The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

For those of you not in the know, this was the movie that Heath Ledger was filming at the time of his demise. The film wasn't completed at the time, and so for certain portions, his character is played by one of three different actors, being Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. Of course, none of these men look anything like Ledger, although that's not really an issue given the nature of the film.

Dr Parnassus is a two thousand year old monk of sorts, with a gambling problem, and a long time gambling partner in the Devil. Throughout the ages the Devil has approached him, and made various wagers, which is where the good doctor's immortality came from. In the present, Parnassus wanders around performing shows with his daughter, played by Lilly Cole (a relatively new face, who has that same problem that Cristina Ricci does, her face makes her look more like a porcelain doll than a real person), a dwarf played by Vern Troyer, and some other guy who's in love with the daughter, and is ultimately forgettable.

Their apparent purpose is to travel around, and convince people to enter a fake carnival mirror which takes them to the Imaginarium, which in turn is actually the inside of the doctor's mind. Once in the Imaginarium, their imaginations become real, and they eventually make a choice between selfless enlightenment, or selfish greed. Typically the nature of the bets between Parnassus and the Devil revolve around who gets the most souls from this practice.

Ledger's character Tony is found by the trip, hanging by his neck under a bridge, and he miraculously survives because of a pipe whistle that he lodged in his throat. The stand-ins occur whenever Tony enters the Imaginarium, and thus takes on a different self image, because of his imagination.

Ultimately, I'm not sure that I liked the story of this movie, there were no real heroes, a lot of imperfect people, and one Devil. Regardless of how I felt about the story, visually the movie is very stunning, from the vagabond rags of the travelling troupe, to the Devil's black bowler, and of course, the acid trip worthy Imaginarium sequences, the movie always has a clear idea of what feeling each scene should have, and executes it with a style that I find impossible not to love.

Comments

Y: The Last Man: Even Spambots Cry After Reading It

Right off the bat, I'm going to say that Y is the saddest story I have ever taken in, with an emotional punch like a locomotive (or a bomb if you will). No work of fiction has ever destroyed me emotionally like this has. That being said, the story may be a tragedy, but gettin there was a lot of fun. The story starts off with every male mammal on the face of the Earth being almost simultaneously wiped out by some kind of illness. With the exception of English major/escape artist Yorick Brown, and Ampersand, a capuchin monkey that he's volunteered to train to help people with disabilities. There's no apparent reason as to why they survived, they just did. At the time the plague hit, Yorick's girlfriend, whom he was about to propose to, was on a trip in Australia, while he was in Chicago. Naturally he sets out to find his true love. Along the way he picks up the companions 355, an agent of a secret government organization called the Culper Ring, and Dr. Allison Man...

Lemme Tell You About The Transformer, Astrotrain, And Why He's My Favorite

I am, quite obviously, a massive fan of Transformers, but I grew up in kind of a weird time for being a fan. Really, I'm just a LITTLE too young. I remember seeing my brother, who was six years older than I, get all of the coolest Transformers, and then by the time that I started being able to ask for Transformers for myself, the nature of Transformers had greatly changed. I have a great anecdotal story about him clipping Soundwave (arguably one of the coolest Transformers toys ever, which turned into a microcassette player) to his shorts and climbing a tree. He then proceeded to fall 30 feet out of that tree, and land on Soundwave, which poked him right in the kidney, and he peed blood for a week. While I still have a great deal of fondness for them, Powermaster Optimus Prime is just not as cool of a toy as the original Optimus Prime. Notably, if you landed on Powermaster Optimus Prime, he probably wouldn't puncture your kidney, but...

Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

This appears to be a time for disappointing sequels, although for awhile there, we got a lot of top tier extremely competent sequels. I guess no trend can be permanent. The first Boondock Saints was one of those rare creations that had just about the optimal amount of everything, it was balanced between being believable, ridiculous, funny, and brutal. Balanced is the last word I would use to describe the sequel. The dialogue is terrible, just about everyone in the movie talks like a middle school bully. There are honest to goodness slapstick comedy moments, such as a mafia liutenant getting smacked in the face with a salami, and then a follow up seen where he's forced to wear headgear and can't speak properly. The tone of the entire movie is just so very different from the original, that it feels like it was made with a different director/writer, with a different vision for what the movie should be. All the more sad, since it's the same writer/director, Troy Duffy,...

Bryce's Pipe Bomb Survival Guide*

Search This Blog