Under the Spotlight: Robin Williams’ touching performance in ‘The Fisher King’
There is a very fine line between comedy and tragedy, with many great performances thriving in the grey area that arises when audiences are unsure whether they should laugh or cry. It creates a tonal tension that is hard to shake away, stretching you across emotional extremes and leaving you slightly rattled in its ambiguity. You are left feeling guilty for finding amusement in comedic moments within a darker scene or feeling pity towards a character trying to entertain.
In recent years, perhaps the sentiment of ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’ is becoming more reflective of our response to tragedy, with an overwhelming response to stories like Succession, The Worst Person in the World and Another Round. Stories that blur both ends of the emotional spectrum to create a cocktail of pleasure and pain, swinging from soaring highs to sobering lows. It’s a tough balance to find, on which some actors, like Jeremy Strong and Jim Carrey, have built a reputation for their magnetic screen presence and ability to draw in audiences through their portrayal of deeply conflicted beings.
However, there is perhaps one actor who is the reigning king of the tortured soul, channelling his own conflicts into his craft and creating one of the most vibrantly joyful yet devastating characters of all time. Before the success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which director Terry Gilliam established a dystopian style that flits between fantastical surrealism and the bleakness of everyday life, he created a hybrid world that blends the nightmare and fairytale in his 1991 film The Fisher King.
The story follows a disgraced radio star, Hack, who finds his path crossed by a troubled yet contagiously optimistic man called Parry. Following this, they end up joining forces to find the Holy Grail and free themselves of their pain. After a severe fall from grace due to accidentally inspiring a mass murder-suicide, Jack is completely miserable and hopeless, working in a DVD store and resorting to alcoholism to cope with his shame. His life, which was previously marked by celebrity comforts and fame—living in a glossy high-rise building and distancing himself from the woes of everyday people—sees him become jaded and cruel towards their struggles.
However, just when he believes himself to be at his lowest while nearly being murdered by a group of thugs, he is suddenly rescued by a mysteriously effervescent man—The Fisher King. He is dressed in torn rags, red earmuffs and fingerless gloves, dismissing the forces of evil through a comical display of slapstick violence and camaraderie, rescuing the bewildered Jack from a sorry fate.
The Fisher King is otherwise known as Parry, with Jack learning that he is an extremely traumatised man who adopted this persona as a coping mechanism after the sudden death of his wife, someone who died in the attack induced by his radio show. The nightmarish fairytale style created by Gilliams reflects the opposing outlooks of both characters. Parry lives in a dream-like yet horrific world reflecting the people in New York who have been discarded, existing in an escapist fantasy in which the screams of the disenfranchised are blithely ignored by the upper-class suits and bankers who rule the city. It is a place of ridiculous wealth and incomparable pain, with the clash between the two exaggerated in Gilliam’s dystopian world.
However, this tonal mismatch between comedy and tragedy is best highlighted through Robin Williams’ radiantly exuberant performance as Parry. He is childlike while possessing a weathered pathos earned through the weight of his suffering, creating a mismatch between the upbeat outward manifestation of his pain and the tragedy that caused it. Williams channels this through a heightened sense of lunacy and freneticism, frolicking around the city in his mismatched clothes and endearing optimism, determined to complete his quest while also falling in love along the way. Parry is brought to life through William’s genius creative choices, from his buoyant walk, fragile innocence and the glorious vitality of the cloud-busting scene, with Gilliam infusing the magical with the griminess of the city that envelops them.
Through the additional romantic arc of Parry’s story, he reflects this pure and unadulterated type of spirit, falling head over heels in love after witnessing the simplest everyday actions of a woman called Lydia. She is someone who is a victim of the same blanket of cruelty as everyone else in the city, becoming invisible through their search for human connection and a shred of kindness.
But this fairytale is disenchanted, and Williams brings the darkest aspects of his dramatic performances to his portrayal of Parry, with a level of despair and heart-breaking innocence shrouding his world, plagued by guilt over the death of his wife and witnessing visions of ‘The Red Knight’—a visual representation of his pain through another fairy tale-esque figure that stalks him throughout the film. Every now and then, he is absorbed by fear and guilt as he tries to escape his past, attempting to deal with the monsters in his mind through his fearless optimism.
Through the blend of comedy and tragedy in The Fisher King, Williams creates a life-affirming performance that imbues all aspects of the human experience. In his child-like wonder, quest for redemption and tortured escape from The Red Knight, we see our own failures, tragedies and joys reflected back at us. Parry shows us that we can persevere despite our sad stories, and sometimes, these pains can unknowingly become the source of our power.
