Doctor Parnassus
A preview showing of Terry Gilliam's London-set new film at one of the best cinemas in town, followed by a Q&A with Gilliam himself. I wasn't going to pass that one up, was I?
I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler-free as I can, but if you really don't want to know anything about the film, don't click
The opening shot of the film is, Gilliam says, also the very first image that occurred to him when he started planning the screenplay. Night-time traffic whirrs around the glowing St Paul's Cathedral, as a tall, rickety old wagon, drawn by two knackered horses, slowly sways and totters into the city. That blend of the modern and the fantastical weaves its way through the whole film: Leadenhall, Borough and Battersea provide the backdrop to Doctor Parnassus's theatre, with its promise of enlightenment and rebirth through imagination.
It's a very beautiful film, helped by the presence of the frankly odd-looking but gorgeous Lily Cole, who turns in a thankfully great performance as Parnassus's daughter. In fact, all the performances are great: Christopher Plummer is dignified and desperate as the possibly-immortal Parnassus, who's been caught up in a series of wagers with Tom Waits's suave, pencil-moustached Devil for centuries; Verne Troyer gets a proper character rather than a series of jokes, as Parnassus's concerned assistant; up-and-coming Andrew Garfield, as the naive young barker of Parnassus's troupe, more than holds his own against the other heavyweights.
But the performances you can't escape are Heath Ledger, and his three stand-ins, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. The film is split between the real world and the phantasmagorical world of Parnassus's imagination, with Ledger playing the part of the ambiguous Tony in real-London and his stand-ins, with matching goatees and pony-tails, playing his imaginary aspects. And they do it quite brilliantly: Depp is all sleazy charm and heartfelt empathy; Law's take on the character is manic and self-confident; Farrell's is barely-repressed danger and violence. But, of course, Ledger should have played all those roles. It's a real shame that he didn't, at least, get to play Tony's final scene, where we see him for what he really is.
It's eerie to see Ledger in the role, not just because we know what happened to him, but because Tony is portrayed pretty much as a dead man walking, from the moment he's found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge (there's a wonderfully sinister scene involving shadows and light on the water). The storyline has a lot to do with the consequences of actions, and with the Devil on the scene, there are overtones of doom throughout. Gilliam is obviously still deeply upset about Ledger's death; he took his time and struggled with answering questions about him, and the first credit that appears on screen is 'A film from Heath Ledger and his friends'.
That aside, it's a brilliant piece of fantasy: the best sort of fantasy, which uses its flights away from reality and realism to show us truths about the real world. The trips into Parnassus's imagination are typical Gilliam brought up to date, with computer-generated landscapes full of giant spinning heads, ladders to the clouds, impossibly huge castles and rivers that turn into snakes, transforming from technicolour paradises to blasted plains. The sequences are kept quite brief, which Gilliam said was very deliberate: it stops you taking them for granted and losing the sense of wonder, and (vital for Gilliam) it also happens to be cheaper.
And, like the best of Gilliam's films, it's very ambiguous. I still can't decide whether I think the ending is sad or happy, although Gilliam told us what he thinks. But I do know it'll stay with me for a long time.
I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler-free as I can, but if you really don't want to know anything about the film, don't click
The opening shot of the film is, Gilliam says, also the very first image that occurred to him when he started planning the screenplay. Night-time traffic whirrs around the glowing St Paul's Cathedral, as a tall, rickety old wagon, drawn by two knackered horses, slowly sways and totters into the city. That blend of the modern and the fantastical weaves its way through the whole film: Leadenhall, Borough and Battersea provide the backdrop to Doctor Parnassus's theatre, with its promise of enlightenment and rebirth through imagination.
It's a very beautiful film, helped by the presence of the frankly odd-looking but gorgeous Lily Cole, who turns in a thankfully great performance as Parnassus's daughter. In fact, all the performances are great: Christopher Plummer is dignified and desperate as the possibly-immortal Parnassus, who's been caught up in a series of wagers with Tom Waits's suave, pencil-moustached Devil for centuries; Verne Troyer gets a proper character rather than a series of jokes, as Parnassus's concerned assistant; up-and-coming Andrew Garfield, as the naive young barker of Parnassus's troupe, more than holds his own against the other heavyweights.
But the performances you can't escape are Heath Ledger, and his three stand-ins, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. The film is split between the real world and the phantasmagorical world of Parnassus's imagination, with Ledger playing the part of the ambiguous Tony in real-London and his stand-ins, with matching goatees and pony-tails, playing his imaginary aspects. And they do it quite brilliantly: Depp is all sleazy charm and heartfelt empathy; Law's take on the character is manic and self-confident; Farrell's is barely-repressed danger and violence. But, of course, Ledger should have played all those roles. It's a real shame that he didn't, at least, get to play Tony's final scene, where we see him for what he really is.
It's eerie to see Ledger in the role, not just because we know what happened to him, but because Tony is portrayed pretty much as a dead man walking, from the moment he's found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge (there's a wonderfully sinister scene involving shadows and light on the water). The storyline has a lot to do with the consequences of actions, and with the Devil on the scene, there are overtones of doom throughout. Gilliam is obviously still deeply upset about Ledger's death; he took his time and struggled with answering questions about him, and the first credit that appears on screen is 'A film from Heath Ledger and his friends'.
That aside, it's a brilliant piece of fantasy: the best sort of fantasy, which uses its flights away from reality and realism to show us truths about the real world. The trips into Parnassus's imagination are typical Gilliam brought up to date, with computer-generated landscapes full of giant spinning heads, ladders to the clouds, impossibly huge castles and rivers that turn into snakes, transforming from technicolour paradises to blasted plains. The sequences are kept quite brief, which Gilliam said was very deliberate: it stops you taking them for granted and losing the sense of wonder, and (vital for Gilliam) it also happens to be cheaper.
And, like the best of Gilliam's films, it's very ambiguous. I still can't decide whether I think the ending is sad or happy, although Gilliam told us what he thinks. But I do know it'll stay with me for a long time.