The surRealist Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
I’m not too terribly sure where to begin with this one. I’ve only seen a handful of Terry Gilliam’s works. I loved “Brazil” for being a dystopian daymare. I love the dark and dismal possible future stories. I love them even more when they’re completely ridiculous while still being grim and disheartening.
I also quite enjoyed “The Adventures of Baron Munchasen” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” for their wonderful surrealism. Beautiful, movies the both of them. Striking to the thinkmeats and to the little high definition, 3-D cameras made out of meat, water, and jelly that fit in those two large cavities in our faces.
I attempted to watch “Tideland”. Not once, not twice, but a whopping four times. I don’t think I ever got farther than thirty minutes into before my brain started twitching and bellowing “ABORT ABORT OH SWEET MONKEY JESUS GET US OUT OF HERE ALREADY!” Not because it was bad mind you. Because its psychologically claustrophobic. I could do an entire review on that if I could ever sit through it.
But let’s talk about “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”. First off, that’s a great title right there. Lots of fun syllables and an a lovely arrangement of words there. Yep. Very spiffy. It made me think of vague and wonderfully surreal things the first time I heard it mentioned. Did the movie live up to that?
Kinda. Sorta.
Oh it was definitely a feast for the eyes. No doubt about that at all. But it also feels like they could have done more with the surrealism too. As though they were being held back from really putting as much into the visuals as they would have liked. At the same time the story was just- Well, this happens to me a lot. I’ll watch a movie and I’ll be left feeling like I should have liked it, but for some reason I just didn’t like it as much as I could have. Like there was some element missing, that had it been incorporated, the movie would have ascended past the tier of “Eh, it was all right.” and up towards “Hey! I’m glad I watched that!”
In all honesty the one thought that kept popping into my head watching the movie went something along the lines of “So Gilliam took all of his best fever dreams, handed them off to some CGI guys, they worked their digital black magics, and a loose plot concerning the follies of youth amidst an age old battle of wits between an immortal, perpetually drunk monk with a gambling problem and a slimy, child molesting, creeper Satan was laid over the whole thing?” Because that’s what we’ve got here. Though to be perfectly honest, that description actually sounds a good bit more awesome than the movie itself.
There were two rather impressive things of note to this movie though. The first being the fact that one of the main characters was played by four different actors over the course of the story. Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell all stepped up to fill the shoes of Heath Ledger’s character for the scenes that needed to be filmed after Ledger’s untimely passing. But here’s the thing; unless you know that different actors are playing the character for different scenes, there’s a chance you might not even realize you’re not watching Ledger the entire time. I went into the movie knowing there was going to be transitions between actors and I still can’t tell you at which points Ledger stopped being Ledger and became somebody else. I can’t tell you when Depp started his part or ended his part. It was a gloriously seamless transition as far as I’m concerned.
The other impressive bit to note is the fact that despite the movie never really being able to thoroughly engage and absorb me into itself, it still managed to snag me right at the end and not through cheap knee-jerk emotional manipulation of well engineered bits of music meant to cultivate just the right emotion in the audience. It manage to sincerely tug at my heart strings and end things on a subtly happy and satisfied note. Things are cleanly resolved and while no one gets an amazing, happy end, they get the endings they need, or at very least one’s they deserve.
It’s not a bad movie. It just simply isn’t a great movie. Its a mediocre movie. Its something to be watched and rather easily forgotten. If you’re looking for nothing more than a wee bit of surreal, over-indulgent, atmospheric CGI fun. Give it a look. If you’re looking for an engaging plot or interesting characters though… well, did I mention the CGI was pretty? Because the CGI was pretty.
Affiliates
