As the quaintly anachronistic title suggests, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is as whimsical and rickety as any Terry Gilliam contraption -- an apparent labor of love, and not just for its star Heath Ledger, who died during production, but for the smoke-and-mirrors tomfoolery that goes into the construction of illusions. Another of Gilliam's charmingly antiquated, hand-crafted thingamadoodles, this one gets off to a bit of a slow start -- trying to set up too many stories... but spinning too many stories, and keeping track of them all, is also a good part of its subject.
Ledger's untimely death unavoidably became another element, since he hadn't finished filming his central role at the time of his demise. Gilliam, as you probably know, figured out a way to complete the film with three other actors -- Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell -- stepping in to complete the part. Once you're watching the movie, that no longer seems like such a strange or desperate move, but I'm not going to tell you how or why it works. (Remember that Natalie Wood died during the filming of "Brainstorm" and Brandon Lee in a production accident on the set of "The Crow," but those two pictures were completed, for better or worse. David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." was a failed TV series pilot that wasn't released theatrically until Lynch said he dreamed an ending for it.) A title card at the end announces it as a presentation of "Heath Ledger and Friends."
"Imaginarium" most resembles the picaresque Gilliam of "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (my favorite of his films) with a smaller budget. Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his magical-theatrical troupe -- doll-faced daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), smitten sidekick Anton (Andrew Garfield, who has some of the best comic takes), and invaluable mini-assistant Percy (Verne Troyer) -- wander the streets of modern London in a horse-drawn collapsible carnival wagon. Their show entices members of the audience to pass through Dr. Parnassus's mirror ("Alice in Wonderland" references abound) and into a world of their own imagination, which delights them so much they are willingly and happily liberated from their cash. Tony (Ledger) is an apparent amnesiac whom they rescue one night from beneath a London bridge. Dr. Parnassus's nemesis, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) shows up to propose a high-stakes wager...
"Imaginarium" reminds us that we are always inhabiting more than one "reality" at any given moment -- memory, the physical present, fantasy -- and that the totality of those experiences is what our existence is really made of. While it's not Gilliam's strongest work (that would probably be "Munchausen," but I'd like to put in a small plug here for the darker, grossly [!] underrated "Tideland"), it's another fanciful chapter in a body of work that is fiercely devoted to celebrating imagination in all its guises. I don't know how he does it, but leave it to Terry Gilliam to make CGI look like vintage animation. Bravo for that!
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"Commerce shuns a sentimental accountant."
-- Macário, the newly unemployed clueless romantic
A 63-minute Portuguese "That Obscure Object of Desire," Manoel de Oliveira's "Eccentricities of a Blonde Hair Girl" (that's the title in the VIFF catalog) is a mildly surreal comedy of manners, erotic frustration and the absurdity of human ambitions, from a short story by 19th-century naturalist Eça de Quieróz. Luis Buñuel made his final masterpiece at age 88; Oliveira is 100 and still at it. Both filmmakers share a clear-sighted serenity that makes their deadpan tales of young woe seem all the more delightful, in a pitiable kind of way.
It begins, like Buñuel's film, with a hapless man's compulsive confession to a stranger aboard a train. Macário (Ricardo Trêpa) recounts to the woman in the next seat how, as an accountant for his uncle, he was enchanted by a young blond woman named Luisa (Catarina Wallenstein), who regularly appeared on the balcony opposite his office sporting an unusual feathered Chinese fan. (He is also afforded an "Un Chien Andalou" view of the street from there.) As is so often the case in these kinds of callow romantic stories, his obsessive devotion to her costs him just about everything -- including his dignity and pride if he'd shown any indication of possessing any to begin with.
In the Lisbon of this film, romance is heavily regulated by social, familial and financial customs and obligations. All these things mediate romantic and sexual impulses, so that Macário falls in love with an image/illusion he wants to possess, but has no notion of the real, flesh-and-blood woman behind it. The final shot is an inspired conceptual anti-joke on a scale that would amuse Buñuel and Hitchcock immensely.
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The portrait of legendary pianist (and Canadian) Glenn Gould that emerges in "Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould" is one of an idiosyncratic artist who disappeared into himself. By the end of his life, at the age of 50, friends and acquaintances observed that even his once charming and free-flowing banter had become scripted. He was no longer Glenn Gould but "Glenn Gould," still a great musician but lost in the cultivation and exploitation of his famous eccentricities: the gloves, the coat, the hat, the piano chair with 13-inch legs, the hypochondria, the projected asexuality, the mystery of his own persona into which he finally retreated.
At the beginning of the film, Gould talks about how the life of a musician requires isolation, and how he uses the media to, well, mediate the distance. Whether they know it or not, he says, the only subject artists can really write about is their distance from the world. "Genius Within" endeavors to explore that headspace, as Gould inhabited it.
Composed of vintage Gould footage and recordings (he left behind a treasure trove of images and sounds), and interviews with friends, colleagues and scholars, the picture inquires into the enduring appeal of the pianist's James Dean-like mystique. Since he died in 1981, Gould has sold more recordings than he did in his lifetime. Considering that he hit the charts as a popular phenomenon with his now-legendary debut recording of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" for Columbia in 1955, that is fairly astonishing.
The interviewees refer repeatedly to what they call "The Eccentricities," as if Gould's personality quirks were indeed just another theme in the ongoing composition known as Glenn Gould.
10 Comments
Thank you for mentioning Tideland! It's one of my favorite Gilliams, and I've shown it to numerous people who have all either loved it or been completely appalled by it. Jodelle Ferland should have gotten some awards for that performance.
Really? You thought Tideland was underrated? I thought it was an absolute monstrosity; one of the most unpleasant films I have ever seen. You must, must tell us more. What did you see in Tideland? This deserves a full-length blog.
Brazil remains, far and away, my favourite Gilliam film. I like a number of aspects of Munchausen (the production design, most of the performances), but Robin Williams' involvement (his usual manic shtick, on relative auto-pilot) drags the film down, big time. Wasn't able to catch Imaginarium at the VIFF (all showings were this past weekend, and I didn't get downtown until Tuesday), but I'll definitely see it when it gets a wider release.
(Jim, I was keeping an eye out for you the other day at the Empire Cinemas, and I thought I might have seen you, but there were so many middle-aged guys that somewhat resembled the pictures of yourself you've posted on this site, that I couldn't be sure. Did you attend the screenings of Yang Yang and It Might Get Loud on Tuesday afternoon, and if so, were you not wearing your glasses? Left side of the theater, near the aisle?)
On Monday, I'm going to attempt a triple-bill of Mother (based on your recommendation), An Education, and The White Ribbon.
JE: I am a generic-looking middle-aged white dude, but I can't see more than three inches without my glasses! Wasn't there for those screenings, and I wish I could stay for "An Education" and "The White Ribbon." Still, I've got lots of movies under my belt and will continue to write about them once I get home. While at the festival, of course, I'm primarily in "input mode."
I'm pleased you like Muchausen. I've long felt this film was unfairly targeted by the critics and audiences, but I loved it from the first time I saw it. I think it's Gilliam's best post-Python work. I know even he seems to think of it in poor terms. Of course, if a film had lost that much money and had thrown my reputation into that kind of chaos, I'd probably be less than thrilled by it, too.
I know Roger Ebert once said that Tarantino could make a bad film, but was incapable of making a boring one. I think the same applies to Gilliam. Not every film is a winner, but damn it, even the failures are so spectacularly interesting that their quality doesn't really seem to matter.
I like the trailer for "The Imaginerium of Dr. Parnassus" and it has an excellent cast, so I don't think it looks too shabby. However, I do remember awhile back when somebody who was posting on Roger's blog asked him if he had seen the film at Cannes, and he replied, "Unfortunately". I don't know if Gilliam will be releasing a different cut from the one he screened at Cannes, but I predict that Roger's upcoming review will be less than positive.
About 'Tideland', if you want my opinion, it deserved that harsh lashing it received. I agree with Wes Lawson that Jodelle Ferland gave a brave performance, but to me that was the film's only lasting aspect. The rest was ugly.
Now, is 'Tideland' a beautifully shot film? Yes. Is it imaginative? Maybe in the second half hour. The best parts of 'Tideland' are the parts in which Jeliza-Rose is off on her own, talking to herself. This is the segment of the film that knows no bounds and, for a second there, I thought it was going to be a pretty good movie.
But no. After the first hour of 'Tideland', it was almost as if Gilliam pulled the audience right out of the rabbit hole. Suddenly we have to spend the rest of the movie in the company of these two really obnoxious, revolting retard adults, and then the movie isn't dazzling any longer. It goes nowhere.
Worse, Gilliam seems to have this strange obsession with flatuence humor. What is it with him and fart jokes? Is it something that he's carried over from his Monty Python days? The exploding fecal matter in 'Brazil', Robin Williams fantasizing about his bowel movements in 'The Fisher King'... it's disgusting. But at least those two films had the defense of being interesting. In 'Tideland', Jeff Bridges passes gas on the bus; and then after he dies, Jeliza-Rose presses his stomach and... well, you know the rest.
Gilliam explains on the DVD intro that he was trying to make 'Tideland' through a child's perspective. The problem is that this technique- putting a child into a neverending hellish atmosphere and seeing it from their point of view- was already done far more successfully by Spielberg with 'Empire of the Sun'. I suspect that Gilliam was attempting to beat Spielberg at his own game (there's a feud going on between them that exists for God-knows what reason; maybe Gilliam is jealous that Spielberg had Kubrick's blessing in making 'A.I').
The fundamental problem with 'Tideland' is simply that it lacks imagination. The film is so obsessed with its own venomous cynicism that it forgets to put that cynicism to intelligent use. I think Rosenbaum put it best in his capsule review: "Enter this diseased Lewis Carroll universe at your own risk".
JE: I don't know or care about any feud Gilliam may or may not have with Spielberg, but "diseased Lewis Carroll universe" is a very good capsule description of what I like about "Tideland." If I recall, the gas in "Tideland" was not from flatulence but from bloating and death. I don't remember a single fart joke in "Imaginarium," though. Not even a whiff of one. Maybe he got it out of his system. More later.
I'll tell you the real problem with Tideland. It was that he told the story through a child's perspective. He didn't back up and view things as an objective adult. He forced us to look through Jeliza Rose's perspective. He calls it innocent. I call it ignorant. You can ask the audience to root for the bad guy, but you can't ask them to be ignorant. You can't ask them to suspend rational thought. Maybe there's a little flexibility, like when you're watching a broad comedy and the supposedly sane characters would have to actually be insane to do the things they do. But if there is any leeway, Gilliam more than expended it with Tideland. Jeliza Rose does not comprehend that her father is dead, even after he's mummified. She does not comprehend that when Dickens derails the train and causes many people to be injured, that's a bad thing. And the scenes in which Gilliam sexualizes the retarded man-child are repulsive. I have some other gripes. Jeliza Rose is too theatrical. She needed to spend some time just acting naturally. Her talking doll's heads are annoying. There's not one likeable character in the whole film.
After I watched the film, I tried watching a bit of the commentary, because I needed answers. How would Gilliam justify his film? But a short way into it, I stopped. Terry Gilliam honestly didn't know any better. Amazing.
I think Tideland will one day resurface as a major cult film. I have to say that I completely disagree with Raymond above. It's the fact that the story is so completely and absolutely rooted in the young girl's perspective that makes it so great. I'm not sure why that's ignorant. We are seeing the world as she would, enormous, enchanting, and scary. There are so many films about childhood but so few that evoke my memories from that age. Not memories of specific events, just the texture of the world, the way it looked from three and a half feet off the ground, and the colors. My memories of childhood seem to play like grainy, ultra-saturated 8mm film, and something in this film evokes the ephemeral nature of these memeories.
I don't have the psychic energy to debate about Tideland anymore. I expended it all on a blog entry two years ago. It's tiring. I can't change my opponent's mind, and in the end I'm just dismayed that they don't share my abject horror at Gilliam's film.
Has Gilliam's "Don Quixote" been finished yet?
JE: Nope. According to IMDb "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is in "pre-production" and scheduled for release in 2011.
JE: Nope. According to IMDb "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is in "pre-production" and scheduled for release in 2011.
Thanks for the info, Jim. "Lost in Lamancha" was interesting. It showed how "glamorous" filmmaking can be.
Checked out ChristWire again. I'm convinced that it's funded by the Republica National Commitee to make liberals look like jerks. This is very dirty politics, I hope. If those jackasses are liberals I may drop out of politics altogether--we're all going to hell.
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