The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Remember how I mentioned that I judge movies by their title?  "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is one of those titles that excite me like no other.  Let's break it down:  you have a completely made-up word "Imaginarium", probably meaning "a location filled with imagination".  Who owns the Imaginarium?  Why, Doctor Parnassus does, who just so happens to be named after Mt. Parnassus, the home of the Muses in Greek Mythology.  I haven't heard a title that offers so much wonder and fantastical imagery since "Alice in Wonderland"*.  And then, above all this, its directed by "Monty Python" alumnus, Terry Gilliam, a man who always - even on his worst days - makes visually impressive movies.   Gilliam will take you to places that no other movie has ever even come close to before.  He's better than drugs.

 ...Also the movie just so happens to be that movie Health Ledger was making when he died tragically of a drug overdose in 2008.  There's kinda that too.

Let's start out with the plot.  If you're wondering exactly how your personal sensibilities will take this movie, you should probably have a clue what its about.  (Deep Breath)  Doctor Parnassus is a former monk turned-immortal thanks to his many bets with his good friend/rival the Devil.  However, thanks to one bet too many, Parnassus now has to give up his beautiful daughter, Valentina on her sixteenth birthday.  But there's a way out!  If the good Doctor can find five souls for the Devil, his daughter will be free.  The way you steal souls is to shove them into his magic mirror, the Imaginarium, which is literary a window into Parnassus's mind where anything can and does happen.  However, there's a another problem, the Doctor has fallen on a bit of hard times.  He's left wandering the streets of London in his run-down beaten carny show, and is dead broke.  Lucky thing that the Doctor's troop saved a mysterious man (Health Ledger) from hanging.  The hanging man has amnesia, a lucky flute, and an inexplicable power to entice the crowds.  Things get weirder from there.  Also in the cast is Anton, a young man in love with Valentina and rival to Health Ledger, and a midget.  Why a midget?  Why not.

I'm reviewing this a bit late, since this movie first came out in theatres in 2009.  However, its theatrical run was like in total three empty theatres in Manhattan for approximately thirty seconds, and weirdly a wide release in Europe.  You could never find it.  Its sad that a good movie like this gets a limited run while crap like "Marmaduke" got a full release in theatres everywhere.  (No, I haven't forgiven that movie for existing yet.  Why do you ask?)  So now that's on DVD, I finally got to watch it. 

Obviously the great albatross hanging around this movie's neck is the death of its star actor, Health Ledger.  During production, the movie was roughly 2/3rds of the way complete by the time Ledger died.  Terry Gilliam's movies always have the worst luck, the man is quite literary cursed**, and this time is clearly the most unfortunate.  The way "Imaginarium" goes around filling in Health Ledger's role for scenes that he could not take part in is to replace him with three difficult actors:  Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrel.  Luckily this movie has a wacky enough plot that there actually can be an explanation for this.  You see, every time Health Ledger's character (who is later revealed to be named "Tony") steps into the Imaginarium, he becomes the sexual fantasy of the particular woman he's with at the time.  So for one woman, he's Johnny Depp.  For another, he's Jude Law.  And for the third act, he's Colin Farrel.  (If he had gone in with me, he would have become Kira Knightley.)  This actually is a bit of a clue as to just what kind of person Tony really is.  However, on the other hand, this effect is just distracting to the audience, leading to a character that has very different mannerisms between scenes.  Two of the three alternate actors have just about a single scene between them - so if you're looking for a lot of Johnny Depp, you'll be quite disappointed.  Also, quite a bit of time and thematic energy is wasted explaining this gimmick.  I guess if your actor suddenly becomes a different person, you have to show the audience that the characters are at least aware of this fact but still, its distracting.

Imagine if tomorrow you woke up and didn't have a nose.  Just a big empty blotch of skin right where your nose used to stick out.  Yeah, you could keep on living but it would be hard to just keep on going as if nothing had happened.  But then again, its better than not having a movie at all.  Also, the other three actors playing Tony donated their entire salaries to Ledger's children in what is actually a very nice gesture.  Still, I doubt those kids will want to watch this movie anytime soon.  Would you want to watch the movie Daddy died making?  Didn't think so.

Another thing that's a bit strange in the movie is how it constantly seems to shift protagonists.  At the beginning, it seems like Anton will be the leading man.  But then Tony takes over for about an hour, leaving me very unhappy that poor Anton has been downgraded to a supporting role.  Even as Tony is the lead, you never quite find yourself liking him, as you sympathize with Anton being forced out both literary in his plot role, and physically as Tony as become the star of Doctor Parnassus's show and the object of Valentina's affections.  Luckily by the end, you come to realize this is probably an intentional effect, when you learn Tony's story.  But by then, a new protagonist has appeared:  Doctor Parnassus himself.   Also, the main villain shifts around a bit as well.  At the beginning, you're certain its the Devil, but later on you come to run into what might in fact be a more sinister evil.  The Devil is a mere trickster out for fun, but this next guy is nothing but lies.

Its pretty clear to me that this movie isn't exactly for everyone. "Weird" barely even describes the scenery.  Once you step inside the Imaginarium, the entire movie grows into a visual masterpiece, with all sorts of bizarre and wonderful sights to be seen.  Essentially the Imaginarium is a land of dreams, where the individual person's secret desires come true in physical form.  But then again, the world outside the Imaginarium isn't exactly normal either:  Doctor Parnassus began his life as a floating monk in a Tibetan mountain monastery decorated with giant face carvings.  Inside the Imaginarium, you have 1000-foot tall ladders, gigantic staircases, and other indescribable wonders.  If the idea of a character running around on a broken 1000-foot ladder, using each 1000-foot leg as stilts to escape Russian mobsters makes you think "that's the stupidest movie ever", then you won't enjoy it.  On the other hand, if you're like me and think that girls leaping through time is the greatest idea for a movie ever, than you'll probably like this one.  Its the "this is so stupid-this is so cool" divide of humanity.  Its exactly why one half of us thought that "Transformers" was the greatest movie ever, while the other half were left begging the Gods to cleanse the world with another Flood (myself included in the latter).  I recommend it for my faction, I don't recommend it for the other side.

Even so, its a worth a view I think.  Maybe you just want to see Health Ledger's last movie.  There are worse reasons to watch movies than that.

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* I haven't seen this year's "Alice in Wonderland", but I have heard the worst things about it.  It goes without saying that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" are great books, also the Disney cartoon is probably not bad either, but when director Tim Burton is doing a remake, you don't just not see the movie - you run for the hills.  He made the forgotten 2001 "Planet of the Apes", that abysmal "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and now this, which I've heard is in fact Tim Burton's worst movie ever.  Its really too bad, since the man did make two of my favorite movies:  the fantastically weird and dark "Batman Returns", and the groundbreaker in stop-motion animation, "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

** Let's review the long troubled history of Terry Gilliam as a directer:

• First he co-directed "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", a movie with a minuscule budget (the coconuts weren't included just for comedy - they couldn't afford horses) and a bit of bickering with co-director Terry Jones.  Of course everybody knows that in the end, it was the funniest movie ever made.
• Next up was "Jabberwocky", a movie that nobody on Earth remembers and it is difficult to verify if this thing actually exists.
• Then came Gilliam's masterpiece "Brazil" which was beset by executive meddling and a recut ending that ruined the movie, luckily later versions put things back the way they were supposed to be.  WATCH THIS.  NOW.
•  "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" was a movie made on half the budget it needed and beset with all sorts of teething problems.  Eric Idle would later say that taking part in this movie was "fucking insanity".  Then it was also a box office disaster.
• "12 Monkeys" also was a incredibly difficult shoot, suffering from all sorts of weather problems - and the movie was terrible.  I know some of you guys out there like it, but "12 Monkeys" is junk.
• "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was a movie that took almost twenty-five years to be completed until Gilliam took over, and so he was caught in a major Writer's Guild of America dispute over credits.  At one point Gilliam planned to release the film with the disclaimer "ignore the credits, there were actually no writers for this movie".  And of course filming was characteristically difficult.
• "The Brothers Grimm" was a production filled with major executive meddling and arguments.  Production was shut down for two weeks when Gilliam got particularly frustrated.  The ad campaign made it look horrible, so I never saw it.
• Gilliam's pet-project, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" has been in various stages of production for two decades now, and they all failed.  The best attempt saw the set destroyed by a flash flood, a shoe-string budget, angry investors, and the star seriously injured and hospitalized for weeks.  He also failed to make "Time Bandits 2", "A Tale of Two Cities", and twice tried to make a "Watchmen" movie before the 2008 movie beat him to the punch.  Warner Bros also flat-out refused to let him get anywhere near their "Harry Potter" film series.  Interestingly, the "Harry Potter" movies have been consistently mediocre - coincidence much?
• However, "Time Bandits", "The Fisher King", and "Tideland" were all made with absolutely no production problems whatsoever and were generally all quite successful.  The curse was out on vacation for those movies.