The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Whether The Imagymnasium of Dr. Gilliam might be a more apt title for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus depends on your taste for linear narrative or your tolerance for a plot that bounces around the gym like a seemingly errant basketball.

There is a plot that, on its surface, despite fantastical elements, is simplicity itself -- Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) guides a present-day itinerant traveling show that offers a sparse, skeptical outdoor audience the chance to come onstage and enter a phantasmagoric "other" realm through a magic mirror; and then we learn that Dr. Parnassus himself trails clouds of complication. Thousands of years ago he entered into a bet with the devil, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), and won immortality, only to re-wager, centuries later--after meeting his true love--to buy back his youth with the promise of surrendering a daughter (Lily Cole) on her sixteenth birthday, now close at hand. This immediacy is highlighted by the reappearance of Mr. Nick, and Dr. Parnassus, inveterate gambler, again re-negotiates the bet: whoever of the two seduces the first five souls will "win" daughter Valentina.

Where Gilliam's vision (remember Brazil?) rips loose is when another itinerant wanderer, Tony (played in sequence by Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law), joins the troop, which has until then consisted of Parnassus' sidekick Percy (Verne Troyer), a "little person" of bilious comic countenance, a young player (Andrew Garfield), and Valentina. To win his bet, Parnassus promises Valentina's hand to the person who assures him victory.

What ensues is a rollercoaster ride that exposes the inner ganglia of Gilliam's perfervid, brilliant, uncontrolled imagination. The tragic death of Heath Ledger during the movie's filming could have derailed the project but instead allowed Gilliam and his co-screenwriter Charles McKeown to alternate "aspects" of Tony while the five-soul contest goes on. As Valentina and Tony disappear onstage into the Imaginarium, Depp, Farell, and Law embody layers of Tony, the effect never seeming to be a cover for Ledger's death.

Gilliam and McKeown have managed to be all over the place and in one place. The viewer has to utterly and absolutely suspend disbelief in order to undergo a joyful, miasmic journey, Or not. This will work for some and not for others.

The cast could not be better. Chistopher Plummer aged up in order to play this role. The Tony quartet truly seems to add up to an entire Tony. Ms. Cole and Mr. Garfield are genuinely affecting. Mr. Troyer is small only in stature, and Tom Waits, as always, brings devilish music to his performance. Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini (Fear and Loathing in Las Veas), editor Mick Audsley (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), art director David Warren (Sweeney Todd) and other asylum mates add wind and fire to this cyclone.

Go, if you can, with the flow.

                                             Howard Buck