Like a travelling sideshow, Terry Gilliam’s Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus drifts from one weird and wonderful idea to another without any discernible plan, scraping by on little more than novelty value. It’s a slight step up from Gilliam’s more recent works (Tideland and The Brothers Grimm), but when you consider the reputable talent involved — not to mention the added pressure of being Heath Ledger’s swan song — you can’t help but wish it was something more significant.
Set in modern-day London, the film’s titular character Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a travelling showman who won immortality from a bet with the Devil, going by the name Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), over a thousand years ago. Assisting his nightly performance is sleight of hand expert Anton (Andrew Garfield), a dwarf named Percy (Verne Troyer) and his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole). Central to their show is a enchanted fake mirror, which takes the entrant inside their own imagination, where they must choose between a virtuous path (Pernassus’) and one more enticing (Nick’s). Take the former, and they return to reality completely euphoric. Take the latter, and they lose their soul to the Devil.
After a secret agreement made many years prior, Mr. Nick arrives to collect the soul of Parnassus’ daughter on her 16th birthday. Desperate not to give her up, Parnassus makes yet another bet with Nick; whoever is the first to obtain five souls wins Valentina. It’s here where Ledger makes his entrance as amnesiac Tony, found by Anton hanging beneath a bridge with a rope around his neck, barely alive. In an attempt to win the bet with Mr. Nick, Parnassus takes Tony under his wing, using the newcomer’s charisma to lure more souls into the mirror.
If it were Gilliam’s intent to completely baffle the audience, he succeeds admirably. Interesting concepts, or at least visually arresting ones, take precedence over a cohesive narrative. Sense is partially restored during the second hour of film where answers are finally given, but lost once more to an utterly shambolic, and mostly unsatisfying, conclusion.
The sudden death of Heath Ledger mid-production provides one possible reason why the narrative doesn’t quite gel, as the actor had yet to complete a significant portion of his scenes. Gilliam initially thought the project was doomed, but filming eventually resumed after a drastic rewrite, which sees Ledger’s character undergo a string of physical changes to momentarily become the likes of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. It works, but only just. Each star substitute barely has enough screen-time to make an impression, and it’s abundantly clear the story was not conceived with their presence in mind.
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While it’s hard to fault the performances, many of the characters in Imaginarium more accurately resemble caricatures, serving only one purpose to the story; Anton’s the love interest, Percy’s the cynical sidekick and Valentina’s the prized possession. On the bright side, Christopher Plummer gives a strong dramatic performance as Dr. Parnassus and Tom Waits is devilishly fun to watch as Mr. Nick. It’s a shame to say that the films biggest disappointment is Ledger, who appears to understand and care for his character as little as we do.
All these criticisms aside, one cannot fault the superb aesthetic of Gilliam’s film. Costumes, make-up, set design and cinematography remain spectacular throughout. Each journey into the mirror transports us to a vividly imagined world where the creative minds of Lewis Carroll, Salvador Dali are tossed into a blender with Gilliam’s own. One particularly brilliant imagining sees giant ladders reach to the sky in a cartoon world reminiscent of Gilliam’s work in Monty Python. In this scene, the deliberate cheesiness of the special effects works in the film’s favour, but when the visuals attempt to be more realistic, the result can be quite jarring.
But jarring seems to be exactly what Gilliam is aiming for, and like a trash-bag fashion show, you can’t help but admire Imaginarium even though a lot of it’s rubbish.
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