The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Country: GB/CAN/FR
Technical: col 123m
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Andrew Garfield, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law (last three as Ledger surrogates)
Synopsis:
A travelling theatre is headed by an immortal shaman whose trance-like state renders passage through the fake mirror a gateway to the world of his own unconscious.
Review:
Ledger's last film, interrupted by his own death by misadventure, was intended by its director as a kind of compendium of his work to date. It is therefore a treat for Gilliam buffs to spot the echoes from his Python animations, Munchhausen and Time Bandit days, to name but three. However, it is academic since his stylistic signature is writ so large across all that he does that his films are more variations of each other (with the exceptions of Fear and Loathing and Tidelands, perhaps). So what is new here? Actually Christopher Plummer is rather good, as a Faust-like figure desperate to save his daughter from the devil, and the sheer richness of imagination that goes into the children's book-like, Daliesque landscapes of the imagination that Gilliam devises, not to mention the jaw-dropping technique of their execution, is worth the price of admission. Once again, though, he has failed to come up with a movie which is more than the sum of its parts.
Country: GB/CAN/FR
Technical: col 123m
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Andrew Garfield, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law (last three as Ledger surrogates)
Synopsis:
A travelling theatre is headed by an immortal shaman whose trance-like state renders passage through the fake mirror a gateway to the world of his own unconscious.
Review:
Ledger's last film, interrupted by his own death by misadventure, was intended by its director as a kind of compendium of his work to date. It is therefore a treat for Gilliam buffs to spot the echoes from his Python animations, Munchhausen and Time Bandit days, to name but three. However, it is academic since his stylistic signature is writ so large across all that he does that his films are more variations of each other (with the exceptions of Fear and Loathing and Tidelands, perhaps). So what is new here? Actually Christopher Plummer is rather good, as a Faust-like figure desperate to save his daughter from the devil, and the sheer richness of imagination that goes into the children's book-like, Daliesque landscapes of the imagination that Gilliam devises, not to mention the jaw-dropping technique of their execution, is worth the price of admission. Once again, though, he has failed to come up with a movie which is more than the sum of its parts.
Country: GB/CAN/FR
Technical: col 123m
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Andrew Garfield, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law (last three as Ledger surrogates)
Synopsis:
A travelling theatre is headed by an immortal shaman whose trance-like state renders passage through the fake mirror a gateway to the world of his own unconscious.
Review:
Ledger's last film, interrupted by his own death by misadventure, was intended by its director as a kind of compendium of his work to date. It is therefore a treat for Gilliam buffs to spot the echoes from his Python animations, Munchhausen and Time Bandit days, to name but three. However, it is academic since his stylistic signature is writ so large across all that he does that his films are more variations of each other (with the exceptions of Fear and Loathing and Tidelands, perhaps). So what is new here? Actually Christopher Plummer is rather good, as a Faust-like figure desperate to save his daughter from the devil, and the sheer richness of imagination that goes into the children's book-like, Daliesque landscapes of the imagination that Gilliam devises, not to mention the jaw-dropping technique of their execution, is worth the price of admission. Once again, though, he has failed to come up with a movie which is more than the sum of its parts.