Rating: 6.5/10

Writers: Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Tom Waits, Andrew Garfield
Studio: Sony Pictures Classic

Originally posted on November 3rd, 2009:

For everything said and speculated about Terry Gilliam’s THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, surprisingly little of it has to do directly with the late Heath Ledger. The film is significantly less about Ledger’s (and, subsequently, Depp’s, Law’s, and Farrell’s) character Tony. Even if Ledger had lived to complete the film, Tony is not much more than a catalyst for change within the film. The bulk of the story revolves around Christopher Plummer’s Parnassus and Tom Waits’ Mr. Nick. On a basic level, it’s very easy to say Parnassus is God and Mr. Nick is the Devil – Parnassus believes (or, at least, once believed) that the world exists from his mind, from his stories, from his say-so. Mr. Nick likes to tempt people into sin and throw them into fire.

Parnassus is able to plunge people straight into their own imaginations, as long as they choose to walk through a flimsy mirror on his traveling stagecoach of an “imaginarium.” Once inside their imaginations, they are faced with a choice that involves the age-old good vs. evil conundrum. Mr. Nick invades their imaginations along with Parnassus, usually offering up more base pleasures, while Parnassus typically employs the lure of enlightenment. Very often, the souls take Mr. Nick’s path, and Parnassus is left weakened and distraught. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS follows their battle for souls, populated with colorful characters and creative settings.

But, as God, or even a very powerful being, Parnassus makes some real amateur mistakes. For one, he makes a deal with Mr. Nick. And it’s a deal that inevitably comes back to haunt him. For reasons revealed along the way, Parnassus and Nick engage in a battle to get the most souls. The first to five gets the prize. With Parnassus’ track record, it’s not a very safe bet. His mission is complicated by the arrival of Ledger’s Tony, who comes into the picture under auspicious circumstances, upsetting the fragile apple cart of the imaginarium, which includes Parnassus, his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), and his assistants Anton (Andrew Garfield) and Percy (Verne Troyer).

While the film starts strong, luring in its audience with Gilliam’s creativity, it eventually collapses under a needlessly muddled plot and poorly executed ideas. It’s unfortunate that the direction and plot weaken so much as to sink the entire film under them, as all of our principal actors turn in wonderful performances. Plummer is, as always, immersive to watch. Waits translates his gravelly timbre and knowing grins into a playful take on the Devil. Andrew Garfield (who most recently sledge-hammered open my heart with his performance in BOY A) and newcomer Lily Cole both approach their roles with gusto and little fear, turning in performances that are enjoyable and ultimately exciting to watch. Even Verne Troyer pops in his role.

Much has been made of the way in which the completion of the film was handled after Ledger’s passing – three of his friends stepped into to assume his role. It was an inventive enough idea, and PARNASSUS is the rare film that could even attempt to make a conceit like this passable. And, of course, when those three friends happen to be Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, who would even argue with such a plan? Unfortunately, the physical transformations of Tony occur as our former (or was he?) amnesiac is recovering his memories and sense of self, and it’s not such a great self. As Tony slides from Ledger to Depp to Law to Farrell, it’s hard to tell if Tony’s descent into near-villainous territory is due to the original intent of the film, or to the mix of actors with their mixed ideas of what the role entails, coupled with a revised script that Gilliam himself has admitted was written on extremely short notice.

At the hands of another director, I suspect a film like PARNASSUS would smack of pretension. But Gilliam seems to love his film and his characters and the world he has created, which makes the inevitable letdown of PARNASSUS’ muddled mess of a third act that much more heart-breaking. Gilliam has clearly attempted to create a fantastical world, as he rightly should – it’s a world of imaginations. But the imaginations do not go far enough, and finally fall off into a poorly-conceived CGI territory that make them nearly impossible to interpret. Coupled with a messy plot that veers off into its own desert somewhere in the last forty minutes, PARNASSUS becomes an unfortunate lesson in “what might have been.”