Travelling carnivals, bad-trip psychedelic dreamscapes, Lily Cole in Victorian knickerbockers: even if Heath Ledger had not died before the film had finished shooting, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus would be plenty macabre. Terry Gilliam’s follow-up to Tideland may feel less distempered, less discombobulating than its immediate predecessor, but only just. This is the freakiest edge of the Terriverse; policemen in suspenders emerge from a gigantic classic Python head to perform a vaudeville number, enormous pogo sticks allow the users to vault for miles across dayglo valleys, heads turn into hot air balloons.
For all the gonzo aesthetics, one can sense compromises from the get-go. There is, tragically, one glaring problem; for much of the movie’s duration, the director has a Heath Ledger sized hole to fill. Borrowing a postmodern trick from I’m Not There and Palindromes, Mr. Gilliam gets by with a little help from his and Heath’s friends. Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law all stand in for the tragic Aussie star during the film’s many fantasy sequences; old-fashioned body doubles and masks do the rest.
This arrangement works reasonably well and allows the plot to unfold without too many jarring moments. For the record: carny hired hand Andrew Garfield loves his mysterious and titular boss’s daughter (Lily Cole) but he faces stiff competition when the charming, faintly sinister Heath Ledger joins their oddball travelling show. There is, moreover, a long-standing agreement with the devil (Tom Waits, naturally) that when the girl reaches her 16th birthday she will be handed over to assume duties as the Princess of Darkness.
She remains ignorant of her plight while her father, Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) frets constantly. Oh, did we mention their travelling show contains a portal that leads inside Parnassus’ mind? Or that the good doctor is immortal? Well, it’s just that sort of flick.
There are lovely ideas in play here but too often budgetary constraints reduce Mr. Gilliam’s extravagant vision to mid-’80s arcade game graphics. It hardly needs to be said that the film is sort of a mess, held together by Gilliam brand surrealism, a terrific performance from Mr. Plummer and the goodwill of its A-list patrons.
Say what you will about Tideland, but it worked on its own sour, dark terms. Parnassus gets by on eccentricity and Pritstick. Still, it’s hard not to applaud Gilliam who can still hit the Bunuelian notes that made Brazil so darned special. And we defy anyone not to feel something warm and moist about a movie that ends with the legend “A Film by Heath Ledger and Friends.”