Corruption In The Fisher King

Two characters rise, and two characters fall. After Jack, one of the main characters in Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King, achieves high status and fame through his deliberate offensive, arrogant opinions on a radio talk show, he accidentally provokes one of his avid callers to kill a group of wealthy people in a bar. After he realizes that this action was caused by him, Jack begins the ultimate downfall that his character must go through to achieve forgiveness from those around him and within himself. Through a fragmented view of the life of Charles Foster Kane, the main character in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, four different characters reflect on the life and legacy of Kane. After Kane is sent away to live with Thatcher, his new guardian and …show more content…
The film opens with Jack in a room hosting his radio talk show. Viewers are not allowed to see his face and already feel disconnected from him as the camera looms over him through bird’s eye view. The emphasis on cold colors and heavy shadows position the audience to dislike Jack, because the viewers are given a cynical sense coming from Jack. When viewers are finally allowed to see Jack, extreme close-up shots reveal his dominant feature that allows him to have fame: his mouth. While listening to the responses he gives his callers, it is obvious that he does not care about them. All Jack truly cares about is his popularity, and his crudeness is what makes him popular. After one of Jack’s biggest fans calls to tell Jack about a woman he met in a chic bar, Jack cuts him off and tells him the people that go to this bar are no better than them, and they need to be exterminated. Here, viewers see the same feature that causes him to have fame is the same feature that causes his downfall: his mouth. After Jack leaves work, viewers visit him in his home. The first time viewers are allowed to see Jack’s whole face is when he is looking at himself in a mirror. In the next scene, Jack is sitting in his bathtub looking at himself in a hand mirror practicing the line “forgive me” for a television show in which he was offered an acting position. The mirror reflects how egocentric he truly is with himself. The …show more content…
Although he approaches his new hobby with good intentions, it is evident that Kane does not care about money. Instead, he cares about the power to affect the public’s thoughts and opinions. With his hunger for power, his craving causes him to become increasingly corrupt when he decides to write and print stories that are designed to capture the reader’s attention instead of his previous promise. Kane’s ultimate downfall begins when he refuses to pull out of the campaign to be Governor due to his opponent’s, Jim Gettys, blackmail. During Kane’s speech for Governor, viewers see Kane through a low angle view on a stage with a ridiculously huge portrait of himself in the background. Viewers immediately are given a sense of how much he is obsessed with himself, but the camera switches to a high angle view to show Gettys menacing over Kane. This portrays Kane’s true powerlessness. After the speech, Kane’s first wife, Emily, shows him a note with an address to go to that she received from someone anonymous. They both go to the address and find Gettys with Susan, the woman that Kane is having an affair with. As Kane steps over to Susan’s side of the room, the camera displays Kane in a low angle to emphasize his sense of the control he thinks he has over the situation. The use of dark clothing on Kane and Susan predicts the impending doom each of them will suffer