Early in Terry Gilliam’s latest and much-beleaguered fantasia, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Christopher Plummer’s titular mystic looks the devil in the eye and tells him: “You can’t stop stories being told.”

You needn’t be the shrewdest of viewers to spot a dash of the former Python in the wizened Parnassus. With his travelling troupe of ragtags and misfits, he’s a showman of the old school, out of time, out of place — a psychedelic swami peddling genuine wonders to a diminishing audience. Though it’s that very line which rings out like a self-motivating mantra when the troubled road his Imaginarium has travelled to the screen is remembered.

Gilliam is no stranger to mid-production setbacks. The sorry fate which befell his unrealised The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was heart-wrenchingly documented in Lost in La Mancha. On the special effects-laden The Brothers Grimm, it was heated spats with notoriously hands-on überproducers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, which gridlocked the film in a stalemate so lengthy that Gilliam had stomped off and shot Tideland before its plentiful pixels were finally in place. (That particular tribulation was candidly chronicled in the fascinating behind-the-scenes scrapbook, Dreams and Nightmares: Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Grimm and Other Cautionary Tales of Hollywood.)

But even flash floods and raging Hollywood heavyweights couldn’t have prepared Gilliam for his highest hurdle yet: the sudden loss of Heath Ledger, Imaginarium’s star attraction, at the junction of what had been the smoothest shoot of his recent career.

That Gilliam was able to preserve what was captured of his friend’s final performance is alone worthy of no small respect. That he’s forged so graceful a solution to the crisis is a miracle of directorial ingenuity to rival any of the marvels found beyond the magic mirror of the film’s extraordinary ‘imaginarium.’

In Imaginarium’s real world — a grimy, inhospitable modern day London, teeming with nouveau Dickensian squalor — Ledger plays Tony, a charming amnesiac first found hanging by the neck beneath the Blackfriars Bridge. Rescued at the behest of the Doctor’s kewpie doll daughter, Valentina (supermodel Lily Cole) and to the chagrin of her would-be suitor, Anton (Andrew Garfield), Tony quickly ensconces himself in Parnassus’ favour and is recruited as the band’s marionette-limbed barker. Fresh blood is just the thing the good Doctor is after — he finds himself in something of a bind. The Devil (Tom Waits) is in town to collect on a wager. The prize? The rouge-cheeked Valentina, nearing sweet sixteen. (“The age of consent,” she purrs.)

Donning a commedia dell’arte mask, Ledger puts forward his best Jack Sparrow routine — cockney accent, twitchy carriage and all. This is Ledger with his sleeves rolled up — a jaunty jape between blockbusters and ‘worthier’ fare in the good company of an all-class ensemble. But in re-teaming with Gilliam after the problematical Grimm, he at least goes out with a spring in his heel, a smile on his face, and a rascally gleam in his eye.

On any other project, Gilliam’s fix to his leading man’s tragic absence would have risked comparisons to Bela Lugosi’s awkward posthumous replacement in Plan 9 From Outer Space. But whether by sheer coincidence or gracious cosmic design, Ledger’s passing neatly occurred at an opportune point for an actor switch. So, with Imaginarium’s already generous order of whimsy, it’s easy to accept Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell as through-the-looking-glass Ledger proxies. Having the dicey Tony assume shifting physical guise actually helps paint him as a slippery character, so it’s possible that had Ledger completed the role, the film might have been less absorbing.

Still, the actor’s non-presence during a jumbled third act accounts for his character’s mizzling emotional payoff. Depp, Law and Farrell each inhabit the part with the requisite shifty charisma, but that Tony’s biggest moment ultimately falls to a face that’s lately ascribed to him strips it of much of its wallop.

Understandably, the film is the product of its difficult circumstances. As Ledger exits, things lean expectedly off-track, and Gilliam’s phantasmagorical imagination tends to outrun the reach of his budget. And yet, it seldom matters. Somehow, this precarious high-wire act avoids tumbling into an incomprehensible clutter of colour and quirk — thanks largely to his company of players.

Trading the catwalk for a film set, the angelic Cole is a striking presence as the ennui-stricken teen. She’s genuinely captivating — coy, canny and cool — and a future in acting seems like a surety. Garfield, who’s done grim and determined in Red Riding 1974, reveals both ace comic chops and a welcome frailty as the near-ignored everyman in Parnassus’ weird and wonderful coterie. Together, they’re the heart of the film — making the Doctor its beautiful mind. Plummer essays the ancient enchanter with equal parts self-serving pluck and crumpled pathos. He’s the perfect foil for Waits’ suavely sly and unctuous Mr Nick, the unique cinematic Satan who casually confesses having no understanding of black magic whatsoever.

The possessory card which heralds the credits reads: “A film by Heath Ledger and Friends.” A heartfelt tribute, but make no mistake — this is unadulterated Gilliam from lights down to curtains. Between visual allusions to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and a nonsense musical interlude harking back to his days with Monty Python, Imaginarium, flaws and all, is a labour of love unmistakably sprung from the mind of its maker.

It’s also an unusually poignant paean to human transience and the mercurial nature of dreams. “Nothing is permanent,” sighs Depp as Ledger’s dapper doppelgänger. “Not even death.”

And in Gilliam’s world, he’s right.

DIRECTOR: Terry Gilliam
SCREENWRITERS: Terry Gilliam & Charles McKeown
CAST: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell
RATING: R (M)
RUN TIME: 122 minutes


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