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JANITORS OF GOD Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King is good enough to believe it's not really his movie; it belongs to screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and, foremost, actress Mercedes Ruehl. It's entirely possible that whatever role Ruehl plays, she would enlarge it and make it her own—as she did when she damn near stole Married to the Mob from Michelle Pfeiffer and Dean Stockwell. Even off screen she makes you remember her: when Tom Hanks reverts back to childhood in Big, it's Ruehl's motherly voice that got you in the heart. In Fisher King, tramped to the max in red off-the-shoulder blouse, bra, slip, fingernails and dangling “fuck me” earrings, Ruehl never stops acting, reacting, moving, gesturing. The busy details might have been pushing the limits had she acted opposite a star equally frenetic-minded. (What would have been her fate had Robin Williams played her love interest instead of Jeff Bridges?) As is she's close to overdose but I can't see the role performed any other way. “I'm not a modern woman,” she cries to Bridges and that's the awfully good truth: she's the next best thing—a revival of the archetypic B movie broads of the 40s and 50s who reaches the A stratosphere. When Robert Pratt's camera captures cigarette smoke blowing from her nostrils, she's a magnificent retrograde dragon with that old time religion—a heart of softened gold. LaGravenese's script is a real writer's product; though visually enhanced with the usual Gilliam touches, the story and dialogue belong to the traditions of literature, which is to say the movie can be read. Unlike most screenplays these days about which you feel the lines have been made up just minutes before shooting (and probably were), the verbiage here resembles carefully considered exposition; even the funnies that you know were added at the last minute (Williams' crack about the Crusades and the Pope) have connectable intent. Reading the reviews of the movie you'd never guess the critics read D.H. Lawrence: How could they have missed Lawrence's desire to see male friendship so pure that nakedness not only couldn't corrupt it but would make it purer? The blurbsters did get the Holy Grail stuff, but it's exceedingly difficult to ignore, and is LaGravenese's, as well as Gilliam's, major weakness: they can't quite get all the hallucinatory elements of the allegory to fall into place, bumming through their own artistic intentions. A portion of some trouble lies in the fuzziness about validating the legendary quest (for compassion): while Robin Williams is agreeably toned down, there's more than enough kinesthesia whirling about him that we lose focus on his spiritual renewal. There's script discomfort too with Williams' death wish. Such feelings strong when loved ones die so senselessly, but hasn't he given evidence of progression towards health when he becomes “deeply smitten” with Amanda Plummer? Not. He's driven to his own near-death by an Arthurian Horse of Apocalypse. And there are moments that seem disjunctive: after saving Bridges's life, and taking him back to his home, which is deep in the bowels of a boiler room, Williams says to Bridges, “I'm the janitor of God.” It's not meant to be a throw-away, or meaningless; I'd even argue it's a line coming way too soon in the story: in the wider scheme of plot, it's the clue—they will clean out each other's demons. As the clumsy virgin, Amanda Plummer is surprisingly engaging; just when you think you're going to die of her embarrassments (most notably at an Asian restaurant), she startles you with fresh bits and expressions and neat little voice intonations that become endearing. She's as ugly as ever, and there are tiny specs of Betty Buckley emerging, but her lily white skin and reddish brown-blond hair somehow mesh just right. Bridges suffers from an off-screen transition that he only half-recovers from; he's weak as a drunk, though he gets sturdier as the movie plods along. (This movie is at least twenty minutes too long.) All the actors make watching the director's vision—William's domicile is a set of classic Gilliam contraptions of disorder—much less invasive to our sensibilities. Often Gilliam's pictures are too busily, exhaustively creative to derive anything out of them other than admiration for the spectacular visions. About Williams—well, I hesitate. I always do with his performances. Thankfully he's not working up another media-inspired trashkrieg, as he did in Good Morning, Vietnam and Mrs. Doubtfire. He almost seems to be playing De Niro in Awakenings. But there's one thing you can't take away from him—a beefy set of legs. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved.
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