The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

In interviews that are in the supplemental materials on the DVD for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Terry Gilliam states several times that what he wanted to do was start from a blank slate, and not adapt another person's work for his film. What he came up with is not only derivative of his own work, but cribs from sources as ancient as Shakespeare and older. It's a wonderful spectacle, but it's not original.

The opening scenes are purposefully disorienting. We see an old wagon pulling into an old section of London, with some destitute men in rags sleeping on the ground. When the title card of the film appears, as if written on old parchment, we get the sense that we're back in time, but no--it's the modern day, as we cut to hooligans spilling out of a nightclub (called Medusa). The stage is set--the wagon, which transports a magic show, featuring the title character, is a relic from a different time. The show that is put on is hardly observed by the youth of the twenty-first century.

Christopher Plummer is Doctor Parnassus, a man who is over a thousand years old, a mystic who can control the minds of others, or rather by means of a mirror can transport them into their own imaginations. Plummer has a small troupe--a young man who acts dresses as Mercury and acts as an emcee (Andrew Garfield), a pint-sized assistant (Verne Troyer) who is part Jiminy Cricket, part Lear's fool, and a daughter (Lily Cole), who is about to turn sixteen. Her birthday is an important day, as for all of the Doctor's gifts he has a weakness for making bets with the devil (Tom Waits, an inspired choice), who has come to collect on one that the Doctor has lost.

Into this mix is introduced Heath Ledger, whom Garfield finds hanging by the neck beneath a bridge. Ledger is dressed in a white suit, with strange markings on his forehead. He's still alive, and he can't remember who he is. We learn about him in layers--he was the head of a children's charity--but in gratitude goes to work for Plummer, acting as a carnival barker and bringing in more business. But whether Ledger is actually a good guy or not is left to the end of the story.

Ledger died part-way through the filming, and initially Gilliam thought his meant the end of the project. But he hit on an ingenious solution that, if you didn't know the circumstances, would seem completely normal. Whenever Ledger's character enters, via mirror, the Imaginarium, he changes appearance--looking like Johnny Depp, Jude Law, or Colin Farrell. While he is outside he looks like Ledger. Clearly Ledger had not finished any of the Imaginarium sequences, but Gilliam had enough of him outside that their is a clear demarcation of identities. It works like a charm, and for those who do know the backstory it adds a fillip of sentimentality.

The greatest part of the film is the world Gilliam creates. From an artistic standpoint, it is nonpareil. The scenes inside the Imaginarium are brilliant, displaying a kind of creativity that is astonishing. A drunken hooligan finds himself grabbed by disembodied hands and hoisted among giant jellyfish. A young boy is in confronted by a giant balloon that is shaped like Plummer's head, while Law and a group of Russian gangsters are treated to a Python-esque revue of London bobbies in drag. The art direction and costumes were both Oscar-nominated, and deservedly so.

But for all the bedazzlement on display, I was never fully engaged. Part of the problem is that Gilliam steals from himself--we get a lot of echoes from his earlier films, especially The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. Indeed, Cole, a distinctively beautiful young woman, is used in much the same manner that Uma Thurman was in Munchhausen. Upon further viewings one could play Bingo out of spotting references to earlier Gilliam films, from Time Bandits to Brazil to The Brothers Grimm. Of course many directors recycle themes and motifs, there's nothing inherently wrong in that, but after too long and a viewer can sense a director spinning his wheels.

Furthermore, the story here is rehashed. Parnassus is a combination of Prospero and Faust. Though Waits makes a great devil, there's nothing about him that leaps off the screen. What we're left with, almost literally, is smoke and mirrors.