I wanted to share this wonderful article with Verne Troyer that appeared in LA Confidential Magazine in December. In the article he recalls what it was like to work with the late Heath Ledger in his final film.

My thanks to Verne and Ray for sharing this amazing article with us.

CLICK ON THUMBNAIL FOR ORIGINAL SIZE TO READ THE ARTICLE

EXCLUSIVE

Sarah Monzani

By Theresa Shell

On Saturday, the Dr. Parnassus Support Site had the privilege of talking with The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus make-up designer Sarah Monzani. Sarah has been placed on the Oscar short-list for best make-up for this year’s awards. She also received a nomination this week for the BAFTA in the same category. Both for her work on The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus. Monzani is no stranger to either award, having won both the Oscar and BAFTA for her phenomenal work on “The Quest For Fire” in 1983. In her career, Sarah has worked as make-up artist/hair designer or make-up designer on such films as “Interview With The Vampire”, “Evita”, “Valkyrie”, “Midnight Express” and “Bugsy Malone” among many others. I’m very excited about talking with this gifted artist.

Sarah Monzani is a brilliant artist and such a lovely person. She is witty, intelligent and a font of wonderful information about “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus”. She made me feel so comfortable during our interview. I had a delightful time talking with her and I hope that you will enjoy the wonderful behind the scenes stories and facts that she shared with me which run through to the very last line of this interview. So, read on and learn about Heath Ledger’s battle of the contacts (“No, I wear them all the time.”), Terry Gilliam’s quest to make-up a ventriloquist’s dummy and the fact that there were 5 Tonys, not 4 in the film courtesy of the wonderful Sarah Monzani.

Theresa Shell: Was there a point when you were younger that you just knew, “I want to be a make-up artist and I want to be a make-up artist for film”?

Sarah Monzani: At 15 years old I did that. And, my father told me I had to get a proper job. He said, “You need a proper job. If you never make it to be a make-up artist, which I never think you will do, you need a job to fall back on.” He said, “Do you want to go to college?” And, I said, “No, I’ve been to school and I didn’t like that. Why would I go to college?” I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. And, he said, “Well, you have to get a job.” When I was younger there wasn’t an option. He said, “What do you want to do then?” I said, “I want to train to be a hairdresser.” And, that was it. I left school at 15, did my apprenticeship for three years which is very different from today because you don’t do three years now. The best place to enter the profession at that time was television and, you couldn’t enter without being able to do make-up and hair. So, having already done training to be a hairdresser, it was great for me. My first three months as a make-up artist I didn’t have to learn to do hair because I already knew. I applied when I was 20 and I was so lucky. I was chosen as 1 out of 100 or something.

TS: I find it amazing when a 15 year old is so certain of what they are meant to do in life. I have seen that it is the same situation with Heath, Daniel Auber, Terry. I think it is the way it is with a true artist. They just know.

SM: It’s true.

TS: I did an interview with Monique Prudhomme…

SM: Lovely Monique.

TS: Isn’t she the dearest thing? She brought to my attention was the fact that the character of Anton always had silver paint on his face somewhere indicating that he was Mercury.

SM: Yes.

TS: The next time I saw the film, I looked for it and sure enough, it was there in every scene of his. Are there other little things like that which are symbolic for the characters?

SM: You get an illusion that they (Dr. Parnassus, Valentina, Percy and Anton) live and apply their own make-up and hair for their stage performances in the wagon. With no proper washing facilities in the Wagon we always left bits of stage make-up on their faces adding to a certain amount of grime which was always there embedded in their skin.

TS: One of the things that really struck me was the subtle changes in the make-up for each of the Tonys. I really felt like each Tony, though basically having the same look, had differences in his make-up that further defined that particular Tony’s true soul. I didn’t think it was just the real life physical differences from actor to actor. Heath’s Tony was more gritty, world weary, sleazy in his make-up. His eyeliner was always smudged and undefined just as his Tony was undefined. We didn’t know who he really was. Johnny’s make-up was lighter, more suave and slick, Jude’s make-up was much lighter, dreamy… almost buoyant, and, Colin’s make-up to me was very calculated, very perfect and planned as was his Tony’s persona. Was that that my imagination or was it intentional?

SM: (Laughing). Very good, you’re very good. It was intentional. Certainly, the Heath side of it was the sleazy, heathen. Both Heath and I had worked out exactly what was going to happen when he had gone through the Imaginarium, so this was all pre-planned.

TS: Right.

SM: What’s so weird for me is the conversations we had about that before, we tried to put into the film after and in the strangest way it almost seemed to work better. I don’t even know if I’m saying that right because I don’t want to say it worked better because we didn’t have another way of doing it.

TS: I know what you’re saying. It did in so many of these…I guess you would call them turns of fate…that to me were a huge indication that, even in light of the tragedy, that the right decision was made to complete this movie. If it was not meant to be completed, I don’t think so many things would have fallen into place like they did.

SM: Completely. I have absolutely no qualms about that at all.

TS: In my love of details, I also noticed with Doctor Parnassus, for example that when he was nursing his hang over with the icepack on his head and they did the close up, you had put food in his beard. After having seen Mr. Plummer in person, I was really able to appreciate the changes that were brought about by the make-up.

SM: (Laughs) Yes.

TS: My reaction was like, “Well, the old drunken, slob!” What fun that must have been for you. I would think you would have had the most fun with Verne’s character.

SM: Verne Troyer IS Percy. That’s what I felt.

Verne had a great face to work with and he came alive with each character.
For Percy’s normal look was a pale base with a little eye definition and a small thumb piece, as with all the actors Percy also had our dirt and grime effect.

Percy’s many stage characters we reflected the costume theme. With all Percy’s stage make-ups we used black grease paint in different ways.

We first see Percy on stage dressed as a bug, we used black grease paint all around his eyes taking it from the inside corners up and over the brow bone to create a bug eye affect.

With the Demon costume Percy’s eyebrows were very exaggerated, starting either side of his nose painted with sweeping upwards spikes to create a demonic appearance.

TS: He was actually the first person I spoke to from the film and he has been wonderful. He made himself so available to me.

SM: He was completely heartbroken…I mean we were all heartbroken when Heath died, but he was devastated. We all cried on a regular basis. He found it very hard being in the make-up trailer. And, then we had a double, a Heath double.

TS: Right, he did the scene where Tony was jumping onto the lily pads.

SM: He did so much. I don’t know whether you know all the bits. Do you know the film well?

TS: Extremely. I’ve seen it four times.

SM: You know the bit where Lily says to Heath (Valentina to Tony), “We’ll find you something to wear”?

TS: Yes.

SM: Heath ties something around his waist then puts on a hat.

TS: Yes.

SM: That was actually the make-up test.

TS: Really?

SM: If you look at the film, Heath is looking in the mirror. The person you are looking at from behind is the double, the person in the mirror is Heath’s face. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

TS: It is. He loved what he was doing on this film and working with Terry again.

SM: Yeah.

CONTINUE READING HERE

Last week I told talked about the discussions that have been going on where so many people have talked about the fact that Heath Ledger (who was brown eyed) looked as if he had blue eyes in many of the stills for his role of Tony in The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus. Courtesy of the film’s Director of Photography, Nicola Pecorini, I shared with you the photo below and explained that though both Nicola and concept artist, Daniel Auber, remembered the discussions in which Heath and Terry talked about giving Tony one blue eye and one brown eye, neither remembered for sure if the two men went through with the plan. Nicola said I would need to ask Terry Gilliam to be sure, which I did. Terry answered me this evening, he said, “Yes he wore blue contacts for all of his scenes. We had been planning to have one of the contacts drop out at one point to help doubt to enter as to how genuine Tony was but,he was gone before we got a chance.”

Another question I had for him was that I had noticed after the credits when the screen went dark that the score of the film played in what sounded like cell phone tones coming from every direction. I had asked the score’s composer, Jeff Danna, about this and Jeff said, “It was a Terry thing. I don’t know why he did it. You must ask the maestro, himself.” So, when I asked the question above, I also asked Terry Gilliam about the score being played in cell phone tones. He said, “To me it is the sound of many, many people trying to call Heath on Tony’s cell phone. Unfortunately, he still doesn’t seem to be picking up. One blogger/reviewer said it brought tears to his eyes. Obviously he got it.”

So, I have the answers to my trivia questions to share with you now. As I mentioned, I heard the cell phone tones after the credits. It’s very powerful. I hope that all of you will stay until that point in the film and hear it for yourselves now that you know what it symbolizes in the eyes of the film’s director.

EXCLUSIVE

By Theresa Shell

I just love fun facts and trivia! What color were Heath Ledger’s Tony’s eyes in Dr. Parnassus? There has been a lot of discussion among fans of The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (especially Heath Ledger Fans) that Ledger’s eyes appear to be blue in some of the movie stills. But no one could be quite certain. Heath had brown eyes, so this seemed odd. I looked at the stills and had to admit that there appeared to be a bluish tint in some photos. I’m a fanatic for trivia so I wanted to know.

My curiosity getting the better of me, I asked Dr. Parnassus concept art supervisor/concept artist, Daniel Auber. Daniel said he remembered a conversation between Heath, Terry and Nicola Pecorini about the fact that they thought it would be cool if Tony had two different colored eyes. Then, he said, he had seen a test photo taken with Heath wearing one blue contact thus giving him two different color eyes. From there I asked Nicola Pecorini. Nicola remembered the conversation and photo as well, but didn’t know if Terry and Heath did go forward with using the contacts. He said for a definitive answer, I’d have to ask Terry. So, until we hear back from our favorite director, I am pleased to share the photo with you with the kind permission of Nicola Pecorini. I’m even more curious now for an answer as to if so many fans of the film are right in their belief that Ledger had at least one blue eye in the film.

Heath Ledger Dr. Parnassus Make-Up Test Photo

My thanks to Daniel Auber and Nicola Pecorini for their kindness and for humoring me in my quest for an answer to this question!

Source: SciFi Soundtrack

Terry Gilliam’s new journey into psychedelia, Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, is opening in several more theaters this weekend. We’ve got answers to your most pressing questions from director Gilliam and cast.

Dr. Parnassus is a tricky and trippy little film that only someone like Terry Gilliam could make. Characters wander in and out of reality, and into their own imaginations. After Heath Ledger passed away during filming, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrel and Jude Law all stepped up to take over his remaining parts, which all happened to be in the imaginary world. It may sound odd, but the casting actually works well in the final cut of the film: After all, in your imagination, you can take on any shape, size or face. Now that the movie is opening for a wider audience, we know there will be plenty of questions regarding how much was changed. So we chatted with the cast and director Terry Gilliam to find out what they had to do to salvage Dr. Parnassus after the tragedy of Ledger’s passing.

We were at a press conference with Gilliam, and this is what the director had to say.

How did your vision for the film change following the passing of Heath?

Terry Gilliam: It didn’t change, basically, I just got these three other guys in. Basically what happened, we’d shot almost everything, on this side of the mirror, [in the film characters can jump into a mirror, "this side" refers to the real world]. There were a couple scenes we hadn’t shot.

There’s a scene between Anton and Jude, that used to be Tony’s trial, and it used to be in the wagon with all with the other. By putting it on the other side of the mirror, it’s a better scene, because they are the ones battling for Valentina. It worked out better. At one point I was just going to say it was co-directed by Heath, because he was creating these situations, where there were only a few solutions to. As far as Johnny, Colin and Jude taking over, that was inherent in what we had. It’s already stated that two people go through the mirror, and one imagination may be stronger than the other. It’s entirely possible that the middle-aged shopping lady could be dreaming of Johnny Depp and not Heath Ledger. But other than that, the dialogue is exactly the same as it was before.

What I can’t tell, and will never know, is how the film would differ if it were Heath carrying the character all the way to his death. It might have been a stronger film. This way it might be a more entertaining film, it’s certainly more surprising, because you don’t know who you’re going to see next. It was important to me not to change anything. There’s a moment [in the dream world] with Princess Di and James Dean, a lot of people think that was written as a eulogy to Heath, that’s exactly what was written before he died.

That’s the advantage of not being a studio film. How many studios would have let me introduce Heath’s character as we do in the film? And leave the dialogue in, “why are you fishing dead people out of the river he’s dead.” I said, we’re not changing anything.

Christopher Plummer didn’t want to say the line, in the monastery, when he’s talking about different stories “It could be a comedy, a romance, a tale of unforeseen death.” He didn’t want to say it, it was after Heath died. I said, you have to say it. That’s the film Heath and I were making. You don’t change these things.

Are there any cut scenes with Heath that we didn’t see and may see on the DVD?

Gilliam: It’s all there. Nothing is thrown away, every bit is in there. For him to die when he did, it’s like, how could you do it so tidily, I don’t know what other word to use. He didn’t destroy the film. He somehow got all the important work of his done and then died. It’s still a very strange experience that I haven’t completely sorted out in my head.

We also asked actresses Lily Cole, who plays the red-headed Valentina, what her take was on working without Heath. Did her character have to change?

You never kissed Heath Ledger’s character, in the real world or in Dr. Parnassus’ mirror world. While you eventually have that very intimate moment with Colin Farrell, who replaced him after his untimely death. Was that intentional, and how was that for you?

Lily Cole: I think the kiss itself is irrelevant. It was always going to be a symptom of a script. The actual experience of playing my character against Tony, still with the same relationship but at a different stage, with a different actor was very strange because of the circumstances. Colin was so lovely and funny and sympathetic and was going through a difficult time as well. At the same time, it was a very bizarre scene to play.

Below is a list of the cities in Germany where Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus will be playing. CLICK HERE for the link to the individual theaters showing the film in these cities! Book your tickets TODAY!

Bochum
Bonn
Borken
Braunschweig
Bremen
Bremerhaven
Bruchsal
Burghausen
Cham
Chemnitz
Coburg
Coesfeld
Crailsheim
Darmstadt
Deggendorf
Delmenhorst
Dettelbach
Diepholz
Dormagen
Dorsten
Dortmund
Dresden
Düren
Düsseldorf
Ellwangen (Jagst)
Elmshorn
Emden
Erding
Erfurt
Erlangen
Essen
Esslingen am Neckar
Euskirchen
Frankfurt (Oder)
Frankfurt am Main
Freiburg
Friedrichshafen
Fritzlar
Fulda
Garbsen
Gelsenkirchen
Gera
Göppingen
Görlitz
Goslar
Göttingen
Greifswald
Gronau (Westf.)
Günthersdorf
Gütersloh
Hachenburg
Hagen
Halberstadt
Halle (Saale)
Hamburg
Hamm (Westf.)
Hannover
Hechingen
Heidelberg
Heidenheim
Heilbronn
Herne
Hildesheim
Hof
Hürth
Husum
Ingolstadt
Iserlohn
Jena
Kaiserslautern
Karlsruhe
Kassel
Kaufbeuren
Kiel
Koblenz
Köln
Konstanz
Krefeld
Landau in der Pfalz
Landsberg am Lech
Landshut
Leipzig
Leverkusen
Lich
Lingen
Lippstadt
Lörrach
Lübeck
Lüdenscheid
Ludwigsburg
Ludwigshafen
Lüneburg
Magdeburg
Mainz
Mannheim
Marburg
Meiningen
Memmingen
Mengen
Meppen
Mönchengladbach
Mülheim an der Ruhr
München
Münster
Neckarsulm
Neu-Ulm
Neubrandenburg
Neuburg a.d. Donau
Neufahrn b.Freising
Neumünster
Neunkirchen/Saar
Nidderau
Nürnberg
Nürtingen
Oberhausen
Offenbach am Main
Offenburg
Oldenburg (Oldb)
Olpe
Osnabrück
Paderborn
Passau
Pfaffenhofen a.d. Ilm
Pforzheim
Pirmasens
Plattling
Plauen
Potsdam
Ravensburg
Recklinghausen
Regensburg
Reutlingen
Rheine
Rosenheim
Rostock
Rudolstadt
Saarbrücken
Saarlouis
Salzgitter
Schifferstadt
Schorndorf
Schwäbisch Hall
Schweinfurt
Schwerin
Siegen
Sindelfingen
Singen (Hohentwiel)
Solingen
Speyer
Starnberg
Stralsund
Stuttgart
Suhl
Sulzbach (Taunus)
Trier
Troisdorf
Tuttlingen
Überlingen
Ulm
Verden (Aller)
Viernheim
Villingen-Schwenningen
Vilsbiburg
Waiblingen
Waldkraiburg
Walldorf
Walsrode
Weimar
Wesel
Westerland
Wiesbaden
Wildau
Wilhelmshaven
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfsburg
Wuppertal
Würzburg
Zweibrücken
Zwickau

Berlin
Köln
München
Bremen
Köln
Hamburg
München

By Theresa Shell

What color were Heath Ledger’s Tony’s eyes in The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus? Why does Mr. Nick scream, “I’m going to Chicago?” and why does Anton always have silver paint on his face? I’ve been doing a little detective work about some of the fun trivia for The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus and I thought you might enjoy the results of my search on a few of these things.

CLICK ON THUMBNAIL FOR ORIGINAL SIZE

I’ve written a little post about my findings after talking to Dr. Parnassus cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini, concept artist, Daniel Auber and costume designer, Monique Prudhomme and posing my questions to them. Check it out. It’s fun and interesting. CLICK HERE TO READ THE POST ABOUT DR. PARNASSUS TRIVIA!

Source: Nerve.com

The Legendary director on Heath Ledger, the Incredible Hulk, and what the hell to do with your life.

By Phil Nugent

At sixty-nine, Terry Gilliam has been writing, directing, and animating longer than some of us have been alive. His latest film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, famously stopped production after Heath Ledger’s untimely death. Gilliam’s loyal friends rallied him to continue production, with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell all sharing Ledger’s role. The film opens December 25. His advice is good right now.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?

I have no advice for the young except to get a job, a proper job. I myself decided to quit the night shift at the Chevrolet assembly plant, out in the San Fernando Valley of California, and go and get a job at a children’s theater, building sets, painting myself green and playing ogres, and making absolutely no money at all. It was the best thing I ever did.

Try to do the things you want to do, that you get fulfillment and pleasure out of. I come from cartoons, where all I needed to get my ideas realized was a piece of paper and a pen. Early in my career, I got used to that kind of freedom. And eventually, that led to [Monty] Python, where there were six of us doing exactly what we wanted. We were lucky because we were on the BBC, so we had access to a public of millions, and we succeeded. Along the way, you develop confidence in your own ideas and your ability to carry them out.

FEAR NO MISTAKE

At the end of the day, you will make your share of huge mistakes. But often the mistakes lead you somewhere more interesting. As far as I can see, things never work very smoothly and you just have to keep your eyes and ears open. It helps to be very clear about what you don’t want to do.

THE BRUCE BANNER OF FILMMAKING

Movies are like reality. They’re like life — unless you happen to sell your soul and go work in Hollywood and do whatever they want you to do, with all the money they throw at you. But if you’re out there doing what you want to do and maintaining your independence, it’s really rough.

I actually find that the restrictions placed on me have led to results that were better than my original intentions. Something happens when people start blocking me, when events block me or money blocks me: I start getting angry, and kind of like the Hulk, my adrenaline starts flowing, and instead of turning into a big destructive monster, my creative juices start flowing, and I come up with really good ideas. I guess I’m the creative Hulk.

The last few films I’ve done have been based on other people’s material — books, whatever — and this time I thought it would be interesting to start with a blank page and see what we [Gilliam and his co-writer, Charles McKeown] could come up with. We didn’t have a story or even any characters in mind. One idea led to the next, and it started taking form, and then we’d throw more things at it and see if they’d stick.

THE THIN LINE BETWEEN FANTASY AND REALITY

My wife thinks I keep making the same movie over and over. I’m always playing with the borderland between reality and fantasy, trying to find the line that divides the two. To me, they both need each other, they feed off each other. Fantasy is often a reaction to the reality of your life, and the reality of your life changes according to your dreams. It’s a dialogue between these two things. I just keep trying to find ways to keep the dialogue fresh.

ACTORS NEED PLAYPENS

I’m careful about who I work with. I really love my actors, and I create a kind of perimeter wall around what they’re doing. It’s a kind of playpen. I’m always trying to defend that space where people can play without fear of failing. I’ve tried to cast actors against type, so that they get a chance to show the full range of their talent. Particularly if you’re a star, a big name, you’re under this incredible pressure to maintain your success rate. And of course, that leads to your having to do things that you’ve done before. If you’re Bruce Willis, you have to do Die Hard for the rest of your life; if you’re Johnny Depp, you have to do Pirates of the Caribbean for the rest of your life. At a certain point, even though you may be making money and maintaining your level of success, it becomes a trap. You want to do something different.

HEATH LEDGER

I worked with Heath Ledger on The Brothers Grimm and just loved him. After that, I was happy to consider doing any film with Heath playing the lead. I just thought he was so special and wonderful and just a great friend, so when this one came along, I was very keen for him to be in it. It was a funny time for him, because he was being inundated with offers after Brokeback Mountain. I knew that the more pressure I put on him, the more he might drift away from something, because he was feeling a lot of pressure at that time.

He was working in London playing the Joker, and at the same time, he was working on this music video that he was writing and directing. He needed a place to work, so I set him up at the special effects company. One day I was going through my storyboards, and Heath was there — by this time, he’d read the script, but I hadn’t spoken to him about it — and at the end of the presentation he slipped me a note that said, “Terry, can I play Tony?” I asked him if he was serious, and he said yes.

There really are no words [for Ledger's death]. I was devastated. I always say that nothing can surprise me anymore, but Heath gave me the biggest surprise of my life. At the time I thought Parnassus was dead, that we were going to have to close it down. Luckily, I was surrounded by people who told me not to give in to my own cynicism. Eventually they beat me into submission, and I started thinking, well, maybe there is a way to save this film. Most people were just concerned that Heath’s last work not be gone. He was so loved by so many people, and Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell came to the rescue.

LEAVE OBAMA ALONE

A couple of years ago, when I was in New York, I said that I was threatening to sue Dick Cheney and George W. for the illegal, unauthorized remake of Brazil. I’m afraid that America has become more and more like Brazil, and I think that right now, America has the best hope for the future imaginable in President Obama. But boy, are they beating the shit out of him. By being elected, he was certainly handed a poisoned chalice. How do you fix the mess that the previous administration left behind? It’s a deep, deep hole he’s trying to dig out of. I don’t know if it’s possible, and people are so impatient, expecting solutions immediately. America is more deeply divided than ever before; it’s like two countries. I’m not sure where it’s going to end, but it’s interesting times.

Source: The New York Times

By MANOHLA DARGIS

A Traveling Show Comes to Town, but Its Guests Are the Ones on a Journey

The most recent circus to pop out of Terry Gilliam’s head is titled “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.” It’s a full three-ring affair, complete with puffs of smoke, glitter and grunge, some hocus-pocus, mumbo jumbo and even a dwarf. It’s the story of a holy man, or maybe a fool, who transports customers into fantastical worlds of their own imagining. In “Critique of Pure Reason,” his exploration of understanding, Kant used the phrase “ens imaginarium” to describe pure space and pure time, preconditions of imagination. Think of this movie as a gloss on the nature of imagination (well, kind of, sort of), only with hurdy-gurdy music and, alas, Heath Ledger’s final screen performance.

Mr. Ledger was in the middle of production on “The Imaginarium” when he died, at 28, in January 2008, from an accidental overdose of prescription medicines. Mr. Gilliam, in either a desperate or inventive move, decided to complete the movie with three different marquee names — Johnny Depp, Jude Law and a very good Colin Farrell — all of whom play aspects of the character originated by Mr. Ledger. It’s a weird, not entirely successful experiment. Mr. Ledger’s death understandably haunts the movie, shadowing its every gaudy and hyperventilated scene to alternatively distracting and depressing effect. It’s hard to think how it could have been otherwise even if the movie does have its attractions, including some of its lead performances.

Never one to take a straight line where a crooked one will do, Mr. Gilliam plunges you into the world of “The Imaginarium” so brusquely that it takes a little time to get your bearings. The story opens in a dark corner of contemporary London in which a jerry-built theater, stage lights brilliantly glowing, has materialized amid the gritty urban landscape. The theater is the imaginarium of the film’s title, a traveling show with a remarkable feature attraction, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer, delightful), a boozy graybeard wearing robes and a smear of white makeup that makes him look like a carnival relic.

He is, in a manner of speaking, though his roots prove to be more mystical than strictly performative: once upon a time he was sharing deep thoughts on a mountain when the devil, nicknamed Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), stopped by for a visit. One thing led to another and years (centuries? millenniums?) later, Dr. Parnassus roams about peddling his fantasies, or rather those of his customers, in the company of his daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole, a heart-faced beauty), a 15-year-old on the verge of 16, who with her ripe shape and restless thoughts, seems ready for harvest. Also along are Dr. Parnassus’s two helpers, Percy (Verne Troyer), and Anton (Andrew Garfield), who pines after Valentina but faces competition when they rescue a man swinging from a rope, Tony (Mr. Ledger).

That Mr. Ledger enters the film with a hangman’s noose around his neck is disconcerting, if only because it serves as a blunt reminder of his death and even some of the early, irrelevant chatter about a possible suicide. Mr. Gilliam could have omitted this interlude with some skillful cutting or at the very least trimmed it down, to lessen its grimness and any taint of exploitation. He might have thought he was honoring the actor’s legacy by letting the scene play out, complete with a vivid silhouetted image of the nearly expired character hanging by a rope, but what he’s mainly done is punch a hole in his own fiction. Mr. Ledger’s performance — Tony is soon kicking and scheming — helps fill the hole, though not entirely.

An amnesiac, Tony immediately joins ranks with the travelers, eventually taking over ringmaster duties and bringing new energy, customers and production values to the shabby show. By the time he’s hit his stride, this natural smoothie is sweet-talking women into parting with their purses so they can take a ride into their own feverish imaginings. Much like musical numbers, the fantasy sequences elbow into the narrative, with bursts of candied color and the kind of whimsical touches that will be familiar to fans of Mr. Gilliam’s work, his animations in particular. In one sequence a dowager floats gaga in a wonderland filled with high heels the size of houses, a different Tony (Mr. Depp) at her side.

He’s not the only one transformed: when she gazes into a mirror, a younger, thinner version of herself stares back, which helps explain why visitors to the imaginarium are so blissed out when they exit. Whether you will be similarly enthralled on leaving “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” largely depends on whether its will-o’-the-wisp story, from a script by Mr. Gilliam and Charles McKeown, means less to you than the movie’s hallucinations, its self-conscious play between the theatrical and the cinematic registers, and its charming performances. It might also depend on whether you can see past the loss of Mr. Ledger, as Mr. Gilliam has tried, and instead hold onto this last, bittersweet performance. Despite the fatigue around his eyes, he looks like he really enjoyed his trip into Doctor Gilliam’s imaginarium.