The Last Station - "Time to Get Off"

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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - "Imaginarium Delirium"

Written by Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown

Directed by Terry Gilliam

Director Terry Gilliam has had a stream of bad luck experiences. His adaptation of Don Quixote infamously fell apart mid-production (as depicted in the documentary Lost in La Mancha), part of a tough decade or so in which he has released three films, all of which have had problems or been tampered with by the studio. He even appeared on the streets of New York City in 2006 holding a sign that said “Studio-less Film Maker… Family to support… Will direct for food.” So it comes as no surprise that the plot of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus revolves around the quest to continue telling stories even after an audience for them may have moved on.

Christopher Plummer stars as the titular doctor, whom many ages ago made a pact with the devil Mr. Nick (Tom Waits, acting as if the role was written for him) for immortality. He travels around modern day London in his horse-drawn collapsible theater with his accomplices Anton (Andrew Garfield), Percy (Verne Troyer), and daughter Valentina (Lily Cole). They sucker patrons into the Imaginarium’s mirror, a gateway into their imagination which fulfills their wildest dreams. After a moment of enlightenment, they are then forced to choose between Doctor Parnassus’ road to salvation which returns them to the real world or Mr. Nick’s sinful easy out, which commits their soul to hell. This ongoing wager for souls is mightily favoring Nick these days, until along comes Tony (Heath Ledger).

Parnassus, a mystical man, foresees a hangman entering his life in a tarot card. Tony is found hanging from a bridge over the Thames with a noose around his neck and runes on his forehead. He fits the bill and soon integrates himself into their little troupe, much to the chagrin of Anton, because Tony is quickly charming Valentina away from him. The fact that Tony is seen narrowly avoiding death time and time again in the film has a shadow of sadness hanging over it, as Heath Ledger infamously died of an apparent overdose during the filming of Parnassus. Gilliam’s curse seemingly extended beyond even that to producer William Vince who died of cancer after production was completed and Gilliam was struck by a car, cracking his vertebrae. He was quoted as saying afterward, “They got the star, the producer, and they were going for the director, and the fuckers failed on the last one.”

Only one scene in the film feels like it was edited around a lack of Ledger, otherwise his lack of presence is only felt within the Imaginarium itself. Tony is creatively played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell for certain scenes, respectfully seen through different people’s imaginary perceptions of Tony. The use of other actors is integrated well, because it is well within the film’s logic that when someone’s imagination idealizes a person to look a certain way, then they will appear as such. Each actor retains the variety of quirks that Ledger attributes to Tony, making the transitions quite smooth.

The worlds created within the Imaginarium itself are quite astounding. Inspired by famous illustrators and painters like Maxfield Parrish, Grant Wood, and Jose Maria Sert, each venture into a character’s imagination is wholly unique. These fully CGI creations never feel “realistic”, but then again, that’s kind of the point. Like the scene from ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ where Eddie ends up in Toon Town, they are surreal masterpieces of the imagination that immerse our live action actors.

Gilliam’s unique style comes across successfully for the first time since 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. His penchant for wide angle and fisheye camera lenses sometimes is a cliché, but when the scene is ripe for such treatment, it is a wonderfully surreal fit. No one mixes the real world and fantasy quite like Gilliam, who has a truly handpicked cast at his disposal here that can balance the drama and comedy of it all (excepting Verne Troyer who despite his best efforts, can’t stand up to Christopher Plummer). If you have enjoyed Brazil, Time Bandits, or any number of other Terry Gilliam movies, you should enter The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.


*** Three Stars

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is still in theaters if you look hard enough. It arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on April 27th.

9 - “Denyin’ 9”

Screenplay by Pamela Pettler
Story and Directed by Shane Acker


The humans are all dead. Life on planet Earth is over, destroyed by an uprising of intelligent robots. All that remains are nine small sackcloth people, each numbered and given distinct personalities. Their origin is somewhat a mystery, and the lives of the first eight consist mainly of trying to avoid death at the hands of a cat-like robot creature. 9 (Elijah Wood) suddenly awakens after a long dormancy to find himself flung into this world, being brought up to speed by 2 (Martin Landau), who he meets first but is quickly captured by the creature and 1 (Christopher Plummer), an old grouch who leads the rest of the group. 9 doesn’t play by 1’s rules, and at every turn follows his own instincts about how to improve their lives and ultimately make life safe for them.

The world they occupy is a bombed out war zone, seen from their six inch tall point of view. All kinds of mechanical pieces of the world and rubble from buildings make up the dangerous world they live in. The church used as a home base is like a football stadium to these tiny numbered men (and woman). The small details and inventiveness of these backgrounds are some of the best aspects of the film. No wonder someone with a passion for production design like Tim Burton would attach himself to the project as a producer.

At its best, 9 is a film that has thrills. The adventures that these sack-people go though are engaging and never dull. The camera often sweeps around the action in such a whirly-bird way that any notions that such a tale would be better served in another animation medium (like stop-motion) are dashed quickly (though Coraline does achieve one or two of these camera moves- tremendously more difficult when not done in CG). Whether it be running from one monster or chasing another, on the whole the fight scenes are well choreographed. That is, except when too many characters are involved, and the film purposely chooses to forget a few of them for a moment. It is these conveniences that help move the plot along at its fast clip, but also contribute to a lot of plot holes and moments when the audience is expected to simply go along with it all because that is what is happening now. Ultimately too many of these scenes with “subtle” gaps in them occur, to the point of becoming the dominant form of storytelling throughout the film.

Dialogue in the film is used frustratingly in a simple manner, where it only occurs to give us a simple line to explain what is going on now. Things along the lines of:
“I’m going to go there to rescue someone now.”
“No, I don’t want you to go.”
“But I have to go to find the thing we are searching for to help rescue life as we know it.”
“Then I will go with you to help, but only so I can serve a plot device later.”
Of course, this is exaggerated. But it really feels like this is what is being said at almost every turn and it hampers the movie from achieving any cohesive emotional impact every time. You get so used to it as an audience member that when a moment comes late in the film where a moment of important planning is completely understated, you get confused. 9 hints a plan to 5, without telling him a single thing. 5 then naturally understands the entire plan, to the point where you question if 9 intended that at all in the first place. And it turns out he did. Oh well. The (almost mandatory at this point for an animated film) celebrity cast that also includes John C. Reilly and Jennifer Connelly is wasted on such dialogue.

There is a certain technological or political lesson lurking below this world, that machines will one day destroy us, or that our government will betray us and get everyone killed. Yet it is a Computer Graphics animated film. Again, why I would make a case for why this film may have otherwise been made with stop motion animation. But like the rest of the story, it is best to not think too hard about that. The film’s ending kind of makes sense, but not really. Somehow 9 knows the secret way to redeem the entire situation through a ritual that he was never shown nor was hinted at (I guess it’s just another of the instinctual gut feelings he has). In the end we kind of get a sense of redemption, an uplifting moment for the human soul, but is it really? Some of the nine sack-people have gone on to another place and we leave our remaining characters alone in this shell of a lifeless world. What do they have? What will they do with their lives from this point forth? Seemingly nothing.

9 Came out in a tough year. Not only is it unfortunately now part of the 2009 “nine trilogy” (with District 9 and the musical Nine), but it also faces stiff competition from more animated films this year than any this reviewer can recall. In any other year, 9 might be a welcome change of pace to the Disney and Dreamworks dominated animation scene. But instead, this inventive and fairly independent (Tim Burton and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov threw their weight behind the project as producers) CG animated film is merely another one on the pile, held back by a weak script.


** Two Stars – Watch it if you Must

9 was released last week and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.