FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Weird and wonderful: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasus.

After Heath Ledger’s sudden death during the filming of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, director Terry Gilliam said he was in no mood for completing the film. But, on the urgings of others, he did and the result, under the circumstances, is a hugely impressive achievement.

In many ways, this is vintage Gilliam, with classic motifs and signature themes from his career. There are the weird and wonderful contraptions and machines, a magical looking glass that provides a doorway into another world and allows for the outlandish escapades beyond the boundaries of space and time and the Pythonesque humour and physical comedy.

Contemporary London provides the backdrop (and briefly, later Vancouver), but we spend most of the time with the outcast characters in the travelling imaginarium performing a mystical circus act that is losing its appeal in this era of loud, brash entertainment.

The gang – Christopher Plummer as the ancient, drunken Doctor Parnassus, his daughter Valentina, her boyish admirer Anton and the doctor’s sidekick midget Percy – one night save a young man Tony from hanging by the neck under a bridge. When Tony decides to stay with the group, it creates a tension. His charm and swagger belie a murky past. As the professor and Valentina warm to him, Anton grows jealous and protective.

At the same time, the devil – a smirking, chain-smoking Tom Waits – is preparing to collect on a deal he’s made with the Doctor.

Ledger, of course, plays Tony to begin with and it is, as Gilliam pointed out, eerie just how much death surrounds his character here.

There are some great sequences as characters pass through to the other side of the mirror of the imaginarium. It’s as if they are being confronted by their deepest inner fears and desires in physical form. You never know what to expect behind the mirror: a two-dimensional country landscape, a forest of gigantic shoes or huge ladders that disappear into the sky.

This is also a place where people’s appearances can change. Hence the character of Tony is also played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. For the most part, Gilliam succeeds in turning a major obstacle – the loss of his lead character – into a strength. Fine actors help, of course. As the two-hour film goes on, the storyline gets manic and messy, but it is such a visual feast that, for this reviewer at least, it warrants another viewing. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is out on December 25.

There’s a good range of new films to look out for this month. Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar’s visually sumptious, romantic melodrama Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos) opens on December 18, starring his favorite muse Penélope Cruz.

In the comedy department, spoof thriller Black Dynamite (out on the 4th) is a hilarious send-up of the seventies blaxploitation genre. Think Shaft with afros and attitude multiplied by 10.

The Vancity Theatre has Slamdance audience award-winner Punching the Clown (until December 10), a satirical comedy following the fictional highs and lows of the real comedian-musician Henry Phillips as he struggles to make it in LA.

The comedy of the moment seems to be The Fantastic Mr. Fox in which Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums) has adapted Roald Dahl’s classic kid’s story using a painstaking stop-motion animation process. George Clooney voices the debonair Mr. Fox; Meryl Streep is Mrs. Fox and Bill Murray plays the badger lawyer in a comedy creature caper that has been getting rave reviews. It should be in theatres by the time you read this.

Robert Alstead made the Vancouver documentary You Never Bike Alone. www.youneverbikealone.com. He writes at www.2020Vancouver.com and is blogging VIFF at www.iofilm.com