack is broken, borderline homeless, and lazily inattentive to his job as a video store clerk. He’s so guilt-ridden and depressed that he does not notice the self-sacrificing love offered by storeowner Anne (Mercedes Ruehl), who isn’t asking for much. Just to be seen that she’s there, which is the opposite dilemma to Lydia (Amanda Plummer), a nervous and kind young woman who is actually scared to be seen. Perhaps because she was seen before by people who hurt her; probably because she’s too kind to fight back.
LaGravenese’s script ensures that Anne and Lydia are fully rounded characters, not merely ciphers in service to the men. And despite Ruehl being awarded a richly deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, there are actually four leads in this movie. Add a beautiful and heartbreaking supporting performance from the brilliant Michael Jeter, who died too young, like the friends of whom his character speaks, and this is one of the great ensembles.
Now to the quest. We all have one. The problem is, at least, threefold: many of us never discover the quest; among those who do, many vacillate between self-improvement and selfish ambition; and for those who discover their true calling to service, there’s the individualism of our culture to overcome. We all have a quest, but it was never supposed to be pursued alone.
The first step on achieving the quest is called the separation—from false certainties: the world of home and reputation and whatever else you tell yourself will save you. There’s a reason we call money and status trappings. They keep us from finding our true selves. Separation requires stepping away from the things that keep us numb and throwing away our crutches. In The Fisher King, Jack is separated from his self-righteousness, Parry from his sanity, Anne from her dream that life would work out okay, Lydia from other people.
Then there follows the descent, where we meet the shadow, the things we hide, repress, and deny about ourselves—not just the unpleasant stuff but the gifts we conceal out of unhealthy humility or because no one has ever awakened our gifts through initiation and mentoring. By the third scene of The Fisher King, Jack is in a hell of his own making, Parry is living in a literal underworld, Anne is asking, “Is that all there is?” and Lydia is on the fringes of everything.
After the descent comes the ordeal, where the struggle is most intense. For Parry this has included the most horrifying violence. For Jack the struggle is within—inside his ego, first broken by losing his reputation; then struggling to stay alive, or to get out of bed in the morning, ashamed of what he did and envious of what he no longer has; then resisting the call to get up and do something for others. Breaking into someone’s house to steal a cup is the least of his challenges. Breaking free from the prison of selfishness is the real ordeal.
And then the homecoming. Some cultures celebrate the return of newly initiated people with dancing, food, lovemaking, and fires lit to mark the auspicious moment and to inspire the next candidates for emotional maturity. More long-lasting is a homecoming to the self, the newly calibrated way of being, no longer broken but broken in. The meek shall inherit the earth, apparently, but meek may not mean what most of us have thought. Some people think it refers to what happens to a wild horse after being broken in; it still has the capacity to kick, but it won’t. A meeked person would be one who knows how to use a sword but refuses, unless it is necessary to protect the vulnerable from greater harm. A meeked Jack is able to find his charisma again, and might even return to his gift of public storytelling, only this time he won’t use it to hurt people. And a meeked Parry has come through the ordeal of horror, reintegrating his psyche with the support of friends and knowing that now it is okay for him to truly grieve. They come home to each other, to the women whom they love and who love them, but most of all, they come home to themselves.
So what does The Fisher King do for me? Or to me? Or maybe even through me? Aside from the delightfully moving performances; the new spaces that Gilliam and his crew make out of a city we thought we knew (and the new light that Roger Pratt’s cinematography brings to it); the gorgeous, heart-stopping cameo from Jeter; the brilliant paradox of a suicide attempt thwarted by a murder attempt; the Chinese restaurant scene; and the transcendent Grand Central Station dance sequence evoking the truth that magic is possible anywhere (it may just depend on how you look at things and what you’re willing to make of them)—aside from all that, there’s also this:
Life is not about what my ego wants for itself, nor some metaphysical blueprint outlining all the twists and turns of one life among billions. Finding my true self is not so much about discovering what I am as how I am. It’s about how I can dance with my own wounds and the pain of the world, with my own gifts and the opportunity to make a difference—no matter how many people see me. It’s about going deep within to discover a mission of service to the common good. That mission begins with discerning our loves—what do we truly care about that can become a place of service to the common good? The rest of life is about figuring out where to put those loves.
Whether it’s a terror of things that go bump in the night, or grief at people or hopes lost, they say that while you may never really conquer your demons, perhaps you can learn to live above them. To be aware that they are there but not be ruled by them. Making that kind of life enables us to say, without irony, without arrogance, Thank God I’m me. And everyone who knows us will probably agree.
Kathleen
When it comes to using fantastical, over-the-top images to make a point about real life, Terry Gilliam has no equal. But The Fisher King, perhaps due in part to an exceptionally thoughtful script by Richard LaGravenese, is a fairly straightforward story about four people who may not even know that they’re on a quest to discover their true selves. As Gareth points out, and as the film makes clear, this quest is one that we all share, and we can’t do it alone. This film is about love, and it might even be considered a romantic comedy. But it goes deep into considering what love requires of us.
The first character we meet, Jack, is defined by an excessive self-regard. He is a familiar character in our culture, a media personality who knows that the more outrageous his on-air remarks, the more popular his program will be. We get a close-up view of the egotism that fuels Jack’s outsized ambition and sense of superiority. To maintain his inflated self-esteem, he needs to demean most of the people who call into his radio show. But when one careless rant causes a disaster that wrecks his career, his fall is a big one. His house of cards collapses and there is nothing at the center but a bitter, cynical shell of a person.
And there’s Parry, a traumatized survivor of a horrific act that killed his wife. His grief has become so all-encompassing that it has driven him to madness and caused him to abandon his career and move into a basement boiler room with rats and portraits of medieval knights and ladies, who suggest to him that the answer to his problems lies in engaging in a quest for the Holy Grail. Gareth correctly identifies Parry as suffering from an extreme version of unintegrated trauma, compounded by his inability to ask for the help he needs.
I feel that I know the two women in the film. Anne is smart, with an outgoing, vibrant personality and a lot of love to give. But she’s confused self-sacrifice with love and has allowed too many self-absorbed men like Jack to take advantage of her. Only when she recognizes this is she able to break the pattern, begin respecting herself, and start demanding respect from Jack. Will he offer it or not?
Lydia walks as if she is ashamed to be taking up space in the world, cringing from human contact to protect herself from the demands that others place on her. Her mother’s regular phone calls always include questions about whether she’s found a boyfriend, but Lydia’s attempts to date have resulted in dispiriting one-night stands. She has adopted an armor of cynicism regarding relationships with men. But when Parry disarms her after their dinner date by seeking only to kiss her on the cheek and bid her goodnight, we sense that another Lydia, open to being loved, will soon emerge.
Gareth’s description of The Fisher King as an “exquisite fantasy” is accurate. The film strikes me as a perfect expression of Gilliam’s gift for using extremes to reveal basic truths. Its characters are four seriously damaged people, but we would be foolish to dismiss them without considering how much they tell us about our own lives. How do we hide from the demands love makes of us? When did we recognize that our withdrawing from others was a form of narcissism or a fantasy of self-sufficiency? What kind of transitions did we have to undergo in recognizing that we were trying to manipulate and shape people so they could better serve our needs rather than simply love them? These four people may be on a quest to find more honest and fulfilling relationships, but so are we.
It is one mark of Gilliam’s genius that he has provided us with a serious film that includes some of the best comedy ever put on film, and it is no surprise that Robin Williams peppers the film with extremely funny remarks. But many unexpected delights linger: the slapstick of noodle-slurping and mayhem with chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant; the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of a brightly painted Pinocchio doll; and the hilarious use of the song “How about You?” in unlikely settings.
One line sums up the magic of this film for me. Parry wakes from a coma; he has been in a hospital recovering from a brutal assault by thugs who target men they consider worthless bums. Suddenly we realize that much more than physical healing has taken place. Parry says, “I really miss her, Jack—is that okay? Can I miss her now?” and we know that Parry is finally free to love both Lydia and himself. This film might be a balm for anyone who is grieving the loss of someone who was dear to them. Or anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how we are to use our capacity for love to serve one another and the common good.
Questions and Conversations
Considering traumatic memories can be retraumatizing, and it takes a bit of dexterity to reflect on painful matters of the self without opening wounds. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola can be instructive here. They invite us to name “sources of consolation and desolation,” a more complex method of exploring the everyday question, “How are you doing?” But the Exercises don’t say, “Let’s drown in pain together.” Instead, they keep the focus on naming the sources of that which is and is not life-giving. So, in discussing the themes raised in The Fisher King, we invite you to be gentle with yourself—like you would be with a rare Pinocchio doll. If deeper and more painful issues surface, consider a wise spiritual director or therapist. Medicine people will go on healing the wounded world, and even those who feel they are the most broken can find their own wholeness by helping others.
- Was there anything you felt you didn’t understand?
- What do each of the four main characters bring to the others?
- What do each of the four main characters need the most—to let go of and to receive?
- Which of the four main characters reminded you most of yourself?
- What do you need to let go of and to receive?
- What is your quest?
- What is the next step on your quest?