The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

Terry Gilliam has had a somewhat erratic career as a director. Starting out as animator, director and part-time performer for Monty Python, he first broke out alone with the medieval comedy Jabberwocky... a fun and slightly offputting exercise in historically-correct grottiness. From there he crafted masterful flights of fancy such as Brazil, The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys. Throughout this career he has struggled to secure budgets and control over final cuts, with ill luck forcing him to abandon production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote nearly 10 years ago. Financial restraints and creative squabbling saw the more recent The Brothers Grimm fall prey to a drastic neutering that left it a poor and ineffective shadow of what it might've been. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is the latest Gilliam epic that almost never made it to the screen, with the mid-shoot death of Heath Ledger casting doubts on the film's future. Fortunately, the nature of the film's story and the amount of footage Ledger had already shot allowed Gilliam to salvage his vision with a few minor re-writes. I say fortunately because I'm not sure if Gilliam would've survived another abandoned film, I'm not actually referring to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus itself as it isn't the great new Gilliam masterpiece we've all been waiting for.

The story of this film is the idea of stories themselves, with the titular Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) an immortal sideshow pedaller who gives audience members the opportunity to travel into his magical mind. It's a journey limited only by the bounds of their own imaginations, and made possible by an ancient bargain Parnassus once struck with the Devil (Tom Waits). We join up with Dr. Parnassus and his carnie-helpers in modern day England, where his magical show has been reduced to a hokey vaudeville illusions act that fails to make a buck from drunken and ungrateful chavs. One day, Parnassus' travelling troupe saves a mysterious white-suited man from death by hanging (Heath Ledger). This silver-tongued stranger claims to have amnesia and slots into their routine effortlessly, and even begins to find ways for them to start making money again. Meanwhile, the Devil catches up with Parnassus and strikes a deadly new bargain.

It's an interesting story, and it's full of great ideas, but the delivery feels all off. Plot has never really been one of Gilliam's strongpoints as a director, his best films tend to be those that have been written or co-written by talented screenwriters like Tom Stoppard (Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare in Love), David Peoples (Unforgiven, Blade Runner) or Richard LaGravenese (A Little Princess, Freedom Writers). The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus also seems to suffer from a lack of focus and some generally poor line delivery, and most of the characters come across more as cartoonish caricatures than tragic figures that should be engaging our sympathy.

Of course, most people will be watching this to see Heath Ledger's last performance. It's a decent role and Ledger does a good job of it (especially in the scene where he gets frustrated with Anton for taking his tin whistle) but it's also expectedly sad as some of his key scenes had to be played by other actors (don't worry, it makes sense in the context of the film - these three scenes all take place inside the face-changing world of Dr. Parnassus' fantastical imaginarium). Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell all step in to do their best impressions of Ledger's character, with Farrell taking up the largest portion of important screentime and Depp's scenes barely amounting to more than a cameo. All that aside though, the real star of the movie is Tom Waits as the Devil... you've never seen apter casting, and Waits doesn't really have to do much to convince in the part. He's a hoot.

At the end of the day, I think I'll have to label this one as a disappointment. It's a good excuse for Gilliam's typically inventive imagery and chaotic ideas, but beyond this there isn't much else going on to make it a particularly memorable or cohesive film experience.

HIGHLIGHTS: In the Jude Law imaginarium sequence there's a police song-and-dance routine called Join the Fuzz that is so purely Monty Python it'll be hard for any pythonite fans to not crack a smile. The masculine cops even wear skirts and stockings.

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