The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - 2009 - Terry Gilliam

Heath Ledger's untimely death will forever hang over this movie and that really is too bad. This second and final Ledger film to be released posthumously does not have the power of the Batman name or the record setting box office. When The Dark Knight came out last summer the buzz around the film was about how wonderful Ledger was and talk of him getting an Oscar. For Parnassus the talk has focus more on the production issues associated with Ledger's passing in the middle of filming and how Terry Gilliam planned to work around not having his lead actor for half of the film. I for one hope that people can get passed the external tragedy and appreciate the film for what it is. To address the issue, Gilliam's trick works well. In the context of the titular imaginarium changing an actor is easy to accept. Everything else about the film just works as well.




Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a thousand year old mystic with a pension for placing wagers with Mr. Nick, Tom Waits as one of the best devils ever put on screen. The doctor and his players travel around in a portable stage show, setting up shop for one night at a time and then moving on to the next part of town. Along with the doctor there is Anton (Andrew Garfield) the carnival barker of the troop, Percy (Verne Troyer, great in his first meaningful role) the doctor's voice of reason and Valentina (Lily Cole). A quick point about miss Cole, I think that she gives a good performance but I have been madly in love with her since the fist time I laid eyes on her years ago. I know that most models who go into acting are less than impressive but I think she can be an exception though my bias toward her is strong. Anyhow the movie has us follow the troop around until one night when they come across a man hanging under a bridge. The hanged man is Tony (Heath Ledger) and he may have amnesia. I do not want to go too deeply into the story but it does involve a place called the imaginarium and on one trip we get Johnny Depp as Tony, one we get Jude Law as Tony and in one last trip we get Colin Farrell as Tony. While far from an ideal situation, a world of imagination does make it easier to accept the different actors all as Tony.

I am sure that this film invites many different readings and if one chooses to delve into the symbolism there is likely some meat. I may explore those ideas in future viewings, but after the first one I am pretty sure that the grand message of the film is spelled out in an early scene between Doctor Parnassus and Mr. Nick. Parnassus is in a temple telling the eternal story when Mr. Nick shows up with a machine to silence anyone who tries to speak. The Doctor tall Mr. Nick that he tells the story to keep the universe running. Mr. Nick is a bit of a skeptic and decides to use his machine to make the Doctor and all of his followers quiet just to see what happens. When the universe does not end Mr. Nick feels he has proven his point, but Doctor Parnassus sees it another way. He says that someone somewhere must have been telling a story and so long as people keep telling stories the universe will go on. That is what Terry Gilliam is working at here. He is telling a story to keep the universe going and under better circumstances that may have been all he was doing. Life being what it is, the project also turned into a tribute to a talented young man who was lost too soon. Real life adds a special poignancy to the ending that may be lost in the years to come as memories fade, but the story will go on.