Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus almost didn’t get made due to Heath Ledger’s death midway through production. Ledgers death was unfortunate, but Gilliam should thank his lucky stars that he was making a movie that could adjust to such an occurrence. Unfortunately, the film is a failure. Most people won’t enjoy it, but admirers of Gilliam will see motifs from his former films that they might enjoy.

I ran into a Gilliam film for the first time when my father insisted I watch a weird movie that he liked called Time Bandits. Which I did. To this day I really can’t say what would possess a production company to make that movie. The film featured grand special effects, huge sets, bizarre characters, and fantastical elements. All of these elements are found again in Imaginarium, as well as all of Gilliam’s movies. But with the advent of cheap digital special effects, his imagination has been virtually set free.

Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus take place in the present and follows an immortal man named Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his theater group, which travels and tries to convince individuals to enter a mirror on their theater carriage. When they enter said mirror, they’re transported into a world of imagination, which Parnassus can more or less control. These powers were won from The Devil in a previous wager. However, The Devil comes to collect on a previous agreement that if Parnassus should ever have a child, the first-born would go to The Devil.

If the plot set-up sounds confusing or annoying to you, this movie probably won’t interest you. The above description highlights my biggest problem with the film. The story is stupid and self-indulgent. The movie isn’t about anything. It is a series of vignettes containing wonderful special effects sequences. Yes, this might be an unfortunate consequence of losing a main actor, but that doesn’t mean the core story had to be so confusing. The character Tony (Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell) is never fully explained. There is no reason given that The Devil would bring him into the deal between him and Parnassus. Too many stories in Hollywood are stripped down into simplistic stories about simplistic characters, but complicated plots don’t mean they have to be difficult to follow.

Another thing I didn’t like about this movie was its pacing. I never check the length of movies before I see them because I don’t want to know when the ending is coming. This movie took forever to get through. The scenes of imagination are very good, but when they’re over I found myself just eager to get back into them.

As for all the different actors playing the character Tony, all I have to say is that it works. All the actors do a good job of playing the same whacky person. It is the unfortunate truth that I liked Ledger the most. Gilliam has said that he thought the film was cursed as Ledger died during production, one of the producers died only only months after completion, and only weeks after shooting Gilliam got clobbered by a car. A lot went wrong with this production and loads of sacrifices were made to get this film made. It has enjoyable special effects and the joy of fantasy is visceral, but it is slow, confusing, and ultimately pointless. All by design? Maybe. But that doesn’t make something fun to watch. Snuff films are by design.

I couldn’t help but feel there was a good film somewhere in there. Just too much went wrong. Moreover, I encourage people to go see Gilliam’s greatest film called Brazil. It is a classic, which contains the same grand special effects as Parnassus, but is driven by a thoughtful, clear, provocative story.

Release date: December 2009

Collin says: C -

You’ll say: D