Sadly, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” will be better remembered as an actor’s memorial than as a coherent fantasy drama.
It is the late Heath Ledger’s last screen appearance. He died during filming. Eccentric filmmaker Terry Gilliam was forced to get more inventive than usual in order to complete it, seamlessly employing heavyweights Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to share Ledger’s part. Interestingly, that unusual idea — having four actors portraying the same character — isn’t the problem with the painfully slow-moving, self-consciously disorienting piece.
It’s about a grimy, strange troupe of itinerant performers who look like they come out of another century. They include a literally immortal wizard, Dr. Parnassus (an ancient but still bright Christopher Plummer); his comely daughter, Valentina (an objectified Lily Cole), the young man who desires her, Anton (Andrew Garfield); and their sidekick/mascot/jester, Percy (played by the exceedingly obnoxious artist formerly known as Mini-Me, Verne Troyer).
If you go
‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’
2 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law
Director: Terry Gilliam
Rated PG-13 for violent images, some sensuality, language and smoking
Running Time: 122 minutes
Their traveling stage show features a magic device called an imaginarium. It seems to physically transport people so they can walk around inside actual manifestations of their own dreams and nightmares. Or something like that. This being a typical Terry Gilliam movie — replete with hallucinatory, nonlinear flights of fancy — you can never be entirely sure of what you are seeing or what metaphorical meaning you are meant to glean from it. Not surprisingly, then, the plot is rather opaque. It has something to do with the Devil, here called Mr. Nick, portrayed by offbeat musician Tom Waits at his most offbeat. Dr. Parnassus is about to lose a bargain with Mr. Nick that could cost him Valentina’s soul.
Ledger exhibits his bad-boy charm as the irresistible con man character Tony. He joins the troupers after they rescue him from suicide. (We first glimpse the deceased actor, eerily, hanging from a noose.) Tony will have a major effect on his new associates. Depp, Law and Farrell — groomed to look like Ledger, with ponytail and facial hair — play Tony during each of the times he enters the otherworldly domain of the imaginarium.
Director producer-co-writer Gilliam has been responsible for works of eye-popping genius (“Brazil,” “Fisher King”) and incomprehensible disaster (“The Brothers Grimm,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”). But they are always inimitable, esoteric, visually untamed and artistically uncompromising. His latest, neither his best nor his worst effort, is no exception.
