The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Terry Gilliam has given the movie-going public a vast, fascinating body of work. I am probably betraying my bias in referring to him as a modern-day Shakespeare, but it’s my blog and I happily share my prejudice with anyone who cares to read it. (This could easily turn into a long, snore-worthy dissertation on all things Gilliam, but not today. You’re welcome.)

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus was released in 2009, after what was likely one of the toughest film projects of Gilliam’s career, given the death of Heath Ledger two thirds of the way into the shoot. While Gilliam later said that the changes necessitated by that tragedy ironically made the film better, it was certainly a disproportionate price to pay.

Storytelling is the underlying theme of the film, and story itself is the character that takes us on the adventure. As a monk in the long-distant past, Parnassus and Mr. Nick (as the devil is named) have a discussion about story, and its relationship to the universe. Then as the film progresses, the fates of many souls are determined by the way individuals resolve their own stories within the fantasy worlds of their imaginations, under Parnassus’ magic spell.

I don’t like spoilers, so I’ll be vague about plot points in case you haven’t seen the film.

Christopher Plummer has never, to my knowledge, given a less than top-notch  performance, and he continues to out-do himself in this one. He is a 1000 years old, immortal, a floundering monk in an era that has long since passed him by, and thoroughly, constantly drunk.

Tom Waits gives us another masterful character turn as Mr. Nick, (When I first read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” I thought of Renfield as a minor, relatively uninteresting character...Then Francis Coppola cast Waits in that part, and a tray of hors d'oeuvres will never be the same to me.) smoothe, slinky, creepy to the extreme...everything the devil should be.

Verne Troyer’s Percy puts Jiminy Cricket to shame, as Parnassus’ conscience (and it’s no small feat to best an animated Disney icon), and Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield are flawless as Parnassus’ daughter Valentina, and her soulmate, Anton.

But the heart of the story is an irredeemably predatory con-man who may or may not be suffering from amnesia when found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge one rainy night, as the caravan is moving on. Ledgers’ Tony (patterned to some extent after former Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to Gilliam) tells stories, just like Parnassus’ troop. The difference, we gradually learn, is that they are all designed to perform one function: put money into Tony’s pockets. Most of Ledger’s scenes in the “real world”, outside of the Imaginarium, were shot before his untimely death. Since the character has several appearances yet to come inside the magic realm behind Parnassus’ ramshackle mirror, steps needed to be taken.

The steps were ingenious: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell become Tony in the Imaginarium. The characters entering the Imaginarium are made to change in appearance, according to what is happening in their own imaginations.

Through that device, Tony changes his looks according to his intentions toward whoever is in there with him. (For example, when he is with Valentina trying to seduce her, he looks just like the guy in a magazine photo she often looked at earlier in the story: It’s a picture of the ideal home life she longs for.)

All three actors maintained the character established by Ledger perfectly, showing us the truly deceptive nature of his soul.

Pulling all of this chaos together must have been a huge effort, especially considering the emotional pressure on everyone involved with the project. I think one of the finest results in Gilliam’s extensive filmography came out of this crucible. It will always be one of my favorites.

Greetings from a fellow movie fan:

Sitting on the floor in front of me are several disc-storage albums full of DVD’s. They comprise a collection of movies that has been growing for about a dozen years. It’s the latest iteration of collecting for me which began when I saved up my nickels and dimes as a boy to buy those 3 to 5 minute 8mm films you could get in the local camera shop: tiny little clips from Hopalong Cassidy or a Ski Adventure short.

Later on, there were home movies, and big reels of spliced-together family picnics, vacation trips and the occasional backyard games of Cowboys and Indians with the neighbor kids. I have no Idea where those films ended up, but it would be fun to see them again.

Of course there were the weekly visits to the downtown Paramount theater, to see a double feature, a serial and ten gazillion cartoons with every other kid in town. It was kind of a rite of passage for me when I turned old enough to have to pay a quarter for a ticket instead of 10 cents. I was now one of the “big kids”.

I remember walking down the long, white-tiled entrance to the Paramount, and often seeing the big film cans on the floor by the door: last week’s feature waiting for pickup, or maybe the new movie ready to show the following Monday. I used to think: “Wouldn’t it be great if I was rich enough to own a Movie. My very own Full-Length movie. Wow. I could show it any time I wanted to!”  Who knew?

As I grew older, I remember going to nearby Williamstown to see films with my dad that were not likely to ever find their way to the Paramount. I was introduced to Olivier’s “Richard III” and the film version of Rod Serling's classic “Requiem for a Heavyweight” at the Walden theater.

My first date with the woman I’d spend my life with was at a Drive-in movie, the title of which I don’t recall for some reason. Marcie and I saw quite a few movies together after that, including the 70mm visual stunner “Dr. Zhivago”, which became “our movie”. We’ve never owned it  on DVD or any other medium...somehow it’s not right to see it without a massive screen and a theater full of people.

Movies on the small screen do have their place, though. I remember many a happy night on the fold-away couch with my boys, watching “Godzilla” and “Mothra” and the two tiny singing girls as Tokyo was destroyed multiple times in black and white, then later in color.

Fun, precious memories. Maybe not too different from yours.

So, I’ve decided to dig into the collection, and watch some these old celluloid friends again, and just put down what comes to mind or comes back to mind. I invite you to do the same in the comments...not so much critical review; there’s plenty of that out there. I’d just like to see what gets stirred up in the way of impressions, memories, ideas, etc. Since I tend to be kind of movie-geeky I’ll probably talk about cinematography and camera angles and stuff like that, too, but mainly the feelings, the ideas, the memories the films bring out. Some will age better than others, I’m sure, just like the actors in them, and who doesn’t like talking about that?

So let’s just take the best seat in the house: right in the center, fifth row back from the screen, sit back and relax…

Cinema Paradiso

For me, watching Cinema Paradiso  is like remembering a time and place that are very different from what I actually experienced, but with all the essential feelings intact.

I think the film ends up being a personal experience for many people, because director Giuseppe Tornatore shares those emotional memories, which stick with us long after the details of what actually happened have faded away.

I have a collection of hundreds of movies, many of them universally recognized “masterpieces”; but not one of them is quite like “Cinema Paradiso”.  It touches me every time I watch it, whether the theatrical release, or the considerably longer “director’s cut”, which I prefer.

Tornatore duplicates so precisely the feeling of a childhood memory, I hardly notice that’s what he is doing: only on reflection does it occur to me that the village square seems huge to young Toto, and almost tiny to Salvatore, when he returns to watch the demolition of the cinema. Likewise, the inside of the theater is cavernous to young Toto, and the lion’s-mouth projector opening is large and imposing. Both shrink noticeably when Salvatore takes his final look around the empty auditorium, and squats down to almost touch the small, cobweb-covered lion on the floor.

Colors are brighter, focus a little softer, relationships simpler and more direct to the child than when the man returns home to bury his beloved mentor. That time-perfected quality of the memories may be the most realistic aspect of the film.

The film is a kind of catalyst for my own memories, which are probably as inaccurate as Salvatore’s, but carry the same emotional impact.

My Giancaldo was a small city in Berkshire county, Massachusetts in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. (It was adamantly referred to as a “city”, on pain of ostracism, because we had reached the magic population number. Kind of reminiscent of that Hugh Grant movie about the “hill” and the “mountain” .) The whole town didn’t flock to the movie theaters, (we had two on Main street) but every kid did on Saturday morning, much to the relief of all our mothers. The Paramount was the more ornate of the two: it had been a vaudeville venue before our time, and had a fancy proscenium, plush seats, highly decorated ceiling, and gold-painted plaster flourishes everywhere. There was a balcony, from which that guy (every theater had one, including Toto’s) dropped all manner of disgusting things on the unwary seated below.

The utter chaos before the movie and the cheering joy when it started were common to my childhood and Toto’s, along with the eruptions of outrage should the film break, or some other technical difficulty ensue.

Sometime after 2006, my wife gave me a gift. It was the Special Collector’s Edition of Cinema Paradiso, including both editions of the film, and some replicas of the original theater art used in 1988-89 to promote it. That was the first time I saw the “director’s cut”. I know there are many people who prefer the shorter version (which was the one that got the Oscar), but for me the longer (nearly an hour longer) version was a real treat.

Sometimes a group of characters will get so close to you, that you just hate to let go of them at the end of a movie. That’s how I think Marcie and I felt about the inhabitants of Giancaldo.  When the longer version came out, we got to see Elena get back together with Salvatore, if only briefly. We found  out (although we might easily have guessed) why they ended up separated. Along the way we also picked up some fun little tidbits, like finding out the whole story of what happened to reel 1 during the infamous two-theater showing of a single movie print.

But for me, I guess it was really just a great excuse to spend more time with the characters, and with Tornatore’s fine film-making. For example, I never would have seen that phone call with Elena where just the focus follows her voice and Salvatore’s back and forth across a rainy street in the middle of the night. So glad that didn’t end up in the dust bin.

I think this film is going to be around for a long time. In the special features that accompany that collector’s edition, there is a story about the Little Italy film festival in Baltimore, where it was being shown (appropriately on an outside wall) each year. The festival is still going, and I’ve written to ask if it’s still on the schedule. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it is. It has that kind of staying power: you don’t care how many times you’ve seen it, you just look forward to watching it again, and again.

My wife will usually refuse to watch any movie more than once, regardless of how good it is...even if she fell asleep halfway through and missed the ending. We’ve lost track of how many times we’ve watched Cinema Paradiso, though, and are planning to watch it again, since she just gifted me with a new restoration on blue-ray disc. Can’t wait.