Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Updates:

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus (Festival Review) (2009)

Director: Terry Gilliam

Time Out rating

Average user rating

5 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Online

Reviewed at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival

Dr Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is an ageing but ageless impresario, thousands of years old, who runs a travelling theatre, a horse-drawn, rickety piece of Victoriana that he and his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), company clown Anton (Andrew Garfield) and little man Percy (Verne Troyer) drive through the streets of an especially dismal and rainy modern London. When a rowdy, drunken Geordie storms the stage and falls through the mirror at its centre, we realise that this is no ordinary theatre: the mirror is an opportunity for characters to tumble into parallels worlds conceived by the director and writer team of Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, who previously worked together on ‘Brazil’, ‘Time Bandits’ and ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’

This fantasy land behind the mirror is forever changing: the landscape might one minute look like a Dali painting and the next like the most primary-coloured, pastoral of scenes where giant clay heads spread their long tongues over the landscapes or people walk on broken, huge ladders like stilts. You might also find tributes to those who died young, such as Rudolph Valentino, James Dean and Princess Diana – tributes that float sombrely down a river in boats. Back in London, the theatre troupe stumble across a strange character, Tony (Heath Ledger), the shady head of a children’s charity, who is hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in the middle of a suicide attempt. They release this mystery man, who with his white suit and ponytail has the air of a spiv, and allow him to join their troupe, so helping Parnassus with a wager he has with the devil (Tom Waits).

Who knows how Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ would have turned out if Ledger had not died halfway through production? Certainly, Gilliam wouldn’t have had to introduce Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell as various refractions of Ledger’s character halfway through the film, a device that works fairly well, not least because each of the actors try very hard, through costume, hair and gestures, to mirror the late actor. Some of the accompanying dialogue to explain these transformations is a bit awkward, but only the hardest of souls wouldn’t forgive this attempt to rescue something positive from a tragedy.

The real problem is that most of the film is a bit of a mess, even if you have to respect Gilliam’s untiring celebration of the imagination and his daring in taking his story down some wild and crazy roads that would have narrative purists tearing out their hair. At its worst, this is dressing-up-box cinema, scrappy and directionless, and some of the film’s lengthy, animated fantasy sections feel as improvised as its splurge of weak ideas, poor acting and uninspiring location work in London. It’s still intriguing, though, to see how Gilliam reacted, as a filmmaker, to Ledger’s death and, of course, to see Ledger in his final role. His performance isn’t one of his best and lacks some of the wild charisma of the Joker, say, in a role that could easily have been taken down such eccentric routes. His acting colleagues Depp, Law and Farrell all make the best of a bad job and both Garfield and Cole are intermittently exuberant if always appearing a little undirected.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2009-05-22 17:19:48

Time Out Online Cannes Film Festival 2009

Bookmark

User reviews of this film

sisyphus said...

Posted on Nov 07 2009 16:03 Hi Tom,
I didn't mean to patronise; just offering some background to help you see more in the film (tho I was feeling exasperated!)
OK- the acting is flat, London's portrayal disappointingly one dimensional and some of the CGI absolutely horrid... But... I really do enjoy watching Gilliam's creative struggle. It's like playing 'join the dots' to reveal the masterpiece he intended to make. I'm sure Mark Kermode articulates this point better than I do. I've sat bored witless through Harry Potter, Narnia, Ironman, Startrek, etc. etc. etc. (all films that 'succeed' in their own narrow terms) Where's the Magic? Where's the Artists hand? I like 'thinking'(!) Please try stuffing some of the ref. I gave into Wikipedia... it really is interesting stuff! xx

Report as inappropriate
tom huddleston said...

Posted on Nov 04 2009 15:26 Hi sisyphus
This is exactly what I was talking about in my more recent review on this website (http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/87923/the-imaginarium-of-dr-parnassus.html)
If a filmmaker expects his readers to have a grounding in breughel, bosch and becket in order to appreciate his ramblings, he's pretty conclusively left the path of populist entertainment, no? you need to meet the audience halfway, particularly when you're openly (and rather patronisingly) attempting to 'educate' them. Anything else is just pretentious elitism, fine for the halls of academia but out of place in the multiplex.

Report as inappropriate
sisyphus said...

Posted on Nov 04 2009 15:18 Yes, this film has flaws... but then; Gilliam is flawed genius personified.
You have to bring a little more to the feast if you wish to participate (!) Try referencing:
Romanticism: COLE- 'Voyage of Life'
BRUEGEL, BOSCH- 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'
Existentialism: BECKET 'Waiting for Godot'
Mysticism, European Folklore, Early Christian Iconic Art,
Faustian Pact, Masonic Vengeance, etc. etc.
One of the most imaginative films of the year... 'For those with eyes to see'

Report as inappropriate
Gobinder said...

Posted on Oct 22 2009 10:54 Apart from one or two inspired fantasy scenes, the rest is a mish mash, poorly directed and edited and the acting is also poor .Very disappointing, could have been a lot better.

Report as inappropriate
philmk said...

Posted on Oct 20 2009 15:11 The London scenes were like outtakes from a Harry Potter film. Some pretty images inside the Imaginarium. Pity this was Heath Ledger's last film.

Report as inappropriate