The biggest story with this film is that it is the movie that Heath Ledger was working on at the time of his death in 2008. Somewhere around a third or half of the film was already shot, so writer/director Terry Gilliam had to rethink the structure of the film to keep production going. What he came up with is actually a pretty convincing final product. Watching the film unaware that Ledger died, there is no clear evidence that the end result we see is anything other than what was originally planned.
In the story, Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a mentalist and sideshow huckster who travels around in a time-worn wagon with a small troupe of freaks. He gets audience members to go through a magical mirror so he can control their imaginations and put them in a happy fantasy world. But everything is not as happy as it might seem when the entourage meets Tony (Heath Ledger) a mysterious man who seems to be on the run.
About a thousand years earlier the doctor made a deal with the Devil (a bald Tom Waits) to become immortal. Later he made another deal with him to be young again, but in exchange for this, he agreed to give the devil his daughter once she reached her 16th birthday. When the Devil comes to collect on the bet, Parnassus makes one last bet to see who can get five followers faster. Tony, in an effort to help the guru, exposes a checkered past of his own.
The worst thing about this story is that at it's core, it is a very simple idea - a man has to beat the Devil at a bet. But Gilliam doesn't stop at this basic idea and instead makes a very complicated, multi-layered story that is visually beautiful, as one would expect from him, but rather confusing. There seem to be too many characters with too many individual agendas totally separate from Parnassus' goals.
It seems as if Ledger had filmed all of his real-world scenes before passing away, so Gilliam cleverly has three actors play him when he goes inside the magical mirror. As a reflection of his deceitfulness (or three-facedness), Ledger becomes Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law as he steps into the imaginary mirror-world. I think this is an elegant way to deal with a difficult formal situation. It makes a lot more sense than just having an actor wear a mask to disguise himself (which is done a bit, but not very much). This not only works well for the story, but is also weird enough to fit into the rest of the film.
Of course because it is a movie by Gilliam, it is super weird and exotic looking. Much of the dream world looks like the previous Gilliam/Charles McKeown writing collaboration The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It is fun to watch, but is a bit annoying that we can't get some new aesthetic. It mostly feels like recycled outtakes from Baron Munchausen rather than something entirely fresh.
This is an OK movie, but it is not fantastic. I appreciate Gilliam's success at dealing with the difficulty of losing his lead actor well before filming had wrapped, but the problems with the movie are deeper than this. It feels like an inverted pyramid, precariously perching a heavy top on a small point. It doesn't ever topple over entirely, but comes very close several times.
Stars: 2 pf 4
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I agree that Gilliam's solution to having his lead actor die was elegant and simple and works well. (Lucky for them they filmed all the "real world" scenes first and could use other people for the fantasy scenes). But that's the only thing of interest here (other than the small role by Andrew Garfield, who is brilliant in all he does, bless him). And I do strongly object to calling the film beautiful. I was deeply disappointed by the special effects. I am certain Gilliam used digital effects in the past to a degree. It's impossible not to. But I think I'm right in saying that in Baron Munchausen and Brazil et al, he often used old-fashioned movie magic for the special effects, thus keeping costs down and also getting a wonderful, hand-made film to the images on screen. They actually built models with wonderful detail and it shows in most of his movies. Here he resorts to just digital effects and the look to me is depressingly unreal and fake and flat.
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