The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Amidst all the mass outpouring of grief and shock that greeted the untimely death of Heath Ledger in early 2008 it was hard not to also feel a twinge of sympathy for Terry Gilliam who had, with Ledger’s death, just lost the leading man of his uncompleted film, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

Necessity is as they say, though, the mother of invention and now Gilliam’s film is released onto the big screen with not just one leading man but four: the late Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, all playing incarnations of the same character, Tony.

A return to form for Gilliam, the film is a richly eccentric mixture of Pythonesque humour, entrancing dreamlike landscapes and bizarre creatures set in a travelling magic show.

Dr Parnassus is thousands of years old and immortal. He now runs a ramshackle travelling show with his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), eager assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield) and dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer). Parnassus has however made a deal with the devil to help find his lost love, Valentina’s mother. The devil’s price was the soul of Valentina on her sixteenth birthday" a birthday that is now just days away...

Upping the stakes, the Devil offers Parnassus a further wager. The first of them to claim five souls wins the prize of Valentina. As they place their wager the troupe save the life of disgraced charity boss Tony (Heath Ledger), who they find hanging from a bridge. And so the game begins...

Gilliam sets his surreal tale in a grimly despairing version of contemporary London that needs a little magic and hope. Those qualities arise in the quest to secure the five souls and save Valentina. If an individual can be persuaded to step through the mirror of the imaginarium, they pass into an idyllic fantasy of their happiest imagining; a land of sweets for one soul, a paradise of consumer goods for another...

Full of Gilliam’s trademark flights of fantasy this is a stunning visual treat and a poignant reminder of Heath Ledger’s considerable talent.