The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Hollywood: movie
Genre:Adventure Fantasy Mystery
Director::Terry Gilliam
Screenwriter: Terry Gilliam (written by)
Charles McKeown (written by)
Producer: Amy Gilliam, Samuel Hadida, William Vince
Music Director: Jeff Danna, Mychael Danna
Release Date:20 November 2009
Cast: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law, Andrew Garfield
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: hollywood movie Reviews
There can be few other films which have garnered more goodwill than Terry Gilliam's latest fantasy. This is a director who has suffered from more poor luck than just about anyone else in the business, and one who dares to dream more than any film-maker of his generation. The critics desperately want to love his ramshackle tribute to the late Heath Ledger, which was completed with the help of Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell after the Australian actor died before completing his scenes.
And yet the whole thing is just too much of a flight of Gilliam fancy to truly be called a great film: there is too little dramatic structure, too little glue holding together the strands of Gilliam's wild fantasies, and far too much whimsy. Many of the performances - including, if you ask certain people, that of Ledger himself in his final role - seem insipid at best.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus stars that reliable old-timer Christopher Plummer as the titular leader of a travelling troupe of oddballs offering clients the chance to discover a personalised dreamworld by entering their rickety sideshow. Long long ago, Parnassus made a deal with the Devil (a wonderfully slithery Tom Waits) which handed him immortality while condemning his daughter Valentina, played by the unusually gorgeous but predictably vapid Lily Cole, to Hell on her 16th birthday. Ledger plays Tony, a lost soul who finds a new lease of life as the troupe's master of ceremonies, but who soon finds himself plunged into the maelstrom of whirling imagination which lies behind Parnassus' dusty curtains as he ventures into the unknown in a desperate attempt to save the young girl.
Hollywood: movie
Genre:Adventure Fantasy Mystery
Director::Terry Gilliam
Screenwriter: Terry Gilliam (written by)
Charles McKeown (written by)
Producer: Amy Gilliam, Samuel Hadida, William Vince
Music Director: Jeff Danna, Mychael Danna
Release Date:20 November 2009
Cast: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law, Andrew Garfield
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: hollywood movie Reviews
There can be few other films which have garnered more goodwill than Terry Gilliam's latest fantasy. This is a director who has suffered from more poor luck than just about anyone else in the business, and one who dares to dream more than any film-maker of his generation. The critics desperately want to love his ramshackle tribute to the late Heath Ledger, which was completed with the help of Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell after the Australian actor died before completing his scenes.
And yet the whole thing is just too much of a flight of Gilliam fancy to truly be called a great film: there is too little dramatic structure, too little glue holding together the strands of Gilliam's wild fantasies, and far too much whimsy. Many of the performances - including, if you ask certain people, that of Ledger himself in his final role - seem insipid at best.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus stars that reliable old-timer Christopher Plummer as the titular leader of a travelling troupe of oddballs offering clients the chance to discover a personalised dreamworld by entering their rickety sideshow. Long long ago, Parnassus made a deal with the Devil (a wonderfully slithery Tom Waits) which handed him immortality while condemning his daughter Valentina, played by the unusually gorgeous but predictably vapid Lily Cole, to Hell on her 16th birthday. Ledger plays Tony, a lost soul who finds a new lease of life as the troupe's master of ceremonies, but who soon finds himself plunged into the maelstrom of whirling imagination which lies behind Parnassus' dusty curtains as he ventures into the unknown in a desperate attempt to save the young girl.
"Give this to Gilliam: his solution to Ledger's death mid-shoot is seamlessly elegant," writes Total Film's Kevin Harley. "The action cuts between today's 'real' world and a florid fantasy realm accessed via the imaginarium's faux-mirror. Heath is Tony here; Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell are alt-Tonys on the other side.
"The plot is a rollercoastering summary of Gilliam's strengths and weaknesses, ranging from gloriously OTT, headtrippy sights and sounds to more slender plot trails."
"This is likely to be an unpopular opinion given the circumstances, but the final performance of Heath Ledger's tragically curtailed career is not actually very good," writes The Times' Wendy Ide, bravely. "Tony is a chancer and a charmer with an Estuary accent that drifts halfway to Australia and back again. He looks great, but beneath the surface you would be hard pressed to find much of substance. The same could be said of this enthralling but flimsy bauble of a film."
"The movie world would be an awful lot duller and more disagreeable without Terry Gilliam," writes our own Peter Bradshaw. "And yet, I have to confess that I am not, in my heart, a paid-up fan, and this film is really for fans only. Despite the brilliant moments, there is a fundamental lack of dramatic traction here and the surrealism creates an inert flabbiness in its already chaotic story. It seems to be addressed to an undemanding audience of children, or maybe inner-children. There's nothing wrong with that, but the wacky shapes and contours of Gilliam's imaginary world appear to have no real edge to them."
"When Depp muses about stars who have died before their time, as photos of James Dean, Rudolph Valentino and Diana, Princess of Wales float down a slate-coloured river, it's hard not to detect a whiff of forced memorialising on Gilliam's part," writes The Telegraph's Tim Robey. "There's a difference between pondering sad, uncanny ironies and being force-fed them – it's sadder still that Ledger had to be enshrined like this."
There's no doubt in my mind that Parnassus, despite Gilliam's remarkable achievement in completing the film, remains a hugely undisciplined and self-indulgent paper tiger of a movie. Yet I have a feeling that criticising Gilliam for allowing his wacky imagination to run wild is a bit like having a crack at Jackson Pollock for relying overly on the drip the paint on the canvass trick. Even so, I found my interest wobbling in Parnassus around the mid-point, despite the undoubted anticipatory factor of Depp, Law and Farrell's appearances. One can only hope that with his next film, which might be his long-thought-abandoned retelling of the legend of Don Quixote, Gilliam will find some genuine dramatic energy and storytelling vitality to make his fantastical reveries roar with renewed vigour
.What did you think of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, if you caught it at the weekend? And have the critics been too harsh? Given the trying circumstances, should Gilliam be praised for having wrenched a passable movie from the jaws of disaster? Or should the film be judged on its dubious merits alone?
Plot:
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day. It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick, in which he won immortality. Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr Nick. Valentina is now rapidly approaching this 'coming of age' milestone and Dr Parnassus is desperate to protect her from her impending fate. Mr Nick arrives to collect but, always keen to make a bet, renegotiates the wager. Now the winner of Valentina will be determined by whoever seduces the first five souls. Enlisting a series of wild, comical and compelling characters in his journey, Dr Parnassus promises his daughter's hand in marriage to the man that helps him win. In this captivating, explosive and wonderfully imaginative race against time, Dr Parnassus must fight to save his daughter in a never-ending landscape of surreal obstacles - and undo the mistakes of his past once and for all...
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