The movie follows Dr. Parnassus' traveling show and his band of carnie folk...you know, small hands, smell like cabbages. To help you visualize, Dr. Parnassus is a cross between Dumbledore and Gandalf after an all night bender on butter beer and pipe-weed. Ready for Parnassus' main act? Step right up folks and you too can enter into Dr. Parnassus' imaginarium, where you can live out your dreams as if they were reality. Careful though, a trip inside doesn't come without its consequences - queue gasp and ominous music.
As Ledger's final role this movie is eerily fitting, if not morbid at times, with incredibly dark themes and images of death. I feel awful saying this, but watching the movie knowing how it ends for Ledger, makes it take on a whole new meaning and maybe even more interesting than what it would've been. I'm sorry, but it's true!
Is the movie uniquely creative? Absolutely. Fluid? Anything but. It's very all over the place and incredibly hard to follow unless you pay close attention and bare with it at times. You really have to commit to the first hour of the movie before you start getting any payback in plot or even understand what's going on. Ledger's death doesn't really help much either, as he was replaced by not one but three actors - Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp and Jude Law, each seeming like they're trying to figure out what the movie's about as the camera's rolling.
Apparently all the live action portions of the movie were filmed first, followed by the imaginarium/fantasy portions, so anytime Ledger's character steps into the imaginarium, you get a different actor. They tried to make that part of the story line, but it just adds another layer of..."what the hell?"
Also, thank you Avatar for ruining movies for me with your cutting edge CGI. Not everyone had the same budget as you Mr. Cameron, and now you're making every movie try and compete! Parnassus doesn't stand a chance in that department, at times feeling like you're watching A-Ha's music video "Take on Me." It's fantastically creative, but just not as well executed as what we're now used to.
SPOILER ALERT: If you can decipher a theme in the movie, I'm not sure it's as grandiose as it tries to be. I saw it as life is just one big chess game between the devil and Jesus over the souls of humanity, with each of us left to make the ultimate decision for ourselves. Seems thin to me - I mean, I could've told you that myself after 18 years in Sunday School. Did I just pay $12 to see a "Catholics Come Home" commercial?
Dr. Parnassus is a roller coaster of a ride, filled with its creative peaks and moments where you just want off. The movie begs the question, if you could take a walk through Dr. Parnassus' Imaginarium, what dream would you like to live out? I ultimately decided mine would've been to see a different movie. Ok, I'm being overly harsh, it's really not that bad. But I didn't think it was good either. It's certainly worth taking a gander at Ledger's last piece of work, if nothing else than to experience how ironic it is. So R.I.P. Mr. Ledger, you are missed, but by any stretch of the imagination, this is just a PUT IT IN YOUR NETFLIX QUEUE!
Check out the trailer and decide for yourself!
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