The plot in Terry Gilliam's manic eleventh film is typically all-consuming, all across the board but there's a foundation, I think. His far-out creations in character, costumes and CGI effects, all with his charming trademark textural density, are given purpose by a story that necessitates alternating dimensions. Features of this story were required by the death of Heath Ledger halfway into the filming, although the state of the narrative itself I imagine was intact from square one. It concerns an oddball, boilerplate traveling show that unravels out of a shabby old camper in dilapidated corners of London populated largely by lushes and freaks. Comprising the show is the fine and enduring talent that is Christopher Plummer, in the form of the astronomically old Parnassus, squatting mysteriously on a stool while his id, Anton, played by decent new face Andrew Garfield; his daughter and his agitated midget played inevitably by Verne Troyer, perform for a loudmouth posse of beer buddies.
Percy and Anton save the life of a man hanging from a bridge. Why they can do this is safely not described. The man on the rope is Heath Ledger. That's right. He gets in on the traveling wagon performance, is repulsed by its primitive style and recommends making it more state-of-the-art. Why it's so flimsy is because Parnassus is several hundred years old, having made a deal with the devil, played typically by Tom Waits, to live eternally as long as Satan can take Valentina when she turns 16. So you have to concede that Parnassus took his own sweet old time procreating. But naturally he wants out of the deal. I always did feel like Satan must often run into default risks.
Tony, it unravels, can access or summon or manipulate or make up odd dimensions on the other side of a mirror on the crummy footlights. In these dimensions, anything goes, which is invariably what Gilliam favors. CGI lets the filmmaker and his designers to go crazy, which they consciously do with vigorous fervor, and some astonishing imagery appears. I think Ledger was supposed to be the master of all of these worlds. Alas, Gilliam evidently finished filming all the outer-world London scenes, Ledger returned to New York for R&R, and after that came tragedy. True to Gilliam's filmography's most prevalent thread of fantasy as escape from reality but carried by an air of loss, he juxtaposed him by casting Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law as the Tonys of Imaginariums Nos. 1 through 3 and not elaborating further, as in fact with Imaginariums, that's not necessary. Depp looks the most like Ledger, although it's an ironic feeling of mine that Farrell steals the role. In a sense, the finished product is rather serendipitous in its tragedy, as in most of Gilliam's films, fantasy is treated as creative and imaginative escape from reality, but it also carries with it an atmosphere of loss. This often evokes a violent and sudden response, as is the case with the presence of the humongous squashing foot crashing down that appears in the Python credits he animated.
My dilemma with Gilliam's films, which nonetheless inventively combine the Gothic and romantic, is that, while I don't need A-B-C, Act 1-2-3, I do somewhat prefer having some idea of a film's own conditions. You get the feeling that if a creative idea hits Gilliam, he finds himself at liberty to seize and squeeze it for all the juice it can drain, which is good, though often going not just for broke but for overdraft fees. Almost invariably longing to like Gilliam more than I do, I went out of my way to see Doctor Parnassus essentially to be confounded. Gilliam has never been guilty of the crime of being on auto-pilot. But a good deal of his movies are an acquired taste.
Now what I see is a company of seasoned actors sportingly attempting to maintain their sanity while all around are losing theirs. Can it be easy to play one-third of a master of one-third of a capricious fantasy realm? You only have to dive in. Ledger himself---who makes Tony comparatively down-to-earth in the "real" world, which is of course intentional---must have been ready to do the same and would have given the plot more cohesion. Nevertheless, this is without a doubt an Imaginarium. The best angle is to sit there and let it wash over you. Get caught up in the present-tense much in a way like reading a Kurt Vonnegut book, not worrying so much about hearkening back to the beginning or guessing the end, because at any rate you can't.
Percy and Anton save the life of a man hanging from a bridge. Why they can do this is safely not described. The man on the rope is Heath Ledger. That's right. He gets in on the traveling wagon performance, is repulsed by its primitive style and recommends making it more state-of-the-art. Why it's so flimsy is because Parnassus is several hundred years old, having made a deal with the devil, played typically by Tom Waits, to live eternally as long as Satan can take Valentina when she turns 16. So you have to concede that Parnassus took his own sweet old time procreating. But naturally he wants out of the deal. I always did feel like Satan must often run into default risks.
Tony, it unravels, can access or summon or manipulate or make up odd dimensions on the other side of a mirror on the crummy footlights. In these dimensions, anything goes, which is invariably what Gilliam favors. CGI lets the filmmaker and his designers to go crazy, which they consciously do with vigorous fervor, and some astonishing imagery appears. I think Ledger was supposed to be the master of all of these worlds. Alas, Gilliam evidently finished filming all the outer-world London scenes, Ledger returned to New York for R&R, and after that came tragedy. True to Gilliam's filmography's most prevalent thread of fantasy as escape from reality but carried by an air of loss, he juxtaposed him by casting Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law as the Tonys of Imaginariums Nos. 1 through 3 and not elaborating further, as in fact with Imaginariums, that's not necessary. Depp looks the most like Ledger, although it's an ironic feeling of mine that Farrell steals the role. In a sense, the finished product is rather serendipitous in its tragedy, as in most of Gilliam's films, fantasy is treated as creative and imaginative escape from reality, but it also carries with it an atmosphere of loss. This often evokes a violent and sudden response, as is the case with the presence of the humongous squashing foot crashing down that appears in the Python credits he animated.
My dilemma with Gilliam's films, which nonetheless inventively combine the Gothic and romantic, is that, while I don't need A-B-C, Act 1-2-3, I do somewhat prefer having some idea of a film's own conditions. You get the feeling that if a creative idea hits Gilliam, he finds himself at liberty to seize and squeeze it for all the juice it can drain, which is good, though often going not just for broke but for overdraft fees. Almost invariably longing to like Gilliam more than I do, I went out of my way to see Doctor Parnassus essentially to be confounded. Gilliam has never been guilty of the crime of being on auto-pilot. But a good deal of his movies are an acquired taste.
Now what I see is a company of seasoned actors sportingly attempting to maintain their sanity while all around are losing theirs. Can it be easy to play one-third of a master of one-third of a capricious fantasy realm? You only have to dive in. Ledger himself---who makes Tony comparatively down-to-earth in the "real" world, which is of course intentional---must have been ready to do the same and would have given the plot more cohesion. Nevertheless, this is without a doubt an Imaginarium. The best angle is to sit there and let it wash over you. Get caught up in the present-tense much in a way like reading a Kurt Vonnegut book, not worrying so much about hearkening back to the beginning or guessing the end, because at any rate you can't.