As cinematic geniuses go, Terry Gilliam has had a particularly cluttered, and often unlucky, career. Remarkably, one can point to Time Bandits or 12 Monkeys as among the most coherent and accessible of the filmmaker’s works. But even his most awkward and arcane pieces have something interesting to say or at least look at. His latest, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (a Gilliam-esque title if ever there was one), is both cluttered and unlucky, but in spite of this, or perhaps even because of it, it actually kind of works. For my money, it’s his best film since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If nothing else, it will be forever remembered as Heath Ledger‘s final film. His death occurred midway through the production and would have ended it, but Gilliam managed to find a way to keep Ledger’s performance in the film and replace him at the same time. The final result raises some interesting, if futile, what-if questions, but is certainly a testament to the malleability of film.
The title character, played by Christopher Plummer, is the immortal leader of a traveling circus (of sorts) with an ulterior motive for those he entertains. He lures them through a magical mirror on his stage into their own imaginations, presenting them with a comically exaggerated choice between enlightenment and damnation. Inside this fantastic world the subjects of this gauntlet may wear a different face from the one they normally wear. Thus Heath Ledger might transform into Johnny Depp, or Jude Law, or Colin Farrell, depending on which aspect of his soul is being examined. Clever, huh?
Parnassus’ scheme is the result of an old wager with the Devil (played with seedy panache by Tom Waits), with his daughter’s soul at stake. The bet seems long lost, as the wandering troupe seem to be unable to attract an audience in the debauched and debased 21st Century. Then they happen upon Ledger, a mysterious pinstripe-suited figure hanging from a bridge as from a gallows. After they rescue him, he joins them with the promise of sexing up their repertoire. This he does, exploring the Doctor’s Imaginarium himself in the process. Not surprisingly, the Imaginarium offers some pretty outlandish and often tour-de-force visual setpieces, but the real charm is the way they supplement Gilliam’s familiar practical stagecraft. Take the magic mirror itself, for instance. In the “real world,” it is nothing more than a sheet of crumpled silver paper with a slit to allow entry and egress. On the other side it is seen as a liquid-like mystical portal.
I wonder if Gilliam might be making an homage to Ingmar Bergman‘s The Seventh Seal, which similarly involved a high-stakes game between Death and a mortal man who, at one point, also crosses paths with a wagon full of bohemian performers. Visually, the two pieces could hardly be any more different. While Bergman shot in stark minimalist black and white, Gilliam loves his gratuitously clunky props, garish colors and extreme wide-angle lenses. I’m the last person to dismiss the appeal of the latter approach–when I buy a ticket for a Terry Gilliam picture, I certainly hope to get all the musty fabric and Baroque gadgetry I paid for. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Adventure/Fantasy/Mystery
Rated PG-13
DVD Release Date: 4/27/10
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