The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
2009
Starring: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law
Director: Terry Gilliam
Runtime: 122 Minutes
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics
Rating: PG-13
The passing of Heath Ledger was a tragedy, and with it we mourn the loss of a great and gifted performer coming into his own and standing on the cusp of greatness. But if there is one tiny nugget of positive impact we can salvage from such tragic circumstance it is the effect his untimely death had on his dear friend and director Terry Gilliam. Midway through his dark hearted Faustian saga in which a thousand year-old carnival owner battles The Devil for souls in an unwise wager, Gilliam suddenly found himself without his leading actor.
With much of the real-world action wrapped already, Gilliam hit on a stroke of genius whereby he envisioned that each of the three times Ledger’s character, the enigmatic, amnesia-stricken George, would step through the mirror into the Imaginarium, a surrealist netherworld where temptation battles imagination for the right to consume you or set you free, he would be played by a different actor (first Johnny Depp, then Jude Law, and, finally Colin Farrell). At the time the idea seemed risky to say the least, but having now been realized the notion of a man with no conscious memory being different each time his subconscious is tapped into seems so natural and straightforward it is difficult to imagine how such scenes could have been more effective had Ledger played the parts himself. This unforeseen obstacle jolted Gilliam and sparked within him an explosion of ingenuity, channeled like a diamond bit to the purpose of salvaging his picture from disaster.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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