The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Director: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits
It had all the hallmarks of an unmissable piece of cinema: the final big screen appearance of the genius actor Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam's return to the kind of grand fantasy last seen in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Add to that a cast that includes Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Johnny Depp, Lily Cole and Tom Waits… yes, THE Tom Waits. And yet, Imaginarium somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It sees the centuries-old mystic Parnassus (Plummer) travelling the streets of present-day London in a kind of horse-drawn vaudevillian caravan, while locked in a wager with the fiendish Mr Nick (Waits). The challenge: to gain the most followers. The prize: the freedom of Parnassus's beautiful daughter Valentina (Cole). But with her 16th birthday just days away (when her fate will be decided) and Parnassus struggling to attract new souls, the appearance of Tony (Ledger), an apparent amnesiac hanging from a rope below London Bridge, could change everything. Stuffed to the brim with the madcap director's surreal visual style and twisted ideas, the film's originality is in little doubt and Gilliam fans will be charmed. However, the story is not just insubstantial, but frequently incoherent too. The film is also let down by some below-par CGI in its many fantasy sequences. While Ledger offers glimpses of brilliance, they are all too few, and his turn is let down by an accent that flips between English and Australian. Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farell do a fine job of stepping into the dead actor's character, seamlessly tying the dream scenes to the rest of the film. The only great performance, however, is Waits's, whose chain-smoking, gravel-voiced villain is Gilliam's greatest triumph of imagination for years.
* Oliver Good
