Terry Gilliam is bur­dened with num­ber of unfair rep­u­ta­tions. First, as a visual styl­ist more than a sto­ry­teller or direc­tor of actors — the lat­ter, at least, obvi­ously refuted by the fact that many high-profile stars will repeat­edly work with him for pen­nies. He’s also known as an unpre­dictable hel­lion and spend­thrift, which are, from the point of view of those that hold the purs­es­trings, the two least desir­able char­ac­ter­is­tics in a direc­tor. He may in fact be con­cerned more with the integrity of the work than with the busi­ness angle, as any artist should be, but he is no wastrel. In fact, all but one of his com­pleted movies came in on time and under bud­get. A bet­ter way to describe him would be as the most unlucky per­son in the movie business.

After the mul­ti­ple calami­ties and mis­for­tunes (that even an athe­ist might char­ac­ter­ize as acts of god) that befell The Adven­tures of Baron Mun­chausen and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam made The Broth­ers Grimm as a com­mer­cial con­ces­sion. Despite it still bear­ing his unmis­tak­able impri­matur, it remains the sole Gilliam film I actively dis­like. One good thing to come of it, how­ever, was a gen­uine friend­ship with its star Heath Ledger. Inter­ested in film­mak­ing him­self, Ledger stuck around on the set of The Imag­i­nar­ium of Doc­tor Par­nas­sus even when not needed on cam­era, serv­ing as Gilliam’ appren­tice and pitch­ing in when­ever possible.

“Can you put a price on your dreams?”

Gilliam’s fabled bad luck first reared when he was hit by a bus and cracked a ver­te­bra, as reported in Wired. Ledger died dur­ing pro­duc­tion, fol­lowed by pro­ducer William Vince before post-production could begin. If one untimely death could pos­si­bly be said to be any more of a shame than another, Ledger’s acci­den­tal over­dose at the age of 28 might be truly unfair. He was rid­ing the crest of a wave of appre­ci­a­tion for his per­for­mances in Broke­back Moun­tain and Bat­man: The Dark Knight, and had just begun to stretch his mus­cles as a direc­tor with music videos for Ben Harper and Mod­est Mouse.

The pro­duc­tion was very nearly halted, but Gilliam real­ized it could be sal­vaged and re-conceived if Ledger’s part were par­tially recast with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Far­rell. Gilliam stuck to one sim­ple and absolute cri­te­ria: all three actors must be per­sonal friends of Ledger, lead­ing him to report­edly turn down an over­ture by none less than Tom Cruise on the basis that he hadn’t known Ledger. Depp and Law actu­ally do quite resem­ble Ledger onscreen, at least with the aid of eye­liner and cos­tum­ing. How­ever, Far­rell most cap­tures Ledger’s phys­i­cal pres­ence and man­ner­isms. Charm­ingly, the movie is cred­ited not to Gilliam but to “A film from Heath Ledger and friends.”

“Voila!”

The eerie syn­chronic­ity between Ledger’s death and the film’s themes of mor­tal­ity are, remark­ably, coin­ci­den­tal. Gilliam co-wrote the script with Charles McK­e­own (also of Brazil and The Adven­tures of Baron Mun­chausen, which this movie most closely resem­bles). Accord­ing to Col­lider, the story is based on Gilliam’s own feel­ings of artis­tic frus­tra­tion, par­tic­u­larly after the recep­tion of his con­tro­ver­sial film Tide­land, which many found not just dif­fi­cult but even offensive.

As its title makes plain, The Imag­i­nar­ium of Dr. Par­nas­sus is set lit­er­ally in a world of imag­i­na­tion, a place we have vis­ited before in nearly every sin­gle Gilliam film. Most famously, Brazil riffs on James Thurber’s 1939 short story “The Secret Life of Wal­ter Mitty.” The few excep­tions include Jab­ber­wocky and The Broth­ers Grimm, in which fairy tales exist mat­ter of factly in the real world. In 12 Mon­keys, it remains ambigu­ous if James Cole’s (Bruce Willis) future (his present) or the present (his past) might be real or delusions.

“He’s come to collect.”

It would be a huge mis­take to expect any Terry Gilliam film to make total log­i­cal sense. Such pedes­trian expec­ta­tions would weigh down an artist we love for his unique, vivid flights of fancy. But per­haps even the wildest Gilliam fancy ought to be inter­nally con­sis­tent to a degree. If some­thing doesn’t make sense, is it a tan­ta­liz­ing conun­drum left open for the viewer to mull over, or is it evi­dence of slop­pi­ness? The cen­tral ques­tion left unan­swered for me has to do with the core con­ceit of the film itself: peo­ple are drawn into the mind of Dr. Par­nas­sus through his mag­i­cal mir­ror. In his mind­scape, they must choose between enter­ing a build­ing main­tained by the Devil (Tom Waits), or… what, exactly? Of those few that reject the Devil, we see their bliss­ful, unen­cum­bered state upon leav­ing Dr. Par­nas­sus’ mind. What exactly hap­pens to them that makes them happy? Also, there’s the side effect of them shed­ding their pos­ses­sions. They may have been freed of their own earthly mate­ri­al­ism, but that doesn’t stop Par­nas­sus from con­ve­niently enrich­ing his own troupe’s cof­fers, giv­ing the whole process an air of a scammy con­fi­dence game instead of spir­i­tual awak­en­ing. Reflect­ing the theme of insin­cer­ity is the corn­ball tune “We Are the Chil­dren of the World” which appears as a ring­tone in the film, and at the end of the clos­ing credits.

The appar­ent pro­tag­o­nist turns out to be an unre­deemable vil­lain, unlike vir­tu­ally all of Gilliam’s pre­vi­ous heroes, in par­tic­u­lar Kevin in Time Ban­dits, Jack Lucas in The Fisher King, Sam Lowry in Brazil, James Cole in 12 Mon­keys, and Jeliza-Rose in Tide­land. Which leaves us with Dr. Par­nas­sus, who ends up a lit­tle bit like Parry (Robin Williams) as we meet him at the begin­ning of The Fisher King: home­less and seem­ingly per­ma­nently locked in a posi­tion of want. Both are hobos, ren­dered apart and invis­i­ble from a world of beauty and wealth. Par­nas­sus’ long­ings are embod­ied by the beau­ti­ful Valentina (Lily Cole), whom may or may not be his daugh­ter, now seen ensconced in an envi­ously bliss­ful nuclear fam­ily. Par­nas­sus remains for­ever tempted by the Devil.

Offi­cial movie site: www.doctorparnassus.com

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