Parnassus and the Case of the Missing Element
Watched this today! I really enjoyed it, in a sort of feeding-the-muse sort of way, with it's weird ideas and some striking visual ideas...
The story feels a little lacking, and I think I've diagnosed the problem:
protagonist. There isn't one.
You have sympathy for most of the characters, and the most active one is the one who ends up being destroyed in the end. Even the filming makes it that you go from Anton (why are the two boys Anton and Tony? just realized this) as the focus, to then Valentina (who's name I barely caught, they call her so many things) and then to Parnassus, and even Mr. Nick's POV. No one really loses except the snake-in-the-grass you'd rather didn't turn out as a snake.
I was secretly hoping *he'd* turn out to be a child of Parnassus, which would have made for a much better ending, if Parnassus had died and Valentina was rescued, and, and...well, I would have worked it out somehow.
But it has inflamed my imagination, which is really much more than I can ask from a movie.
I love that band bus...