The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) is about a thousand year old man running a travelling show. Doctor Parnassus has made bets with the devil repeatedly and, in exchange for immortality, agreed to give up his daughter when she turns sixteen. Her birthday is approaching. The devil proposes a new wager: whoever wins five souls first takes her. The show contains a mirror; whoever passes through it enters their own imagination and makes a choice there. One day they cut down a man hanging from a bridge. He does not remember who he is and joins the show. Heath Ledger played that man. The London section had been shot and the scenes inside the mirror had not. He died in January 2008. Gilliam was about to abandon the film. Then he found a solution: the mirror already changed a person's appearance. In the scenes inside it, three other actors played the character: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. None took a fee and all three gave their share to Ledger's daughter. The film's strangest formal choice came out of a necessity and fitted the story exactly. Tom Waits plays the devil. The design is Gilliam's usual work: handmade, extremely crowded, mixed with digital. The plot is scattered and that is the main objection. It runs 124 minutes. Good for: fantasy cinema, Gilliam, and visual design. Less good for: the story is tangled and the film leaves some threads unconnected.