Like a lot of Terry Gilliam’s movies, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has been a bit overshadowed by the events surrounding its production. The filmmaker and former Monty Python member has dealt with angry studios, lawsuit-happy producers and freak accidents in his quests to bring his visions to life, and Imaginarium was hampered by the death of one of its main stars, Heath Ledger, while production was still under way. But Gilliam has clearly learned the value of perseverance over the years, and thus kept going with Imaginarium, an apt decision for a movie about the persistence and power of imagination and storytelling.

The Details

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger, Lily Cole.

Directed by Terry Gilliam.

Rated PG-13

Opens Friday.

Beyond the Weekly

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

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The doctor of the title (Christopher Plummer) is a man hundreds of years old who is at the helm of a dilapidated touring sideshow; Ledger plays Tony, a mysterious amnesiac whom Parnassus and his associates discover hanging from a bridge in what appears to be an attempted suicide. Tony joins Parnassus’ travelling band, which also includes the doctor’s eternal imp sidekick Percy (Verne Troyer); a naïve young man named Anton (Andrew Garfield); and the doctor’s daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), who is about to turn 16 and thus become property of the devil (Tom Waits), with whom Parnassus made a bargain years ago in exchange for eternal life.

Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown don’t exactly weave a tight plot, despite all the ins and outs; the movie ambles along with the ramshackle feel of Parnassus’ show, and the eventual revelations about Tony’s past feel pretty small-scale. But the Imaginarium itself, a portal into Parnassus’ own mind, is wondrously conceived and consistently impressive, a playful throwback to the surreal animation of Gilliam’s Python days. Since Ledger never completed any of the fantasy scenes before his death, Tony transforms into a slightly different person each time he enters the Imaginarium, and Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell variously take up the mantle, with Farrell getting the most screen time as Tony during the movie’s climax.

Somehow it all hangs together, despite the unavoidable extratextual awareness that creeps in anytime Ledger conspicuously disappears. That’s thanks both to Gilliam’s boundless imagination—gloriously unfettered here for the first time in years—and to the appealing performances from the whole cast. Ledger may end up getting all the press, but Depp, Law and especially Farrell do well with the thankless task of filling in for their departed colleague. Plummer brings real gravitas to the decrepit old man who’s tired of living—as well as tired of no one valuing his storytelling and showmanship (sounds like a certain filmmaker, yes?). And model-turned-actress Cole is a real find, a luminous beauty who also expresses a range of emotions in a narrow role that’s akin to Rapunzel in the tower.

After the dark Tideland and the glossy The Brothers Grimm, it’s refreshing to see Gilliam return to the world of the unabashedly silly and absurd, and Imaginarium is also a nice send-off for Ledger, who gives a fun, easygoing performance without any of the showiness that won him an Oscar for The Dark Knight. In the scope of each man’s career, Imaginarium is likely to be little more than a footnote, but it’s one that provides plenty of small pleasures.