and
But not today.
If you’re ever walking the streets of London when the time is right, there’s a chance that you might come across a horse driven cart containing the most magical show of all, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Step right up and through the silver door and Doctor Parnassus, immortal mystic of the ages, will transport you into a world of your dreams. Anything can happen in the Imaginarium and everything does, and at the end of the journey all you have to do is make a simple choice. Tough but rewarding, or quick and easy? Moral or immoral? Purification or, as the case may be, immolation?
The truth is, perhaps, a bit less glamorous. Yes Doctor Parnassus is immortal and the Imaginarium is real, but he’s not much of a mystic anymore. He’s more like a bum, drinking himself into a stupor as his troupe, Anton the young ward, Percy (played by the late Verne Troyer) and the Doctor’s daughter Valentina cart their wagon across the city. One day however, Parnassus is visited by his old betting partner Mister Nick, played by music legend Tom Waits. Seems that that’s almost Valentina’s 16th birthday and based on the outcome of the last wager, that means she’s going to be coming with him (hope she likes fire & brimstone). Unless of course if Parnassus wanted to make another wager, say, the first person to sway the souls of 5 people to their side wins? Parnassus eagerly accepts, although with the way the show has been doing lately there seems little hope that Nick won’t run away with the whole thing. That is until the Imaginarium happens to find a hanged man under a bridge, with a pipe in his mouth and strange symbols on his forehead…
Now before we move on to the nitty-gritty, you can’t really talk about this movie without mentioning that this is Heath Ledger’s final film, passing away before its completion and being replaced in select scenes by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. I didn’t have much of an experience with Ledger prior to this film, a couple of snippets of A Knight’s Tale and a half-remembered viewing of I’m Not There and The Dark Knight years ago, but I think his final performance shows him off well. Hell, he’s probably the best character in it. Using substitute actors was the best choice in the long run, not only in the context of the story/character and also as a nice gesture of support during a tragic event. Don’t know how many othe actors would’ve been honored like that.
Imaginarium presents itself as having a underlying theme of telling ‘stories’, although most of the allusions tend to lean towards the religious, particularly East-Asian beliefs. Parnassus is depicted as various types of holy men, a yogi, a Sikh, even a pseudo-Krishna at some point, while Mister Nick is clearly analogous to Satan. Parnassus was once a leader of men, until he’s tempted by the pleasures of the material world and ultimately falls from grace. Heath Ledger’s character, as a Hanged Man, symbolizes self-sacrifice in Tarot and is occasionally represented as Judas. Then of course there’s the crux of the film, Parnassus and Nick competing with each other over people’s souls, the struggle between yin and yang played out right on your screen and the positively Buddhist implication that the answer lies beyond them. Gilliam lays it on pretty damn thick too, so if the boats with Anubis’ head don’t make you get the hint than there’s about a dozen other things that will.
However, while analyzing all of this imagery can be entertaining, the film itself struggles to do the same. The opening scene with the Imaginarium is quite interesting; this bizarre caravan with oddly dressed people just appears on the street, an aggressive drunk chases Valentina through the silver door and he ends up in a giant cardboard forest where his face completely changes, he’s launched into outer space with giant jellyfish and eventually gets blown up by a bar. It’s all wonderfully surreal and mysterious and really draws you into the film. Then they keep going into the Imaginarium, or they have flashbacks, and every single time it’s not as good as the first time. CGI is quite obvious in 2018, and in 2009 a blind man couldn’t miss it. Seeing Johnny Depp pretend to dance on some floating plate is probably funnier than any joke in this movie, and they throw out a lot of jokes here. For a director that I have sung praises for in the past for creating such fanciful, visceral settings for his films, this almost feels like an insult. I came to see something like Brazil, not Shark Boy & Lava Girl.
Ironically though, those scenes still end up being the highlight of the film, because everything else just sort of stands there awkwardly. A whole bunch of time in this movie is waiting for the plot to catch up with the audience, and then trying to gaslight you with trippy ‘mind-bending’ visuals. Just throwing more and more stuff onto the pile that we’re supposed to accept without explanation, like the eternal story bit or the declaration that black magic doesn’t magic, or that some people change faces in the Imaginarium but not everybody, until you’re so tired and numb to it all that you throw your hands up in the air with exasperation. Hopefully you’re already in the second hour of the movie by then.
Then we get to characters. Not the acting per se, which is fine, but the characters, which the movie utterly fails to make me care about. Parnassus is barely relevant in his own film until the last 15 minutes or so when the movie decides he’s actually the protagonist. Anton is the typical doormat character who’s there to take abuse until the plot decides he has a spine. Valentina is an overbearing angsty teenager who is constantly pushed into romantic and sexual, and while yes it’s normal for a 16 year old girls to be interested in sex, that doesn’t mean I want to see Heath Ledger put his dick in one. Percy is okay but he’s also immortal for no adequately explained reason so screw that. Which leaves the entire weight of entertaining the audience and moving the story along squarely on the shoulders of Heath Ledger’s character, Tony Shepherd, and while Heath and his substitutes are certainly charismatic enough to entertain an audience, this is not one of those films that can be carried on the performance of one character (even if they’re played by four actors).
It pains me to say it, but The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus might be the first film by Terry Gilliam covered on this blog that isn’t going to get the recommendation. It’s a two hour long mess of special effects and half-baked philosophy that feels like watching Larry Byrd going for a free throw and hitting the popcorn vendor instead. You can’t judge his entire career based on it, but it certainly takes the shine off it. If you’re interested in movies with a lot of subtext to unpack this Halloween, especially if it's tied to religion, you might want to try Circle of Iron, Jodorowsky’s El Topo, or even David Lynch’s Dune if you’re feeling saucy. Or perhaps you can hang out with your friends and not even bother watching a movie at all. Either way you’re missing out on much if you decide to give this one a pass.
