Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

“The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” is a brilliantly beautiful movie filled with stilettos the size of a large cruise ship, 100 feet tall ladders, and a drunken, magical old man named Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer). The movie casts Parnassus as the role of God functionally, while the role of the Devil is played by Mr. Nicks (Tom Waits), who manipulates the people of Earth as pawns making them decide between good and evil. For an indeterminate amount of time, the two have been making wagers that are essentially races to see who first could make “X”, X being a variable, number of souls pick good or evil. They are then rewarded with whatever the prize is. In a particular wager, Parnassus puts up his lovely daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), as prize. Of course Parnassus doesn’t win this wager, or we wouldn’t have a movie. The terms were that on Birthday 16, Mr. Nicks would gain possession of the girl. We drop in on the story with Parnassus, Valentina, Anton (Andrew Garfield), and Percy (Verne Troyer) putting on a carnival-looking act trying to get people to pick good over evil. As Valentina’s 16th birthday approaches, Parnassus is approached by Mr. Nicks for another wager for more souls, which Parnassus is sure he will not be able to win. At this point we are introduced to Tony (Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Ferrell, and Jude Law), who is the savior for Parnassus, or so he thinks. There are things that you find out about Tony as the story goes on: that may shed some light alternate to the view that is originally given of him. The way that the race works is simple, people are brought on stage on this traveling cart, and given the choice to let Parnassus control their imagination or not. If they decide to let Parnassus control their imagination we are taken inside of their head, where their wildest dreams and fantasies come true. Often times Tony enters in to their imagination with them, which is where the beauty of the movie really shines. At the point that you enter in to someone’s imagination you get to see beautiful sometimes vibrant and sometimes dark colored back drops that are larger than life. I won’t disclose too much more information about the race for souls or how the movie is resolved because it’s interesting to watch and see how everything unfolds. As you might have seen above Tony is played by a pretty amazing cast of actors, the reason that multiple actors play the same character is that Ledger died during the filming of this movie. As opposed to stop production they recast the part to the other three who play the part. I think that they do a great job giving each of the other three a fair amount of time on screen and not emphasizing too much to one actor. I think that in this particular instance, Law did the best job besides Ledger at portraying Tony. This movie is very hard to watch if you are a Ledger fan like I am, knowing that this is the very last that we will ever see from him. I wanted more Heath but understand that we couldn’t have more. My impression going in to this movie was that it would revolve around Tony, and it did for camera time but not story wise. The movie resolves itself in a very odd way at the end, but cosmically it all feels okay when it’s over. I would recommend this movie to every single person that has an imagination that imagines things at time that you can’t really materialize because director Terry Gilliam does a brilliant job of materializing what is inside all of us on the big screen. Also if you love any of the actors that play Tony, they all do so in a very interesting way and it is certainly worth watching for just that. The transitions from Ledger to one of the other actors portraying Tony are magnificent. I went to this movie with one of my best friends and there were a few moments that her and I discussed afterwards where it was a very long time before we realized that the transition had happened. Good Viewing.
JP

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