The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Movie Review :
As far as filmmaking snags go, the death of your lead actor is a pretty major deal. Such untimely departures usually result in the scrapping of the whole project, but when the filmmakers plough on, the results get interesting: a cardboard cutout of Bruce Lee in The Game of Death, the not-so creative use of outtakes in The Trail of the Pink Panther, the masterfully awful Plan 9 From Outer Space from the legendary Ed Wood…
It had to happen to Terry Gilliam of course. As a filmmaker, Gilliam has earned a reputation for not merely courting disaster but positively wooing it, as captured in the Making and Breaking Of A Film documentary Lost in La Mancha a few years ago. Still, there was no way he could have anticipated Heath Ledger’s death during the making of his latest movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – but this was one project that couldn’t and shouldn’t have been left unfinished.
Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is an ancient medicine man who treks through modern London with his travelling show, the ‘Imaginarium’, and his troupe of performers: the diminutive Percy (Verne Troyer in a one-off role where he isn’t the butt of Mike Myers gags), the merry Anton (Andrew Garfield) and his restless daughter Valentina (model Lily Cole, her wide-set eyes scanning the pages of a homes magazines in wonder). The group puts on a show that takes audience participation to a whole new level: punters are invited to pass through Doctor Parnassus’s mirror into a fantasy-land hewn from the stuff that dreams are made of. Their own dreams, that is.
After one of their late-night performances, Doctor Parnassus is compelled to renegotiate an old wager with the Devil, who wears a bowler hat and goes by the moniker of Mr. Nick (Tom Waits, perfectly cast): the first to seduce five souls will win the soul of Valentina on her sixteenth birthday. Soon after they strike the new deal, the travelling players chance upon Heath Ledger’s character, Tony – his first appearance in the film is laced with chilling irony – a man in a dapper white suit who seems to have lost his memory but may have dark secrets of his own.
This is a story that only Gilliam could tell. It is closest in spirit to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (whose screenwriter Charles McKeown also co-writes here): a visually sumptuous fantasy with surrealist landscapes, Botticelli-inspired nudity, occasional bursts of Looney Tunes logic, Monty Python lunacy (especially the sudden appearance of the giant head of an English bobby), and a climactic sequence straight out of Alice in Wonderland. It’s a feast for the eyes where the courses just keep on coming.
But does it make sense? Gilliam’s work, which tends to be made on his own terms, is convoluted at the best of times – even when his actors do him the courtesy of staying alive during the production. It comes as something of a surprise then that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus actually holds together pretty well, despite having been reconfigured in the eleventh hour. Yes, there are different incarnations of Tony – played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell – but this device turns out to make sense beyond Doctor Parnassus’s looking-glass. It’s also a lot of fun. Johnny Depp is, as usual, impeccable, his Keef Richards-cum-Jack Sparrow gait immediately recognisable as he hops Disney cartoon lily pads in another inspired blue-screen sequence – and his resemblance to Ledger here is rather striking, it must be said.
The character of Tony, and his role in the story, could be tidier. All eyes will naturally be on Ledger’s last performance, and it’s a shame that it’s a bit of a loose end in this tapestry. Some of the extended flights of fancy will test the patience of the average filmgoer too – this is far from being a conventional piece of cinema, and not everyone will be fond of the Jungian dreamscapes conjured up here.
Still, for those who’ve been barracking for Gilliam, the Don Quixote of the industry, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is ample proof that he’s riding tall once again. It’s a dazzling piece of work, made all the more remarkable by the real-world events that conspired against it. In this way, it’s a story, on more than one level, of the triumph of the imagination
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Movie Details :
Release Date: December 25, 2009 (NY, LA; expansion: January 8)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Terry Gilliam
Screenwriter: Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown
Starring: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Movie Trailer Online :
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