So last night, for my Saturday night movie, I decided to check out “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”. Another film I wanted to see that happened to be on Netflix streamable.

This is another excellent film that I was impressed with. I think it’s one of Terry Gilliam’s best films. Terry Gilliam is the man behind all the Monty Python flicks such as “Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, “Monty Python and the Life of Brian”, he also did, “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”, “Twelve Monkeys” and “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas”.

The story of “Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” takes place in London, England, where Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) would show an audience a sideshow troupe where he would take them to a journey into the “Imaginarium” which makes dreams come true. Parnassus tells a story to his daughter Valentina, Percy the midget and Anton that Parnassus is immortal and he has lived for a thousand years. He fell in love with a mortal woman, made a deal with the devil, trading his immortality to the youth. As part of the bargain, he promised his son or daughter to Mr. Nick on their sixteenth birthday. Valentina is now almost to the doomed age and Doctor Parnassus makes a new bet with Mr. Nick, whoever seduces five souls in the Imaginarium will have Valentina as a prize. Meanwhile the troupe rescues Tony, a young man that was hanged on a bridge by the Russians. Tony was chased until he finds and joins the group.

While the plot is very strange and a little confusing, I thought this a very well made movie. It was fun. It had great performances but I was most impressed with the style of the movie. It was very visual and creative. Different.

Some of you may or may not know that this was Heath Ledger’s final film before his death. He only had a small role in this film but it was an excellent performance, of course. Heath was originally supposed to star throughout the entire film but he obviously died around the time the movie was still filming. So Terry Gilliam hired three actors to take over the role of Tony which were: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. All three of those actors did a great job playing Tony, but of course, they couldn’t top Heath’s performance in the role.

The film had some unique costumes, and unique cinematography I’ve never seen before. This is a very different Terry Gilliam movie than all the others. You all know how some of his movies can be weird. The guy has a strange imagination when it comes to storytelling. Terry wrote and directed most of his movies so all of this is his creation. He’s quite an interesting guy.

If you like Terry Gilliam flicks, this is one worth checking out.

Kev