THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS
July 19 2010, DVD, Myrlin & Jeremy's living room, from Netflix
Utterly, utterly wonderful. I am so glad I saw this after INCEPTION, because the two bear such strong similarities overall, and to be honest, the special-effects alternate-reality sequences are vastly superior here. Of course; it's Terry MF Gilliam, who is a master of such things - so much gorgeous detail, so strange, so beautiful, so eye-bending and awe-inspiring. Yes, I wish I'd seen this in a theater. I'm a fool. But also Hollywood is a fool for not releasing this more widely. I guess people got badly burnt by THE BROTHERS GRIMM, which, admittedly, is kind of a piece of shit. But still; DR. PARNASSUS more than makes up for missteps and delays. This is the kind of movie that made me into a Gilliam fan in the first place, and I believe it should be required viewing for every little kid in the world so that they can see what movies can be in the hands of the right freaks.
The use of three other actors to fill in the gap left by Heath Ledger's untimely death worked about a thousand times better than I'd guessed; it doesn't hurt that those three actors are Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, all of whom look enough like Heath, as long as they have their hair slicked back and an unsavoury mustache-goatee, that they can pass as the "dream-sequence" versions of him. They are like him - they are the same character - and yet subtly different, which genuinely works well. It almost goes without saying that Heath himself is powerful, gawky, and hilarious, which is so rare and awesome (he was a funny-ass ad-libber, to be sure). And he gets to use his native accent, which is also rare and awesome. Oh Heath, we miss you! *bawl* Oh well.
Everyone else in the picture is also great - Tom Waits, of course, playing a brilliantly sneaky "Mr. Nick" a.k.a. the Devil, complete with Ron Mael pencil-mustache (or is that all Tom?); Christopher Plummer as the titular Parnassus, an old carnie locked in an age-old struggle against Mr. Nick; the ravishing Lily Cole as Valentina, the agelessly teenage daughter of Parnassus (and unfortunately, the prize in this age-old struggle... Gilliam does not score feminist points); our new Spider-Man Andrew Garfield as Anton, the hapless young swain in love with Valentina; and Verne Troyer (!) as Percy, Dr. Parnassus's right-hand man. Troyer's actually pretty damn good in this movie - sometimes he can't quite hit the emotional mark, but sometimes he can, and the guy's got the flinty comeback totally nailed. I hope he's clean and sober - he could go places! He's no Peter Dinklage, but as many talented little-person actors as we can have, we should have.
So yeah... instant classic, all the way. This is one to own.
July 19 2010, DVD, Myrlin & Jeremy's living room, from Netflix
Utterly, utterly wonderful. I am so glad I saw this after INCEPTION, because the two bear such strong similarities overall, and to be honest, the special-effects alternate-reality sequences are vastly superior here. Of course; it's Terry MF Gilliam, who is a master of such things - so much gorgeous detail, so strange, so beautiful, so eye-bending and awe-inspiring. Yes, I wish I'd seen this in a theater. I'm a fool. But also Hollywood is a fool for not releasing this more widely. I guess people got badly burnt by THE BROTHERS GRIMM, which, admittedly, is kind of a piece of shit. But still; DR. PARNASSUS more than makes up for missteps and delays. This is the kind of movie that made me into a Gilliam fan in the first place, and I believe it should be required viewing for every little kid in the world so that they can see what movies can be in the hands of the right freaks.
The use of three other actors to fill in the gap left by Heath Ledger's untimely death worked about a thousand times better than I'd guessed; it doesn't hurt that those three actors are Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, all of whom look enough like Heath, as long as they have their hair slicked back and an unsavoury mustache-goatee, that they can pass as the "dream-sequence" versions of him. They are like him - they are the same character - and yet subtly different, which genuinely works well. It almost goes without saying that Heath himself is powerful, gawky, and hilarious, which is so rare and awesome (he was a funny-ass ad-libber, to be sure). And he gets to use his native accent, which is also rare and awesome. Oh Heath, we miss you! *bawl* Oh well.
Everyone else in the picture is also great - Tom Waits, of course, playing a brilliantly sneaky "Mr. Nick" a.k.a. the Devil, complete with Ron Mael pencil-mustache (or is that all Tom?); Christopher Plummer as the titular Parnassus, an old carnie locked in an age-old struggle against Mr. Nick; the ravishing Lily Cole as Valentina, the agelessly teenage daughter of Parnassus (and unfortunately, the prize in this age-old struggle... Gilliam does not score feminist points); our new Spider-Man Andrew Garfield as Anton, the hapless young swain in love with Valentina; and Verne Troyer (!) as Percy, Dr. Parnassus's right-hand man. Troyer's actually pretty damn good in this movie - sometimes he can't quite hit the emotional mark, but sometimes he can, and the guy's got the flinty comeback totally nailed. I hope he's clean and sober - he could go places! He's no Peter Dinklage, but as many talented little-person actors as we can have, we should have.
So yeah... instant classic, all the way. This is one to own.