The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

A thousand years ago Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), the leader of a theater made a deal with devil to get immortality.

Doctor Parnassus lives with her daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole) and other theater’s member. The group of theater always moves from one town to another town. Doctor Parnassus is getting tired, no one would listen to his story, there’s no audience, and no income.

In fact Doctor Parnassus offers the audience to traverse a fantasy world through his magic mirror, a rare opportunity that won’t happen twice. Someone who enters the magic mirror will get an opportunity to leave the real world into the imagination world.

In this situation, the devil takes a place. When Parnassus feels desperate, a devil who transforms as a man named Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) comes, he reminds Parnassus about the old deal. Parnassus’ daughter will belong to the devil when she is 16 years old. Parnassus panics, in three days he will celebrate his daughter’s 16th birthday. As a result he is tempted to deal once again with the devil. At the same time a young man named Tony (Heath Ledger) comes. He helps doctor Parnassus to save his daughter. But does Tony really give sincere help?

With lots of special effects, Terry Gilliam could provide a fascinating performance for this movie. Air balloons, colorful backgrounds, beautiful river complete with the canoe, luxury homes and various magical characters become appropriate visualization to represent the fantasy world in ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’.

However when Heath Ledger died on January 22, 2008, Gilliam had intention to stop the process of this movie. But fortunately he changed his mind; he found another way to continue this movie. Gilliam finally decided to replace Ledger’s role in the fantasy world in a few characters. Initially, Tom Cruise expressed an interest to involve in this movie to replace Ledger, but Gilliam refused with a reason that Cruise was not a close friend of Ledger. Gilliam then chose Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law to replace Ledger when he transformed in a magic mirror. Besides because of their acting capacity, those three actors were chosen because they were the close friends of Heath Ledger.

Tags: Movies

Category: Movies