A contingent of 3 members of the Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus Support Site attended Saturday’s screening and Q&A of The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus for the site. Below is the wonderful article/account that they were kind enough to write for all of us. Frank, after much conversation with neverthesame and Umney, did the writing and did a beautiful job. I understand that there is more to come but our dear Frank is exhausted and getting a little rest before he writes more for us! The photo above was taken by our group while at the Q&A on Saturday. Thank you all so very much!
Exclusive
(Article Includes A Few Small Spoilers)
By Frank, Neverthesame & Umney
Three German forum members, Neverthesame5, Umney, and me, Franklin, had the chance to see The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus at the Munich International Film Festival. Not just the film, but also Terry Gilliam and Verne Troyer, who, together with Ray Cooper, musician and friend of Terry’s who worked with him since Time Bandits, made an Q&A after the screening. There Neverthesame5 conveyed the greetings and best wishes from our Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus Support Site, and Terry seemed to be genuinely happy about the site (and the fact that they even send a little group of German delegates to Munich). He obviously knows The Dr. Parnassus Support Site very well, and highly appreciates the work of “the lady from Los Angeles”, as he said. He recommended our website as the one you should go to, if you want to know everything about the Parnassus film. And he (that is: you! to us) and we got applause for these remarks.
The screening we attended – one of the few at the festival that were sold out – actually was the first “real” screening of the film ever, as Terry put it, that is: It was the very first for a general audience (as opposed to the press and professionals). Or, as Terry Gilliam also said in his typical manner (meaning that we were the first people who payed to see the movie): “You made a sacrifice, you suffered for our art.” – Well, I guess, Terry had no idea how much he was right: Umney had actually come all the way from the other end of Germany, from a small island in the North Sea, over 500 miles from Munich, just for this one evening, just to see this particular movie. She did it for Heath. We all did it for Heath.
Please, do not misconstrue the latter remark. There are of course a lot of reasons to see the movie other than Heath Ledger. The film has an overall wonderful cast of characters you can easily take to. It is very entertaining, and there is no dull second in the movie. (It’s not confusing and unfocused, as some early reviews from Cannes suggested, but has a rather comprehensible and straightforward plot.) It makes you think, feel, laugh, shudder. It draws you into a world of dreams and fantasies, and yet talks about our own world and our lives.
But, the main reason we three people were there was for Heath. And we sat there with throbbing hearts and very mixed feelings about the emotional ordeal that lay before us. I went into the film with the thought that this will be the moment when I say good-bye to Heath – once again, not the first time, not the last time, but it would be – and was – a very special moment, the moment when for me his work becomes complete. From now on, I would never again see a new acting performance by Heath Ledger, his work is completed (“consumentum est”). I thought it would probably leave me depressed and distressed. But that was not the case. Having the chance to see the movie (and doing so in the presence of other Heathens) rather left me euphoric and grateful. I was wonderful to see Heath once again. Although the movie also deals with serious issues and brings up existential questions, it does so in a playful, fantastic, colorful, fairy-tale-like and – I say it again: – very entertaining manner.
In short: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is unabashed pure Terry Gilliam. But, as one young female audience member whom I interviewed after the movie, put it: The Imaginarium is the “warmest” of all of Terry Gilliam’s movies. I think this is primarily due to the cast. It is a “small” film, inasmuch as it only had a limited budget and a limited cast. But that small cast is exactly what makes the film so warm and accessible. It’s a real ensemble film, and there is no single “leading” character, not even Dr. Parnassus or Tony. Rather it is the ensemble and the wonderful chemistry between them, that creates this warm feeling. Even the evil antagonist, Mr. Nick, somewhat becomes a part of that little likable troupe. It is the dreamlike visuals and the actors who make the special charm of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. No wonder, it is a “labor of love” in more than just one sense.
This little troupe that drives it’s baroque coach through contemporary London, seems to have fallen out of time (early in the movie we see a broken watch in close-up), and yet (or rather because of that) holds a mirror to our time, obsessed with money and consumerism. There are also a lot of satirical and socially critical elements in the movie (including a warning against a particular British newspaper), although they are not played into the foreground.
Probably no other actor could have played Dr. Parnassus so well as Christopher Plummer. Let’s face it: An immortal, thousands-of-years-old magician who made a bet with the devil is not exactly a very realistic character you can easily relate to. And yet, thanks to Mr. Plummer, who manages to keep the delicate balance between irony, comedy and touching seriousness, he becomes a totally human and lovable character: the loving concerned father, the sage, the f*ed-up alcoholic. He has a wonderful chemistry especially with Lily Cole and Verne Troyer. There still is a lot of physical humor and slapstick involved with his (and other) character(s), but maybe for the first time here Mr. Troyer is treated as a real actor. Especially the moments when he doesn’t talk, at least not verbally, but his face reveals exactly what he is feeling and thinking are very touching.
Did you ever have the experience, when you see an actor or an actress for the very first time, and yet you have a feeling like you would know him or her all along? The last time I had that feeling was with Edward Norton in “Primal Fear”. This time I had it again with Andrew Garfield, who takes a rather “one-dimensionally written character” (as Terry Gilliam admitted himself) and, with his boyish charm, turns it into a complex personality.
Another first-timer for me was Lily Cole who fits perfectly into this reality-based fantastic fairytale: breathtakingly, even unearthly beautiful, delicate, and yet at the same time very down-to-earth, resolute and energetic.
Terry Gilliam used Heath Ledger’s charisma and comical talent to full measure. Although his character turns out to be rather, well, dubious (to put it mildly), he plays out the cute and likable aspect of it and the comedic and satiric potential in the role. Some of his facial expressions and gestures seemed like he still had the Joker in his bones, while his manner of speaking (not his accent, obviously, which is supposed to be Londoner, I guess), but his manner of speaking somewhat reminded me of Skip in Lords of Dogtown. Yet, he managed again to create a distinct, well-rounded character (although he didn’t get to act out all the different sides of the character, see below), clearly distinct from all the other memorable, unique characters he created during his all too brief career.
The transitions from Heath to the other Tonys are absolutely seamless. Especially because – at least in the first two passings through the mirror – Tony is wearing a mask which covers the upper part of his face, and even if you know, at first you simply cannot realize that now another actor is playing the part. Only when they take off the mask, you see that there ’s another face under it. But at this point of the movie – one of the few actual changes in the script after Heath’s death – the idea has already been established, that in the world behind the magic mirror faces sometimes do change.
In the Q&A after the movie I asked Terry Gilliam whether the other three Tonys had a chance to see Heath’s performance before they did theirs. They had seen only “bits and pieces” of it, Terry said, and had no time for rehearsals. Therefore it was very important, that they were personal friends to Heath, who could rather instinctively tie in with his style. This works especially well with Johnny Depp. It almost seems like Heath and Johnny were playing to each other, because Heath in a particular scene was “doing” Johnny Depp (as Terry realized, and Heath admitted), while Depp is doing Heath – and yet in the few minutes he is on screen, he spreads his own unmistakable Johnny Depp charm which manages to be naive and innocent and yet knowingly ironic and impish at the same time.
As you might know, the Tony character (and if you don’t know, and don’t want to know, I put a big SPOILER tag in here) – the Tony character is a deeply ambivalent one, a rather two-faced character. Unfortunately Hea th only got to play one side of the character, while the other is only fully revealed behind the magic mirror, and hence is played by Colin Farrell. And here lies the only major dramaturgical flaw that comes with the change of actors. Of course it was unavoidable, given the circumstances, and has nothing to do with Colin Farrell’s acting abilities. (Indeed, as Terry Gilliam reported after the film, Colin almost felt like he was “channeling” Heath, when he did his part.) The fact that Tony not only figuratively, but literally has two faces, in this case doesn’t enhance, but diminishes the ambivalence of the character, at least in my personal experience, because rather than have one Tony with two sides, you basically have two Tonys – the cute, charming, comical, though somewhat inscrutable one, played by Heath, and the other one, played by Colin. This is especially a pity at the end of the Tony plot strand, because it directly refers back to its beginning and should close the circle. However, as you have two actors playing it, the two ends do not meet exactly. (SPOILER END)
In these fantasy sequences behind the mirror Gilliam uses many different visual styles, so that they are always a fascinating treat for the eyes, some of them inspired by certain artists or styles, while others are harking back directly to Gilliam’s unmistakable and unique Monty Python artwork. The dancing choir of policemen (“We love violence”, lyrics and music by Terry Gilliam) seems to be right out of an early 1970s Monty Python skit.
All in all the fantasy sequences follow the logic of dreams, in which people, situations, moods suddenly change, and you can never be sure what comes next, where wishes come true and the unconscious interlopes, sometimes unwanted. These sequences just draw you in. They are like dreams you don’t want to awake from, although from time to time they turn into nightmares. Ffor Gilliam this world of imagination is very real, sometimes more so than the “real” world, and therefore it can also be dangerous – “We are not playing, what we do is deadly serious”, Parnassus says at one point – and so people can get lost or even die in this world.
At first, I was thinking that Tom Waits was overacting shamelessly. But soon I realized, that this was exactly how his part has to be done, because obviously it is a larger-than-live character, an eternal archetype. In a way, at the half tragic, half happy and half comical ending (oh, sorry, somehow I’ve got three “halves” now), Mr. Nick is the last remnant of the world of the imagination that is still left, while all the other characters have arrived ( or are stuck) in the “real world,” an ending which, as I said, is happy, tragic, and comical, all at the same time.
Given the tragic circumstances of its making, The Imaginarium works astonishingly, even eerily well. It’s not a perfect or flawless film, but it is a special film, maybe one-of-a-kind in movie history. Yes, it is a warm film, it is a true “labor of love.” – “There is no magic, there are only cheap tricks” is a line from the movie. And yet, although Terry had to use some cheap tricks, there seems to be a kind of magic that actually does work. The magic of love. “A film by Heath Ledger and Friends”
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