The Fisher King

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B0043X1FM2″ locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512WbsNjSBL._SL160_.jpg” width=”114″][easyazon-link asin=”B0043X1FM2″ locale=”us”]The Fisher King[/easyazon-link] includes several brief depictions of physically disabled people, as well as Robin Williams in a not-exactly-clinically-accurate-but-lovable! depiction of a former professor suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (After witnessing the brutal murder of his wife at the hands of a mentally ill man, he spends some time catatonic “in a mental place on Staten Island” and emerges believing he’s a knight on a holy quest.) The gunman, clearly very lonely and seeking advice on talking to a woman, had been goaded into shooting up a popular bar by radio shock-jock protagonist Jack. When he learns of the effect of his bullying, Jack in turn becomes suicidally despondent and attempts to drown himself. In a twist of fate, Jack is introduced to Parry (who is accompanied by a couple other homeless men, one using crutches) and experiences the painful flutterings of an awakening of conscience.

Parry takes him back to the basement he’s been crashing in, where it becomes obvious that he not only has auditory hallucinations but tries to enlist Jack on his quest for the Holy Grail. Jack tries to give him a little money instead, but Parry’s kind “landlord” (who wears an old-fashioned hearing aid in one ear) explains that Parry needs much more than a few dollars to regain what he had lost. Perry tells Jack the story of the Fisher King and the festering wound he received, mirroring the wounds they’ve received in life (and manifest in Jack’s bandaged hand).

Both a motorized wheelchair user and a little person wearing a business suit are milling about in the background when Parry takes Jack to see Lydia, the woman he admires from afar. Parry then shows Jack the “castle” of wealthy philanthropist Landon Carmichael, from whom Parry intends to steal the Grail. (In this high-rent district, there’s another person in a wheelchair, this time an elderly lady being pushed by a uniformed attendant.)

Jack balks at the dangerous plan and suddenly tries to confront Parry with the reality of his identity. Parry is quickly overwhelmed and has a screaming fit, running away to a nearby park where he snaps out of it to come to the aid of an injured and incoherent gay man. Jack and Parry take “Venice” to a crowded, dirty public hospital for medical attention, and Jack’s introduction to the disparities in health care between the rich and the poor.

Jack’s education continues with a trip to Grand Central, where he strikes up a conversation with a disabled veteran begging for spare change. Someone tosses a coin on the floor where the wheelchair-using man can’t reach to pick it up.

“He didn’t even look at you.”
“Well, he’s paying so he don’t have to look.”
“Say, guy goes to work every day eight hours a day, seven days a week. He starts questioning the very fabric of his existence. Then one day about quitting time the boss calls him into the office and says, “Hey Bob, why don’t you come on in here and kiss my ass for me, will you?”
“Well,” he says, “hell with it. I don’t care what happens. I just want to see the expression on his face as I jam this pair of scissors into his arm.”
Then he thinks of me. He says “Wait a minute. I got both my arms, I got both my legs. At least I’m not begging for a living.” Sure enough, Bob’s going to put those scissors down and pucker right up. See, I’m what you call a moral traffic light, really. I’m, like, saying “Red. Go no further. Boop… boop…”

A successful first date with Lydia sets up an internal conflict for Parry, and he has a showdown with The Red Knight, the symbol of his trauma. He becomes stupefied with fear, and is taken back to a mental hospital. Lydia oversees his care, providing cutesy sheets and demanding he be clad in pajamas instead of a hospital gown, but this isn’t enough to wake the prince. Jack presents the Grail and Parry magically wakes up, restored to sanity (and with no side effects from the psychoactive drugs he was probably pumped full of) and ready to lead a chorus of “the bungled and the botched” in song.

Padre Pio: Miracle Man

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B000LXWAI6″ locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rxIYJwWKL._SL160_.jpg” width=”114″]
[easyazon-link asin=”B000LXWAI6″ locale=”us”]Padre Pio Miracle Man[/easyazon-link], distributed by Catholic publishing company Ignatius Press, gets high marks for its attempt to present the cinematic endeavor in more than one language and to include subtitles for each language with which the movie is dubbed. The English-language soundtrack is the victim of some stilted English expression, unfortunately complementing some stilted acting.
One reviewer on Amazon.com recommends using the Italian soundtrack in combination with the English subtitles (fortunately, a technical possibility).

The movie presents a version of Padre Pio’s life story largely told in flashbacks at the behest of another priest who is engaging in the (to some) extraordinary effort of investigating (and, at times, interrogating) Padre Pio in the later years of his life. The investigating priest is seen to use a cane, but in spite of having a mobility impairment himself, ignores Padre Pio’s obvious fatigue during the series of interviews. Padre Pio is depicted in the film as intermittantly using an oxygen tank in old age, and occasionally a manual wheelchair. It would seem he had a generalized weakness in later life, but he was still sufficiently ambulatory to celebrate mass, and to be censured by his religious superiors for taking three hours to do so.

When Padre Pio was a child growing up in the Catholic Church, he witnessed a woman in his church praying to St. Peregrine to cure her young son, whom she held in her arms. Growing increasingly frustrated, she left the boy, who appeared to be five or six years old, and initially seemed spastic, but later was depicted as unconscious, at the altar of the church, whereupon, either through the gesture of “leaving him to God/the Church” just below the altar steps, or the mental focus of the young Francisco (later to become Pio) silently and more directly imploring the help of God for the boy, the boy regained consciousness, and got up and walked. The movie did not specify what, exactly, the boy had, but St. Peregrine is the patron saint of cancer sufferers.

While this cinematic retelling of significant events in the life of Padre Pio adheres to the Catholic tradition of equating suffering with holiness by depicting Padre Pio’s more mundane health conditions as well as his receiving of the stigmata, and how Pio and the religious authorities of his time and place dealt with it, it also shows that Padre Pio had a long and active life in spite of some chronic conditions.

When Pio was of military age, he was ordered to report to his draft board for a physical examination, in spite of his status as clergy, for which he should have been given an exemption. Nevertheless, upon having actually submitted to physical examination, he was spared military service by doctors who were seen to examine his chest X-Ray, and to reject him for military service, on the grounds that he would “infect the whole unit”, the implication being that he had tuberculosis.

Indeed, it was because of the fact that people sought him out and Padre Pio developed a considerable and devoted following during his lifetime, that it was a reasonable concern to orthodox Catholicism that because of his influence, people were coming back to the church for the wrong reasons, or more precisely, that they were coming to Padre Pio, because of what would today be termed mediumistic or psychic powers (also said by occultists outside the church to at times be accompanied or caused by a declining physical body). When asked how he was able to know certain things in advance of their actual occurence, Padre Pio gave an answer surprisingly similar to Cayce’s concept of the Akashic Records; “sometimes God allows me a look at his notebook”.

It was perhaps with this and his public influence in mind that Padre Pio’s religious superiors had him effectively held prisoner for a period of time.

The movie does a good job of showing that some miraculous occurrences attributed to Padre Pio may have had alternative explanations not involving the supernatural or the power of God, such as Pio’s ability to tell people who came to him for news about relatives in military service: the priest who questioned him about his life said that it was “the law of averages” which allowed him to predict the fate of soldiers to their loved ones with some degree of accuracy.
However, some other things are left open to belief, such as one incident in which Pio was established to have successfully bilocated in order to be on the scene during a combat incident during the war, and give a dying soldier last rites, while the other priest shrank from going forward to do so, gun shy because the soldier had been killed by a flying bullet and there was still shooting. There was another incident in which he barred the door against a mortally wounded soldier seeking absolution (within the context of Last Rites) because he was afraid for his own safety.

Though the movie dealt with some miracles said to have been committed by Padre Pio, it left out other reputed supernatural abilities, including the fact that at one point in his life, Padre Pio, like some other stigmatics, manifested the phenomenon of inedia.

Padre Pio was said to have survived on nothing but the Blessed Sacrament and an occasional beer. Whether such a feat was truly miraculous is open to more than one interpretation, like many of Padre Pio’s other unusual abilities depicted in the movie. If Padre Pio remained in his bed or wheelchair for most of the day, it may well be that he had few caloric needs at that time of his life. (And everyone knows that beer is full of empty calories!)