Word: grail
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that the Holy Grail was really in Japan? American theater artist Robert Wilson seems to think so. For the Zurich Opera, Wilson has conjured up a LOHENGRIN that is far removed from Wagner's realm of Brabant. The composer's scenario is full of feudal warfare and knightly swordplay. But Wilson, whose career has included such mesmerizing efforts as Einstein on the Beach and the CIVIL warS, avoids conventional stage action, particularly the use of arms and hands. So this is a slo-mo Lohengrin with formalized gestures that recall tai chi. In place of the banks of the River...
...expect dramatic discoveries to appear on cue for 1992 is unrealistic. The Holy Grail of Columbus studies would be the long-lost original log of his first voyage to what he called "the Indies," which exists only in a badly garbled abridgment made after his death by the Spanish priest Bartolome de las Casas. Las Casas, who wrote voluminously on the Spanish colonization of the New World, was not a mariner, and his version is filled with errors that have caused endless dispute over such basic matters as Columbus' course on his historic sail and where his little fleet made...
...Jack meets the husband of one of those victims, now a daft street creature called Parry (Robin Williams), who leads his fellow homeless in singing "I like New York in June./ How about you?" Parry believes that Jack is a modern Fisher King, a '90s knight searching for the grail of emotional redemption, and Parry knows where it is: in a billionaire's mansion. Parry also has a quest: to win the troth of a frayed damsel (Amanda Plummer, again doing her prom-queen-from-Mars number...
This is all catnip to Terry Gilliam, deviser of the Monty Python animations and co-director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. On his own he directed one commercial hit (Time Bandits) and one cult smash (Brazil). Critics, this one included, went crazy for Brazil; but not many citizens felt at home amid all the astringent whimsy. And the director's next phantasmagoria, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, was a $50 million flop...
Like all these, The Fisher King is long, dark and handsome -- disorienting comedy in a Boschian fun house. Some big emotional moments are bungled or botched. The narrative scaffolding, all that Grail gathering, is both too elaborate and too gossamer to support what is at heart a buddy movie. And the film's moral is bizarre: for two guys to achieve sanity and humanity, they should get naked together some night in Central Park. What if moviegoers take this advice to heart? They could get a stern lesson, and it wouldn't be applied with a ruler...