An epic is defined as a long narrative story celebrating the feats of a traditional hero. Throughout history epics such as Beowulf have been well known. Directors have been known to take qualities of an epic and place them in movies such as Braveheart in order to express the theme. In Terry Gillian's film, The Fisher King, he uses certain characteristics of an epic and ignores others in order to keep the movie more realistic which more significantly impacts the viewer. There are four elements that make up an epic and without all four the story cannot be considered an epic. The elements consist of a central hero, feats of superhuman strength and or sagacity, supernatural intervention, and an elevated style of presentation. Through the use of these elements Gillian is able to examine modern society.
The central hero is expressed as representing the values of his or her society. Gillian chooses the character of Jack, who has a career in radio, as the central hero for the purpose of showing the false beliefs that society holds true to material things. In the beginning Jack has already achieved the values of his society, which consist of wealth, beautiful women, a sense of humor, and a promising career. Gillian shows these values only to represent the materialistic views of society, and that they should not be thought of as achieving true happiness. After Gillian shows how great Jack's life is he presents a tragedy. Jack tells one of his callers that all women are evil and to stay away from them. That night the caller goes and kills a whole bunch of people and then kills himself. Jack feels responsible and goes into a depression, where he does nothing to help himself or anyone else. Around the middle of the movie Jack meets a man by the name of Perry. Perry's wife is a victim of the caller that killed everyone. Perry has gone crazy because of the trauma from the incident. Jack feels responsible and tries to help Perry, but at first Jack only wants topay his fine and get on with his life?, but this approach did not work.
