The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (***)

Directed by: Terry Gilliam

Starring: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Andrew Garfield

Seen: June 16th 2010

*** Out of ****

On a not so different London night, as a small group of friends exit a night club, a strange trailer is drawn up by four horses. When it stops it unfolds into a travelling carnival and a few elaborately made up performers start a rickety show with the few drunken pub leavers mentioned earlier catching interest and getting a bit too involved. One man tries to grab Valentina (Cole), and she escapes through the mirror on stage – into a different dimension, where she manages to lose the drunkard as he gets lost searching for her. At this stage things start getting really inventive, as the environment clearly starts resembling an imagination or a bad dream, and the man is offered a choice between an intimidating set of stairs and a bar – which explodes as he walks into it.

The 16 year old Valentina; her father, the age-old Doctor Parnassus (Plummer); Anton (Garfield), a young sleight of hand expert who also happens to be in love with Valentina and Percy (Troyer), Doctor Parnassus’ confidant, all form part of this travelling troupe, scrounging whatever they can to afford life on their travels. Doctor Parnassus is over a thousand years old, the result of a wager he won against the devil, Mr. Nick (Waits). Mr. Nick reminds him of another wager they made, in which any child of Parnassus will become the property of Mr. Nick on his/her 16th birthday, which in Valentina’s case happens to be in 3 days. As the troupe drive across a bridge, Anton sees a flashing shadow in the light of the lightning, and they realise it is someone hanging from beneath the bridge. They haul him up, and place the unconscious Tony (Ledger) in the trunk of their trailer.

The next day Tony gets introduced to the troupe, and as Mr. Nick comes along to harass Doctor Parnassus, they work up yet another deal: the first one to capture five souls will get to keep Valentina. Tony, who is an unknown to the group, offers his assistance, and as the time goes by, he proves to be valuable in their quest – but also almost loses everything for Parnassus in the quest for the redemption of Valentina’s soul.

The movie is endlessly inventive in the way it portrays the imaginations of people as activated by Doctor Parnassus’ Imaginarium, and I was spellbound by the great storytelling up to and to a measure including the switch that was necessitated by the untimely and tragic death of Heath Ledger. The movie concludes with three rather important scenes in which Tony enters the Imaginarium three times – each time undergoing a facial change as a result of the way the Imaginarium functions on him alone; the first time he is represented by Johnny Depp, then by Jude Law, and lastly by Colin Farrell. The last scene with Farrell turns out to be quite a long one, and this is where the movie does fall apart slightly as all the secrets around the mysterious Tony are revealed in a nightmarish imagination sequence.

To all those who thought they were so smart for seeing the end in Heath Ledger’s eyes during The Dark Knight, a message. You thought you knew something but what you so vainly mistook for drug addiction and imminent death turned out to be the brilliant acting for which he so deservedly won that posthumous Oscar – this movie goes ahead and only increases the brilliance of Heath Ledger as the Joker. In this movie he is a completely different act, again a class act – and his tragic end is not evident in his character, but he does leave a whole which Farrell does not altogether fill during the end of the movie, and his disappearance from the movie is almost as sudden and disappointing as it was for those of us who won’t see him in movies anymore.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a very inventive and entertaining movie, and in my opinion it acts as a crazy and relevant send off for one of this generation’s best young actors. Go see it, and enjoy the wild ride director Terry Gilliam takes you on as he so often does in his movies.