The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

This is the second DVD I chose in the offer, along with “the infidel” and immediately like many other I was drawn in by 2 things:

The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus Poster

1.       The ensemble cast. Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Heath Ledger, Colin Farrell, Jude Law and of course Johnny Depp.

2.       The death of Heath Ledger. Like many people it was upsetting to see one of the worlds finest young actors die, however I wanted to see his performance post Dark Knight, to see if he was as good as he was in the Dark Knight.

When I first saw the trailer I didn’t think very much of it, however my fiancée persuaded me to watch it, unfortunately I was right with my first instincts, the ensemble cast are excellent and the acting that they provide for the viewer is nothing short of excellent, however this is where the positives stop.

I will start with a basic statement which popped into my head within the first 30 seconds:

“OH MY GOD!, THIS IS SO WEIRD”

I looked at my fiancée, she looked at me and we both mouthed

“WHAAAAAAAT THE HELL!”

Now, I know I said I was going to stop with the positives however, the one more positive I will say is that the film is beautiful on a high definition TV (I can’t speak for a standard television). The film is excellently shot and is one of the real stand out things about the movie.

The film isn’t bad, its just weird…………very weird. I think this distracts from the story itself, you are so overwhelmed by what is happening that you completely forget what the story is about.

Basically its about a travelling troupe including Christopher Plummer (Dr Parnassus), Lily Cole (Valentina), Andrew Garfield (Anton) and Vern Troyer (Percy), they each have their own roles, and initially I didn’t understand as to why they were doing what they were doing, until I realised that the characters are in fact portraying God (Christopher Plummer) and his disciples, then the devil pops up in to the story which changes the dynamic, he keeps an eye on this troupe, because God is trying to put together 12 disciples again to what I could gather end the war between good and evil. However Heath Ledger is found hanging from a bridge and God believes he could be a good disciple, however Heath’s character can’t remember anything, thus is useless, until the Devil proposes a game in which the first to 5 souls wins the war, from then on, all different manor of things happen.

It just gets weirder and weirder and weirder. There’s so much weird that its hard to follow.

Unfortunately it had no redeeming qualities, and to be quite honest I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, because it will just have you asking yourself questions, one of them being:

“Why!”