Lower Decks

One of pop culture’s perennial figures for the past forty years, Terry Gilliam has done a good job of hiding in plain sight. He’s the American in Monty Python. Along with John Cleese and Eric Idle, he’s managed to make a career of the success he enjoyed from the handful of TV seasons and movies the famed British comedy troupe, except unlike them, he did it behind the camera, as a director, where he tried to make a modern interpretation of fantasy storytelling.

He’s been doing surreal stories since Python, but he really started to work on his own legacy starting with the quirky ‘Time Bandits,’ which he followed up with ‘Brazil,’ which has been called visionary, and ‘Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ before taking a few detours and a slightly more straight genre presentation in ‘Twelve Monkeys.’ Four years ago, he made a more conventional stab with ‘Brothers Grimm,’ his first collaboration with the late Heath Ledger, which didn’t make much of an impact. After Ledger’s death and greatest success in ‘The Dark Knight,’ Gilliam found himself in the position of working on perhaps the most important film of his career, ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.’

After Python, I think of Gilliam best from ‘Baron Munchausen,’ which I saw for the first time during my freshmen year in college, one of those shared experiences you expect and hope for in such a setting. Munchausen, as I later learned, is actually an established literary figure, but not apparently all that famous (Tristram Shandy is slightly moreso, and I’m still waiting to see the film he ended up inspiring, which I would suggest certainly looks to be Gilliamesque, though it comes to us from Steve Coogan, who might be best known from Ben Stiller’s ‘Night at the Museum’ films). ‘Munchausen’ the film intrigued me as one of the purest love letters to storytelling I’ve encountered, and I’ve never quite heard it described that way.

‘Parnassus’ is famous now because it features Ledger’s final performance, but to watch it is to witness Gilliam’s evolution as a storyteller in his own right, a truly fantastical but more grounded than ever fable about a man (Christopher Plummer who sells his soul to the devil (Tom Waits), and ends up regretting how it ensnares his daughter (Lily Cole) and Tony (Ledger), who stumbles into the whole affair and becomes more important to it than he could realize. The reviews I’ve read only really seem to think it’s important to reference the story, reference a total disinterest, and then note that Ledger basically had very little to work with, or at least, a curious viewer doesn’t.

How far from the truth both are. Ledger spent his whole career attempting to break away from the expectations that developed around him. His most famous role prior to ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was for ‘A Knight’s Tale,’ which was calculated to introduce a new star to the ‘Gladiator’ template, essentially to lock him into a predetermined mold, but Ledger never wanted that. ‘Brokeback’ saw him totally transform himself, and ‘Lords of Dogtown,’ if you didn’t know he was in it, you’d be hard-pressed to figure out that he was. ‘Dark Knight’ was a truly startling metamorphosis all the same, justifying catapulting him into legend. So what did he choose to do as a follow-up? ‘Parnassus’ sees him more restrained than his Joker, but it’s also a lot closer to the work he wanted to do, how he wanted to be seen, than anything most of his other performances. He’s still a supporting character, finished or not. What’s tragic is, ‘Parnassus’ also demonstrates what Heath might have been like as an older actor, who’s no longer the upstart trying to keep pace (even in ‘Brothers Grimm,’ in which he costars with Matt Damon, Ledger doesn’t get to carry very much, but while he’s onscreen in ‘Parnassus,’ it’s hard to ignore him, and it has nothing to do with his specter) or carry something specifically made to showcase him.

It works out so well, what Gilliam had to do to finish the film without him, it was like an eerie case of fate catching up with the production. Ledger’s Tony has been marked for death, and that’s hangs over the character, but the traveling carnival sideshow that Parnassus and his crew perform includes a window into the imagination (through the good doctor, and a mirror). Three times Tony passes through it, and each time, Ledger’s replacements make their appearance. First up is Johnny Depp, who does a variation of his Jack Sparrow. Jude Law, playing on the physical likeness he has always shared with some of Hollywood’s vintage action stars, channels Errol Flynn to a remarkable degree (for the first time, really, unbelievably, unless you count ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’) follows up as the second Imaginarium Tony. When Colin Farrell finally appears as the third one, it’s only appropriate, since it’s Farrell we first see out of all of them, in a magazine photograph, before we ever meet Ledger’s Tony. At that point, Farrell kind of takes over, which I don’t say as a big fan of the actor’s, but because we don’t see Ledger again once he appears. Tony’s part in the story concludes at the culmination of this segment. Don’t worry. You’ll be plenty interested in Plummer and Parnassus by that point.

‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ is a good movie to watch after ‘The Fall,’ 2008’s contribution to the must-see fantasy film fold, starring Lee Pace of ‘Pushing Daisies,’ er, fame. ‘The Fall’ was grounded to a remarkable degree in reality, whereas ‘Parnassus’ has a lot of whimsy about it, which is exactly the way Ledger, certainly, would have loved it. It’s not Gilliam as seen in ‘Time Bandits,’ which you might watch if you’re in the mood for ‘The Dark Crystal,’ say, or ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,’ which features a smorgasbord that includes Robin Williams, Idle, and yes, a young Uma Thurman. Lily Cole is not exactly Uma Thurman (how many people in history have been Uma Thurman?), but she’s got a weird sort of innocent experience going on that’s certainly interesting to watch, too. But if you want to watch this movie for Ledger, you can certainly do that, as much as the battle between Plummer and Waits.

‘The Fall,’ I’ve been telling people since I saw it, is what you might expect a modern ‘Wizard of Oz’ to be, and what makes ‘Parnassus’ a perfect complement to it is that it takes a story that’s both sweet and profound to make you forget that you ever thought you wanted to see it only as a curiosity. It’s Gilliam’s best fantasy film (though I haven’t seen ‘Brazil,’ so don’t quote me on that), at the very least, a culmination of all his work, which even feels like a modern Monty Python at times, one that doesn’t focus solely on the smart jokes but rather tells a complete story.

You might want a more complete story, still, but that may be another reflection of how perfectly the Heath Ledger element fits into it, nothing Ledger or Gilliam could have anticipated, but certainly something that must have occurred to Gilliam as he completed it. It ends up being important not just for fans of Ledger, but for fans of Gilliam, and fans of modern fantasy. Take whatever opportunity you have to see it now, or wait so you can add it to your collection, because you’ll want to. It will end up defining Gilliam’s career, at the very least, whether it’s easy to acknowledge or not. Those who have dismissed it already or considered Gilliam’s directing career to be a footnote for Monty Python will be reconsidering in the years to come. I know that, even though I’ve been interested in Gilliam before, it’s certainly true for me. I may not think Ledger did better work here than in ‘The Dark Knight,’ but now I’m eager to see ‘Brazil,’ and ‘Lost in La Mancha,’ the chronicle of Gilliam’s doomed dream project about Don Quixote, and to revisit the rest of his films.

Yeah, ‘Avatar’ was pretty awesome, and it certainly deserves to conquer the box office, but ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ will have its own legacy.