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Woo! Finally! I get to actually watch a GOOD movie. Nay, a great movie! For lo, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is said to be the most Terry Gilliamish Terry Gilliam movie since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Also the one with the longest title. Of course, as this JUST came out on DVD and was in oh, let's say 5 theaters nationwide, this is a good movie that you haven't seen and should. So... you might want to get the heck out of here and watch it before you read my ramblings to avoid spoilers and such. Also rent The Fall while you're out there because we both know you didn't do it when I first said to. Anyway, previews on this here DVD include Not the Messiah, which is apparently a frelling orchestral concert by Eric Idle, and what appears to be a post apocalyptic movie that DOESN'T involve roving gangs of savage- oh there they are. It still looks like it's actually focused more on foraging and raiding abandoned houses for supplies though than usual. And the 4000th or so biopic about Queen Victoria. Because Terry Gilliam is British in the eyes of the people who stick previews in front of movies.
The opening credits do a weird thing where they cast a reflection in a different font, which is pretty darn distracting, and then we have a big crazy wagon being pulled through the streets of London. It parks, converts to a stage, and out comes a barker dressed as Mercury to announce Dr. P to some really disinterested modern bar patrons, and one random guy who properly admits that this is the sort of thing you have to check out when it just appears in the middle of the street. Or at least hurl beer bottles at it. Since he's kinda drunk out of his skull and all. He just kinda climbs up on stage and starts hurling all the crazy actor types off. One eventually dodges away through the tinfoil prop mirror, and following through, he finds himself in the enchanted forest of cardboard trees. Being crazy drunk, he doesn't acknowledge that this is messed up until he falls in a puddle and suddenly finds himself in a way cooler looking forest, played by a different actor. Then he's abducted by giant space jelyfish and an anthropomorphic hand, which eventually drop him down, narrowly avoiding the pointy bit of a van sized tack, before the giant stone steps to some kind of crazy temple. So yeah, this movie went from 0 to crazy pretty dang quick. A big booming voice explains how these are the stairs to true enlightenment, but they're like 6 feet high per step and there's a bar run by Satan right next to it, so, hey, more booze! Upon entering, the bar explodes.
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Meanwhile, back out in mundane land, the cops show up to get all Wot's All This Then and encourage them to move along to a proper carnival if they're going to be doing this crazy magical stage show business. Well, time for our next victim it seems. Some little kid with a DS kinda wanders in when nobody's looking, so Mercury goes in after him. This time, the cardboard forest gives way to candyland. It's pretty awesome and has the TOTALLY AWESOME FACE BALLON in it. The kid is using his DS to pop various giant bubbles, and also he face balloon, but eventually he's successfully evicted. It's pretty hard describing yon balloon, but basically, we've got a face on it, where the left eye serves as the right eye for another face, whose left eye is the right eye for another face, and so on around the whole thing. It's neat. Anyway, there's some romance type plot between Mercury and Dr. P's daughter, and Dr. P is outside talking to his close confidant Mini Me about how apparently there's only 3 days left before the devil comes to collect his soul for his having all this awesome stuff for 1000 years or so. Which isn't really spelled out here, but it's on the back of the sleeve, so I assume that's what's being discussed. Oh, apparently it's Daughter's 16th birthday soon, which is the age of consent according to her, but everyone's trying to convince people that she's only 12 for some reason. Anyway, there's plot, but now we're going into a flashback so let me deal with that.
Way back when, Dr. P was a monk in this totally awesome sky monastery that looks like something out of Avatar (airbender, not blue cats). Anyway, he's in there giving a lecture to all the other monks who are levitating on flying carpets, when all of the sudden in comes Satan. You can tell it's Satan because he has a bowler hat. Apparently these monks have a sacred duty to constantly relay some story for all time, or else the world will be destroyed. Satan says well that's a stupid thing to waste your time on when it's so easy to prove it isn't true. Then he turns around and uses his magic oboe to pucker everyone's mouth forcing them to stop. See, universe still here. Also- Mini Me is in this flashback. Monk P suggests that it really just takes any story being told anywhere to maintain the universe, their monastery is just to make sure everyone doesn't all happen to stop at once. They get into a bet over whether humanity prefers just monotonous consistency or crazy awesome fantasy stories. Dr. P won, and thus gets to be some immortal weirdo doing street theater long after people stopped caring about such things. Along with Mini Me. Who I really don't feel comfortable calling that all the time. He's done a lot of other stuff. Can I just all him Verne and have you know who I mean?
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Moving on, hey, when there's a lightning flash, you can see a shadow of some guy dancing on the water (all riverdancing style appropriately enough) over the side of this bridge. How weird. Oh wait, it's the shadow of some guy in a fancy white suit someone decided to hang off the bridge after drawing illuminati type symbols on his forehead. Pulling him up, it turns out he managed to not die thanks to having a metal tube shoved down his neck. So, it's safe to assume he was prepared to be hung, but kids, that's still not something to try at home because your neck breaking kills you at least as often as the actual strangulation with that sort of thing. Point is, he's in pretty bad shape even so. Also, as they pull away, Satan is there. The next morning Verne has an amusing chat with him, and explains that his name is something crazy long, or you can just call him Percy. There's also some crazy little forest beast talking, which seems rather surreal until it's revealed to just be Mercury in costume. Apparently, he has amnesia, and is rather surprised to find himself surrounded by weirdos. Eventually Dr. P shows up to confirm that he was apparently sent as a message for him by Satan to propose a new convolution to whatever sort of crazy bargain they have going. So... they let him join the party and give him a crazy beaked masquerade mask. There's also some Hanged Man tarot significance going on. This movie is dense enough with plot and awesome imagery that it's hard for me to keep trying to summarize stuff.
So it seems the new guy is actually pretty darn good at drawing a crowd, and these people can finally put their show on for once to a bunch off random girls who have been shopping. Unfortunately, Dr. P is drunk. Quick! Make your fast talk skill roll to keep them interested! Also I just noticed that Daughter's eyes seem too far apart and it's kinda creepy looking. Anyway, here's Satan swinging by again to talk to Dr. P and have a little contest to see who can get 5 souls first. Oh and have I mentioned how much I dig Satan's look here? It's the whole 1930s not all that evil just more of a slimeball sorta take. You don't see that too often, but often enough that you know what I'm saying, right?
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Later, Dr. P says "hey, I bet Ęcan cure your amnesia wih this crazy steampunk hat thing of mine! Uh, OK? he says. Apparently this works well enough to say his name is Tony and he used to run some charity. Then there's a bit of shenanigans with Mercury getting all slight of handy with the metal thing that was keeping his throat open. Which, as it turns out, is a musical instrument in addition to being an unusual life saving device. There now seems to be a bit of a love triangle forming between Mercury, Daughter, and Tony here, so Dr. P goes "hey, maybe I should promise her hand in marriage to whichever of them helps me get to 5 souls first. Percy observes that this is an incredibly stupid idea, because he's this movie's voice of reason. This shortly leads into Mercury just kinda abducting some random girl off the street and chucking her into the mirror anyway though, because apparently he didn't catch the stupid idea part of the conversation. So uh... everyone decides its time to cheese it. Eventually she comes out pretty well unharmed, jumps out of the cart and is scooped up by Satan. So uh, 0-1 it seems. You suck Mercury.
Oh yeah, I should probably explain now that we've got a calm bit that Tony here is played by Johnny Depp as played by Heath Ledger. Who, Terry Gilliam being pretty well cursed, came fresh from doing the well loved Dark Knight to come work on this, and then promptly went and died halfway through filming. Which is why going through the crazy mirror makes you be played by a different actor. So later we can look forward to Johnny Depp as played by Heath Ledger as played by Johnny Depp.
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Anyway, now we get some story about how Dr. P met his daughter's mother. She blew him off because he was in crazy geezer mode, he tried to kill himself but failed because he was immortal, Satan said hey, I can make you young enough to win her over and give you more magic too... which apparently had a catch of general doom going on around'em. Also holy cow is that an awesome looking scene. I need to be more verbose here so I can make sure there's room to screen grab all these awesome awesome bits. After this, Tony has some advice to give everyone on how to be PROPER eccentric street performers, because the current approach clearly is now working out right. Mercury's reaction to this is, predictably. %@#$ this I'm out of here. And uh.. wow the revamped show is odd. We're switching over to a checkerboard sort of motif, putting Percy in blackface, Mercury in drag, Daughter in Godiva Hair, and setting p a reverse donation box for the crowds. Someone offers to adopt what appears to be Webster up on stage, what with child labor laws, so they toss her in. Tony decides to follow along and see what's up in there anyway.
GIANT SHOES AND LILLYPADS WORLD. Tony is now played by Johnny Depp, much to his... surprisingly mild weirding out. So... they dance around a bit in magical weirdness land, when suddenly the angels flitting about reveal that hidden in the stomach of the giant floating buddha is... Satan's sleazy motel! Fortunately, Tony pulls her back and gives some speech about dead celebrities and suggests a gondola ride down the river styx instead. He tries to get her to give him all her valuables first, since he figures the main goal in all this is money. Eventually the river starts rising up as a satan headed snake though, so he gets creeped out of that angle. Successfully resisting the Satan choice it turns out causes people to come out on a big gaudy swing really happy and most decide to give'em all their money anyway, so, this rapidly begins to work real nicely. It seems like we're going to end really abruptly, getting about 4 out of 5 souls in rapid succession, when suddenly, presuably with aid from the devil, a pack of mobsters appears and chases Tony through the mirror into... dang. It's a 3D version of a Terry Gilliam cartoon. There's giant ladders leading into heaven, while magazines and newspapers promise fame and fortune to you. Eventually, he climbs up one and breaks the rungs to lose them, and OH WOW. OK, he converts the giant ladder to giant stilts and make a run for it. Eventually they catch him though, and try to hang him again, since apparently that's what happened earlier. He stole from the Russian mafia so they hung him from a bridge. Suddenly though, uh, wow.
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OK, a giant metal British cop head bursts out of the ground, it's tongue unfurls, and a bunch of big burly cops with skirts and pantyhose come out and start doing a song and dance number about how violent urges are better dealt with by joining the police and wailing on people who deserve it. It is very oldschool absurdity. Then though a giant version of their mother appears in the distance, and rather than join the dance police they run and hide under her skirt. And then they explode. And then her head is removed, revealing her to actually be a steam powered giant robot Russian mother piloted by the devil. Wow. Just wow. After that there's some more exposition on how he was kind of involved in a money laundering scheme but it WAS generating money for charity, so, moral grey area. Also, Satan shows up to point out that even though that was 4 mobsters he scored, he doesn't QUITE win yet, because that girl from earlier (who is now TOTALLY Satan's groupie) wasn't really a fair pick, as Dr. P had been rendered unconscious before she went in, and there was no Good option available in her crazyland to pick. Pretty darn sporting of him. We then have further explanation that the full version of that second deal with the devil was one of those I get your kid when they turn 16 things, which is what we're currently renegotiating on with this first to 5 thing.
Anyway, Daughter is all running off in a huff because her dad just told her he kinda sold her soul on her, and Tony is now sufficiently filled in on how all this works that he's willing to volunteer to hop in and be soul #5, resolving all this once and for all. First though, some people need to get calmed the hell down. Or people can have a big huge fight, and Tony and Daughter can jump through after fighting off Mercury coming in to point out that Tony is a total conman. Sadly, he is now played by the least talented and nerd-movie-veteran-y of the four actors playing him. They have themselves some quick gondola sex as the world flips from day to night so we don't see it, and find this crying kid in a bleak hellscape. Upon scooping her up, the press arives to shower them in praises. They throw a big party with a children's choir and President Roosevelt attending. Suddenly, Mercury shows up (as a kid) with a news paper from outside, explaining that a week ago, Tony here was arrested for running an organization that placed third world kids up for adoption and was kinda selling the organs of some of them on the lack market. That's bad. That's so bad that, as things go in movies like this, the whole world literally comes apart. Tony starts being a total jerk and runs off, which, in light of this new evidence, it apparently decidedly in character. He beats up Dr. P as he sees him, and the paramedics drive up (this still in a crazy dreamscape mind) and tell Daughter that he's dead... and then after she runs off finishes stuttering what turns out to be "dead drunk." She's all distraught, runs off to meet the devil in front of direct gates to heaven and hell. They dance for a bit, then she voluntarily jumps through the hell gate. "Damn." says Satan, "I won." So he goes to try and cheer Dr. P up.
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Oho. Turns out the illuminati marks from before are some sort of weird black magic he was either using or was used on him. Satan doesn't know because "I could never get into that black magic stuff, I just couldn't get the hang of it." It bugs him though, and more to the point he wants to keep playing. So he suggests that it wasn't QUITE right for the final contestant and the prize to be the same person. So he offers to give Daughter back if Dr. P can off the guy. Conveniently enough, here he comes, running from an angry mob. He's happy to see a gallows up ahead, as he can clearly get a shot at freedom by using his whole pipe in the throat trick for the third time that we've seen. Dr. P pulls a big of slight of hand fun though, and Tony goes bye-bye. I'd feel bad for him but.... holy %@$#! He was selling the organs of third world orphans! It takes a bit for that to sink in with how fast this movie is paced, but dear frelling gods it turns out our primary viewpoint character is a horrible monster!
Meanwhile, while Daughter is no longer in hell, Satan wasn't nice enough to go ahead and bring her right back so she's just... somewhere. Dr. P spends the next several years wandering through imagination land looking for her, and eventually sees her walk by in the real world. He's now in super decrepit hobo mode though, and she has apparently moved on to a normal non-hobo-carny-soul-gambling lifestyle with a kid and everything. So Percy shows up, looking POSH AS @#$% to point out that they should really just move on, let her be happy, and that they should get the act back together. Of course, having lost their staff, they now have to scale back to just doing a little puppet show. Satan wanders by again to offer yet another deal, but Percy drags him back. And that's our ending.
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So wow. That was freaking great. I actually ended up watching all but the last ten minutes while writing this, then having to start it over because a friend showed up earlier than I was expecting. So... let me just real quick-like get some post-sensory overload thoughts out. The deals/bets made with the devil are: 1- Whoever gets enough disciples to their philosophy first wins. Dr. P wins, and becomes immortal. 2- In order to score with this here chick, Dr. P is given his youth back, along with mortality (no im, he got bored with it), and awesome Imaginarium powers, at a price of Satan getting half the real estate in each mindscape and also if he ever has a kid, he gets the kid. It should be noted that they tried actively not having any kids to avoid that bit but had a crazy fluke pregnancy at 60. 3- OK, first to 5 souls in here, with a 2 day time limit on picking contestants and she can go free. 4- Well trick that guy into killing himself and you can have her back, this is no fun if you don't have anything you care about on the line and all.
Also, how the whole imaginarium thing works. You go through the cheesy mirror, and wind up in your personal crazy mental landscape. There is a very very clear division between the good and groovy Parnassus side and the clearly evil side. Both have an obvious thing you can go do, with the Satan choice being really easy and comforting, but again, clearly on the evil side of thing, but the Parnassus side's being seriously a royal pain... or creepy in the case of the cops. There's this really definite lack of any sort of trickery involved in any of it. And... now I've watched this a third time for the commentary track. Seriously, it's good stuff.
