The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Review

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is Terry Gilliam’s best film since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or perhaps 12 Monkeys in 1995. In Parnassus, Gilliam proves that he retains the ability to pair his unique sensibilities with a beating heart of a character driven story. His visuals alone are noteworthy, but in this film they’re not the showcase.

The film centers around Christopher Plummer’s titular Dr. Parnassus, a bizarre Vaudeville-Wonka magician who is able to capture the souls of any passers-by who are willing to pay a pound to venture into their own imaginations. Parnassus is thousands of years old, due to a wager he has made with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), who is ostensibly the Biblical Devil.

The unfortunate consequence of immortality, however, is that Parnassus continues to carry-on his show in a modern London that simply doesn’t care about his theatrics anymore — to see his lazy little horse-drawn sideshow attraction mosey past brightly lit buildings alongside the Thames is oddly moving. Gilliam is making a statement here, about our world’s lack of will to embrace things that are purely for show, or perhaps their refusal of his creative aesthetic in films such as Tideland. His work with Monty Python was quite at home — when applied to dramatic film, critics have sometimes been less eager to embrace him.

The first question that most people will naturally ask about the film will revolve around Heath Ledger, whose unfortunate death during filming led Gilliam to recast his character with the trio of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell (all of whom shine except Law, who is in and out of the film in a microsecond). I sense that to mainstream moviegoers, Ledger’s swan song was performed as he swung upside down over Gotham City; his reappearance here as an unnamed man who is first found swinging from a noose is admittedly unsettling. However, his work here is as fine as any he’d performed in his career; to reappear in such a lucid film as Parnassus is as if he’s briefly come back from the void to reawaken audiences to the fact that this is supposed to be fun.

And Doctor Parnassus is a lot of fun. The performances are solid across the board, from a surprising turn by Verne Troyer to Waits, who plays what is perhaps the best, funniest on-screen iteration of the Devil that I’ve seen. Newcomer Lily Cole plays Parnassus’ daughter Valentina, and she is so uniquely beautiful and talented especially amongst the ranks of Ledger and Plummer that I can’t imagine we won’t be seeing her everywhere in a few years.

For all the hoopla that was made over Ledger’s substitutions in the fantasy sequences, it’s quite surprising to note that Ledger is in about 75% of the film, which is largely grounded in a version of reality that we’re mostly familiar with. When we venture into the Imaginarium, Gilliam’s Python-meets-Carroll-meets-Bosch visuals both serve the story well and remind the audience just how wonderful the director is at what he does. For my money, this is probably the closest Gilliam has come to a return to Monty Python’s animation style, which is a great compliment.

My only complaint with the film (which you should definitely see) is in pacing — often the film drags where it should be taking off, particularly around the halfway mark. I also am curious to see how the audio is mixed in theaters; during our projection, the music overpowered the dialogue, leaving some segments feeling like a scored silent film. This might be intentional, but it occasionally detracted from the experience.

As a Gilliam fan who understands his varied appeal, I would recommend the film to even those who have previously disliked his work. There is a lot to love about Doctor Parnassus.

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Author Bio: John Cooper goes to college. John Cooper loves writing pithy things about movies. Follow him on Twitter.