The Alchemist, January 19, 2010, Vol. 3, No.107
Vol. 3, No. 107
Craziness for the Crazies, Because That’s Just How It Is
With the Recent arrival of “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” at Darkside Cinema, Corvallis is being treated to the last, incomplete performance of Heath Ledger. The film is of course complete; finished in a way that only director Terry Gilliam could.
Known to some for his work in Monty Python, and to others for his films like “Twelve Monkeys,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” and his previous work with Ledger, “The Brothers Grimm,” Gilliam has here a mesmerizing film with few surprises for his fans.
The story goes, Dr. Parnassus won a bet with the devil and won immortality. Later, Parnassus had his youth restored so he could woo a woman, at the cost of possession of his child at age 16. Christopher Plummer plays the tired, tortured old Dr. to perfection, opposite an equal performance by Tom Waits as Mr. Nick, aka the devil. The movie begins just before Valentina, Parnassus’s doll of a daughter, turns 16, right when Mr. Nick proposes a new wager.
Running a cobbled-together, horse-drawn, ancient-wagon-born traveling show in modern day London, the family is struggling, even with Parnassus’s meditative ability to send people to his imaginarium. Think of the imaginarium as a trip through the looking glass; it is basically an Alice in Wonderland story after all.
Enter Heath Ledger as the mysterious, befuddling Tony. His deeds are helpful, his intentions unclear, and his motivation is best described much the same as the reasoning for many curious occurrences in the film: that’s just how it is.
Admittedly, Ledger’s death during filming had something to do with muddling his character. This is one reason it would be an error to compare this performance to The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” Ledger never got to film Tony’s trips through the looking glass, where his character is most free. These parts, the “different faces” of Tony, are well-played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. These actors’s appearances in the film is surprising, but was well thought out by Gilliam and can’t be said to be more surprising than the bright colors, fantastical landscapes and other awesome creatures within the imaginarium.
Something is missing, but it isn’t completion. Perhaps one more scene with Ledger as Tony nearer the end was meant to be, and would certainly have better-fulfilled his character. It’s a moral that is really missing; a lesson, something we should take from this tango with the devil. This reporter has not spent so much time dwelling on a film since watching an older Christopher Nolan film, “Memento,” but still has not figured it out. Whereas “Memento,” was designed to deceive, “Parnassus,” is too much a storybook tale to end that way.
Therein lies the true reason to see “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” its dazzling characters, worlds beautiful beyond belief, and a storybook tale that can’t be denied its happy ending. Why? Well, like one fun but unexplainable Python-esque song and dance scene: because Terry Gilliam said that that’s how it is.
B+
- Robin Canfield
Page 3
