The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Director: Terry Gilliam (The Brothers Grimm, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Twelve Monkeys, Time Bandits, Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Starring: Christopher Plummer, and Heath Ledger, with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Collin Farrell

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for violent images, some sensuality, language and smoking.

The last of Heath Leger’s films is quirky, muddled, and ultimately unsettling. Terry Gilliam has made another film that leaves the audience thinking WTF. It is hard to believe that this director was also behind the comic genius Monty Python and the Holy Grail (one film I could do without… but successful none the less). I tried watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, another one of Giliam’s, but it was a disgusting piece of film making that left me with a splitting headache. The Imaginarium though, was interesting, exciting, and fun, if not a little disjointed and confusing.



Heath Ledger was great, but still clinging to some Joker tendencies throughout the film. To be fair he was not really the main character but more like Brad Pitt in Spy Game. He moved the plot along and was an essential character, but not the lead role.



The movie is about Dr. Parnassus, a genuinely good man whose two vices are drinking and gambling. But the stakes are much higher than wealth, the wages are souls, the players are him and the devil. Dr. Parnassus makes bets with the devil, and lives a miserable life because of his choices. Ledger comes into the story as Tony, the mysterious stranger found hanging from a bridge, and he is either the key to beating the devil at his own game, or the instrument that will bring Parnassus to his ultimate downfall.

The plot is a good idea, well used, but this film takes the idea to another level. Dr. Parnassus can take people to another world, the imaginarium where they can choose to come out better people or they are destroyed by the devil. In the imaginarium is a computer animated world that is more bizarre than Alice’s Wonderland, and less realistic than Toon Town. The great part every time Heath Leger goes into it we see another one of his faces (found in the fabulous acting of Johnny Depp, then Jude Law, and finally Collin Ferrell).



Problem is, the movie starts out slow and doesn’t really get the show rolling very well. It putters around badly with some rather poor sound editing and a spotty script and then picks up with the appearance of the devil and then finally Heath Ledger. Where the plot then twists around five or six times trying the keep the audience on its toes but mainly succeeding in leaving out heads spinning. There is deeper meaning to be found in the story, but one has to do a lot of uncovering to succeed in that endeavor.



It is obvious the unexpected death of Heath Ledger through the filmmakers through a loop and so they improvised well with the three faces of Tony, but the plot did seem like there was too much cut and paste – with Terry Gilliam’s track record though it would be very easy for us to believe that was how he wanted it all along though.
Over all The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus gets a 7 out of 10. It was weird and quirky, had a few good laughs, went some wild directions visually speaking, and in the end succeeded in leaving the audience sitting in silence, whether it was a ponderous silence or a stupor of thought will be up to the viewer. Check it out if you want to see Heath Ledger, or just a trippy flick, but if not then this might not be your particular brand of vodka.


Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – A 16-year-old girl is seen naked with a long wig covering all private area, we see her bare hip and the side of her breasts. A man and a 16-year-old girl kiss and then we see their boat start to rock, afterwards we see her laying with her dress open in just a bra and bare stomach, it is assumed they had sex. A man chases after a young lady yelling at her and making sexual suggestions. A teen girl is seen in many cleavage revealing outfits. A man dresses like a woman and the suit has cleavage. A chorus of men dressed in skirts and pantyhose do a song and dance and moon the screen, we can see their bare bottoms through the thin hose.

Violence/ Gore – 5 out of 10 – a man is found hanging, he is cut down and resuscitated. Another man is hung by the neck and we here crunching as the camera pans off of him, then we see his body swinging. A man blows up in a bar explosion. 4 men beat and punch another man. A man tries to comic suicide and is caught in the jump. A man hits a child and a woman a few times. An angry mob chases a man trying to kill him and in the process they trample another man.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 - 1 “F” word (audible only with the assistance of subtitles, it is muttered and background noise obscures it) and 20 or so other obscenities, 10 or so religious exclamations, some name calling.