Summary
As Jack leaves, he introduces himself, but Parry already knows his name, which surprises Jack. In the hall, Jack runs into the man who is letting Parry live in the basement; the man gets upset because Parry isn’t allowed to have visitors. He tells Jack that Parry is allowed to stay in the basement because of “the tragedy,” but that’s all that’s allowed. The man then tells Jack that Parry and his wife had been at the restaurant that Edwin shot up 3 years prior, and Parry’s wife was shot in the head. Jack looks stricken as he realizes the connection.
Back at the video store, Anne confronts Jack about the fact that he was gone the previous night. He tells her he was attacked and she immediately wants to take care of him. “So where did you sleep last night?” she asks him, suspecting him of having an affair. He tells her he was attacked and spent the night at a friend’s house.
That night over dinner, Jack brings up the Holy Grail. Anne tells him about the fact that she thinks women are made in God’s image and men are the devil. She tries to seduce him, but he’s not in the mood.
The next day, Jack goes back to find Parry, but the basement is empty. He finds a drawing of a knight, but the head is a red splotch. There are candles lit and medieval pictures all over the walls, and he finds a shrine to Parry’s dead wife. As he reaches into the shrine, the man who he encountered in the hall touches his shoulder, startling him. Upstairs the man tells Jack more about Harry: he was a professor at Hunter College named Henry Sagan, who suffered a nervous breakdown after his wife was killed. Jack picks up an academic paper called “The Fisher King” and flips through it. The man tells him that Henry and his wife used to live upstairs, and now he lets Henry—who awoke from a catatonic state calling himself “Parry”—stay in the basement.
Jack goes home and listens to old episodes of his radio show, looking at newspaper clippings from his famous days. He weeps as he looks at the headlines, and when Anne finds him, he tells her that he thinks he is existentially unlucky, always followed by bad news. She holds him as he cries.
Later, Jack returns to the Manhattan Bridge and asks the other bums where Parry is. They direct him to an office building in Manhattan, and he finds Parry sitting on top of a car reciting verse. As the clock strikes noon, Parry grabs Jack and pulls him over to watch as a woman, Lydia, exits the office building. “Isn’t she a vision?” Parry says of Lydia, but Jack wants to give him money and be on his way.
Parry follows the woman from a distance, and Jack follows him. They follow her to a Chinese restaurant, where she clumsily eats dumplings, struggling to use chopsticks. When Jack finally gets Parry to stop following the girl and focus, he gives Parry money to compensate for his crime years ago, but Parry promptly gives it to another homeless person, which angers Jack.
Jack runs over and confronts Parry about the fact that he gave the money away. Calming him down, Parry says, “You really want to help me?” The scene shifts: Parry has taken Jack to the home of Langdon Carmichael, the architect who is in possession of the Holy Grail Parry is after. Jack tries to tell Parry that they can’t break in, but Parry doesn’t buy it.
As Parry approaches the house, Jack expresses dismay at Parry’s behavior, but it only eggs Parry on more. Parry breaks into a jubilant dance about the fact that Jack “cares,” but Jack still tries to get through to him. “There is no magic!” he yells, before telling Parry that he knows he is really Henry Sagan. At the mention of the past, Parry becomes exceedingly distressed, and begins hallucinating a giant red knight, like the one in the picture in his basement lair.
Suddenly, Parry breaks into a run, chasing what he believes is the red knight into Central Park. Jack sprints after him, but eventually falls behind. When he catches up, Parry is blithely sitting on a large boulder in the park in a meditative pose. “Who have we been chasing?” Jack asks, out of breath. “I thought you saw…The Red Knight!” Parry says, casually. Exasperated, Jack throws the money at Parry, when suddenly Parry hears the distressed screams of someone nearby.
Parry finds a crying man in the dirt near a bridge and comforts him. The man is a flamboyantly dressed former cabaret singer and is crying about the fact that there are no more great debutants anymore. They take the man to a hospital, but he resists treatment. As he tries to wriggle free from Jack, the man weeps about the fact that he’s not Katharine Hepburn. Jack asks him if he lost his mind gradually or all at once, and the man tells him that he began having an existential crisis while singing in nightclubs at summer stock theater, after all of his friends had died (referring implicitly the AIDS epidemic).
Later, at Grand Central, Parry and Jack wait for Lydia, who Parry expects to be coming through soon. A bum in a wheelchair begs and talks to Parry and Jack for a moment. Parry looks expectantly for Lydia, when suddenly he spots her. As he catches a glimpse of her, a dream sequence begins in which all the travelers in Grand Central begin to ballroom dance around the main lobby.
Analysis
In this section of the film, we learn about Parry’s connection to Jack. Jack is grateful to Parry for saving his life, but he doesn’t think much of the eccentric bum until the upstairs neighbor tells him that Parry’s wife was killed by “Edwin,” the violent former listener who called into Jack’s show. This news sends Jack into yet another self-hating spiral, as he realizes the ways that his careless words as a shock jock are still reverberating in people’s lives to this day. He is despondent, and complains to Anne that he is a “magnet that attracts shit.” She holds him in her arms, grateful to be of service, as he weeps about the ways his life has gone awry.
In this way, Parry functions as a kind of ghost, a reminder of Jack’s past. While he is haunted by the crazy bum at first, however, Jack soon sees his acquaintance with Parry also an opportunity to heal from his own trauma, to be accountable for the ways that he has hurt people. After taking time away, Jack decides to find Parry and give him some money, hoping this will clear his conscience and make things right. Of course, it isn’t such an easy fix, and Jack gets ensnared in a much more complicated journey, following Parry through delusions and desires, from reality into fantasy and back again.
If Parry is the ghost from Jack’s past, The Red Knight is Parry’s ghost. Outside the architect’s apartment, Jack tries to talk some sense into Parry, to reacquaint him with reality, but it doesn’t go very well. As soon as Jack mentions Parry’s real name, Henry Sagan, Parry falls to the ground and begins screaming. Soon enough, he sees a specter coming towards him, the Red Knight, which he must chase and scare off. Central Park becomes a medieval forest, just as Parry’s trauma becomes personified as a scary and evil knight, and Jack has no choice but to follow him into his delusion.
To reflect Parry's tenuous grasp on reality, director Terry Gilliam creates a film that straddles the line between fantasy and reality. Rather than make Parry’s delusions an off-putting split, the moments of delusion become fantastical, creating an almost childlike sense of wonder. The Red Knight is a fully realized figment, a great red figure on top of a red horse, intricately designed and uncanny in appearance. As Parry runs through the woods of Central Park, the viewer feels the urgency of his quest as he tries to fight off the Red Knight. Then later, at Grand Central, Parry watches Lydia walk through the crowds, and the hoards of strangers partner up and begin ballroom dancing. At moments, the film transforms into Parry’s dreamlike subjectivity, which to the viewer feels more like an adventure or a sumptuous treat than a post-traumatic projection. Thus, Gilliam creates empathy between the viewer and Parry, and shows the ways that the human mind protects itself from pain.
Slowly, from hanging out more and more with Parry, Jack realizes that it is not just he who has something to give to Parry, but that Parry has much to show him. In contrast to Jack’s cynical outlook, Parry maintains a childlike jubilance, a whacky incoherence that inspires Jack to live more in the present moment. Parry’s temperament is especially different from the flashy, snappy, and offensive shock jock that Jack used to be. The delusional knight shows Jack that everyone is deserving of compassion and understanding, and Jack begins to learn this lesson. For instance, when they take the flamboyant depressive cabaret singer to the hospital, Jack holds him in his arms and listens patiently to his story. Then, at Grand Central, when a bum in a wheelchair tells him a story, Jack gives him the time of day.
