The Happy Goat

In my return to posting on this site, many would expect that the first review I write would be for Avatar, the James Cameron 3D extravaganza which recently raked in its two billionth dollar after only 48 days in theaters.  To give you an idea, that figure is higher than the estimated total output of Afghanistan during that same period, and more than the entire population of Greenland produces in a year.

But while I saw Avatar, and enjoyed it, I’m not going to write about it because chances are you’ve all already seen it anyway.  Instead, I’m going to write about the latest Terry Gilliam movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

For those of you unfamiliar with Gilliam, he got his start making the strange paper-cutout cartoons for Monty Python’s Flying Circus back in the 70s.  As the sole American on the team, he had limited time in front of the camera, instead splitting his time between writing sketches and producing the animations that linked them together.  After the Pythons split up, he went on to make a bunch of very strange movies that got high critical acclaim.  From Time Bandits to Brazil to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he has always marched to the beat of his own drummer, and most of the time that drummer is on a unicycle wearing a ridiculous hat and beating the drum with a stale baguette and a lake trout instead of drumsticks.

But enough with analogies.

Parnassus is a movie about good and evil, possibly about God and Satan, a line the movie intentionally walks along instead of choosing one side or the other.  The two immortals are fighting for people’s souls, whom they either liberate (in the case of Parnassus) or tempt into enslavement (in the case of “Mr. Nick”).  Parnassus and Nick are old golfing buddies or something, and over the centuries, Nick has conned Parnassus into a variety of wagers, the most recent one for Parnassus’s own daughter.  Things get more interesting when the doctor finds Heath Ledger’s character, Tony, hanging from a noose tied off the middle of a bridge (he swallowed a small metal pipe prior to being hanged so as to keep himself alive)

Parnassus was Ledger’s last movie; he died during production and was replaced in several scenes by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell.  I was wary of this swap-out at first, but it turns out they tweaked the story a little to make it actually work.  Ledger’s performance is great, as are the performances of all the actors brought on to play him in other scenes.

Out now in obscure theaters sort of near you

The movie sets a new standard for visual impressiveness in Gilliam’s movies, with Parnassus’s “Imaginarium” showing off some snazzy special effects and computer animation.  If Gilliam had this idea for years, I’m glad he waited until now to make it.  Time Bandits was great and all, but you wouldn’t be able to do the kinds of things he did here with the technology available in the 80s and 90s.

The story takes one strange turn after another, finally ending with a sequence as hopeful as it is confusing.  Oh, and Verne Troyer is in it too, turning in a great performance that takes him another step further from Austin Powers’ Mini-Me.

Now, for one reason or another, I forgot that this was a Gilliam movie before I went to see it.  I was very confused and ready to tell people that it was a movie with good acting and great special effects but a very strange plot.  Then I saw Terry Gilliam’s name flash up in the credits and it all clicked together.  Yes, it’s strange, but it’s Gilliam strange, and if you liked his other movies you will also love this one.

Bottom Line: There are so many reasons to see this movie.  It’s Gilliam’s first noteworthy movie since 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  It’s Heath Ledger’s last movie ever, providing another glimpse into the disturbing roles that led him down his tragic path of self-destruction.  It’s got Christopher Plummer dressed like a homeless man, Verne Troyer dressed like a Monkey, and it’s probably got the best CGI special effects of any movie this year not considered science fiction.  You might need to look around a little to find a theater showing it, but it will be worth the trip.