Imagine

I sat down today and decided I was going to watch a movie that has alternated between piquing my curiosity with its beauty and disgusting me with its title and concept. That's right: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

I'm sure the story changed a bit after Heath Ledger died, because the plot of the movie is absolutely absurd and full of holes. For anyone who doesn't know, the movie concerns itself with one Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), an immortal man who keeps the universe spinning by telling stories, and his daughter Valentina (played strikingly by supermodel Lily Cole) who wants to leave her father's ramshackle sideshow operation for a domestic life out of Martha Stewart Living. Parnassus just wants to protect his little girl, most notably from the devil (Tom Waits), to whom she was promised before her birth. Faustian adventures abound for these two, and for most of the movie a possibly-shady-possibly-valiant Heath Ledger/Johnny Depp/Jude Law/Colin Farrell swaggers around the real and imaginary worlds, either messing things up or working miracles.

The imaginary world really carries this movie. The real world is, well, real: it's full of drunken jerks and crooked politicians and greedy socialites. Surrounded by all that, the double-decker sideshow theatre looks like a Baroque painting of a Greek myth. That's a comfort in itself, but once you go into your imaginary world, things just keep getting better. They were all designed to resemble famous paintings, but all eventually grow rampant in their own creative directions (gondolas, Willy Wonka candy-scapes, celestial lily pads and lotus blossoms, pop-up forests, designer shoes and Fabergé eggs, deserts, ladders to clouds, you name it). It's divine just relaxing and enjoying these dream worlds while they last.

Unfortunately, like every other dream, you have to wake up and try to make sense of the plot of this movie. If you want a great movie about imaginary worlds and their real-life consequences, watch The Fall (then buy it on Blu-Ray, because you will want to watch it again).

Reveling in the sumptuous beauty,

K