Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, The

I'm an admirer of Terry Gilliam.

But he’s a difficult bloke to love.

His production troubles (Lost in La Mancha) and budget headaches (Brazil, Adventures of Baron Munchausen) are legendary. Inexplicable illnesses, deaths, weather, project overlaps and cost issues have shut down more of his productions than those of Orson Welles’ due to hedonism and ego. So biblical have been the Job-like sufferings of Gilliam in his art that it's the closest I’ve ever come to believing in a wrathful God. The vengeful havoc that He hath wrought on this poor filmmaker is inexplicably cruel. If there is a deity, he's a mean bastard and he really has distaste for Terry Gilliam’s work.

Probably for that Life of Brian thing.

Yahweh is not known for his sense of satire or parody.

But Gilliam is a glutton for punishment.

He comes off the relative success of The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys (and to a lesser extent, cult status with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and makes something as horrific and indefinable as Tideland. He gets a shot at mainstream convention and gives us The Brothers Grimm - a silly, watered down version of his visual flair and surreal storytelling to appease an audience that was never there in the first place.

This is the director who made Brazil, one of the greatest movies of the past 25 years, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, an underseen and underappreciated visual feast of fable that should hold a place between Willie Wonka and The Wizard of Oz as one of the those rare, timeless gems that adults and children can both enjoy.

And let's never forget the man was the sole American member of a little British comedy troupe where his animation seamed together the brilliant lunacy of something called Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Pretty good credentials for a guy viewed as the biggest financial black hole of the cinema since Michael Cimino.

So, with another break and another few backers who have decided to roll the dice against a stacked house and a surefire, crippling economic failure, he gets a shot at redemption.

And he titles this comeback… the project which will set his career right again... wait for it…

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

He likely could not have alienated more of the casual movie going audience had he called in a bomb threat to the theaters and violently wielded a large shillelagh at the ticket booths.

There has never been a want for very bad titular ideas in the history of film. They are too countless to list here. But what we can offer is a short slate of fatally long-winded titles that guaranteed box office failure. No matter how nuanced, how against the grain, how subversive, how clever the rubric - wordiness equates to commercial failure in Hollywood.

And I'm pretty sure Gilliam knows this. Sometimes he's his own worst enemy.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Those Daring Young Men and Their Jaunty Jalopies

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx

Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!

Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

Etc.

As you can see, we're not exactly looking at Jaws, Titanic or Avatar type opening weekends here. Which is not to argue that a film's box-office potential is any measure of its quality. Far from it.

What it is to say is - at least give the thing a fighting chance out of the gate before you bury it in obscurity or ignominy with a garbled mouthful of a title.

It's like when I try to recommend The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. I get to the "of" part, mumble some Spanglish and end up saying, "Fuck it, it's the border movie with Tommy Lee and January Jones".

And I took three years of Spanish in high school.  

Life is hard on the little things. Give them names that don't cause people to become confused or recoil in disgust.

Which brings us to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas.

It's sort of an amalgam of all the strengths and weaknesses of Gilliam's previous work. Dazzling, cool-as-hell visuals mixed with a clusterfuck of thematic ideas and plagued by some uncontrollable, behind-the-scenes tragedy. In this case, the untimely demise of Heath Ledger.

And just a few words about that. Heath Ledger was a gifted actor who seemed well on his way to a career of interesting role choices and unusual performances. But let's nip all this unwarranted idol worship in the proverbial bud. The guy was not James Dean for chrissakes. And I don't recall Monty Clift being in anything near as childish as Lords of Dogtown, A Knight's Tale or 10 Things I Hate About You. Let's put Ledger's death right around the tragic equivalent of River Phoenix's and move on from there.

This reminds me of the Kurt Cobain/John Lennon comparisons. Grow up and get a fucking grip.

But we were dissecting The Imaginarium weren't we?

Briefly, it is a story of a traveling sideshow of actors led by the mysterious Dr. Parnassus ( a memorable Christopher Plummer). We discover the old Doctor is a bit of a gambling man and has bet consistently throughout the ages (he was granted eternal life for the hand of his daughter when she turns sixteen) with none other than Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), Old Scratch himself. Parnassus' struggle against the devil and his own ethical shortcomings is about all the thematic consistency you can bleed out of Gilliam's mess. As simple as man's desire for endless life and a shot at redemption. The rest of the film is a collection of half-baked ideas and questions of morality, purpose and love that are never fully explained and go primarily unanswered. There are just too many dead-ends and emotional cul-de-sacs to the film. Gilliam seems to be saying something about gambling, atonement, good vs. evil, the fear of one's own desires and the struggle of pure artists in a rigged commercial game but it all gets lost in the meandering storyline. It could be the first film diagnosed with ADHD. 

As with all Gilliam's work, the visuals are magnificent to behold. The set designs are jaw dropping. The Victorian-age thespian wagon the troupe travels in both blends and contrasts with the facades of modern day London. The concept of the imaginarium itself (a mirror one walks through to realize hopes, dreams, fear or desire) is well done, just never fleshed out. The film has Tom Waits in it, which anoints it with a sense of cool regardless of the outcome. And, of course, there are midgets.

What ruins the film is ironically what ended up saving it after Ledger's death. Gilliam was talked into finishing it, after some salvaging re-writes, with Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law stepping in to play Ledger's role during the unfilmed imiginarium sequences.

The result is this forced hodgepodge of a movie. A Frankensteinian patchwork that never finds its bearings because it never really knew in which direction it wanted to go.

The Terry Gilliam fund for wayward artists starts anew.

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