The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus [DVD]

My Aunt is a huge Christopher Plummer fan so she'll really enjoy this

Through the streets of present day london an old wagon moves, drawn by horses. It's like an old time travelling show. Run by the immortal dr parnassus and his dwarven sidekick, plus his teenage daughter Valentina and young male helper Anton. The show offers you a glimpse into your imagination. Literally. For step through the doctor's magic mirrors and you will be inside it. But will you make the right choices to enable you to come out again?All is not well in the company. Valentina yearns for a normal life. And the Doctor sold her soul to the devil years ago. Now the latter his come to collect. She can still be saved. But at a price.And then into all this comes Tony, a strange man with secrets who they save from certain death.Lives and imagination are about to collide. And the main characters will never be the same again.This should be an engaging and wonderful flight of fantasy and it should say great things about the imagination and the place such a thing has in the modern world.But it doesn't quite work.The main problems are twofold:Pace. It's very slow at times, particularly early on, when there's too much of the mundaneity of life. The kind of thing that it should be railing against. The film really needs to lose about ten to fifteen minutes to make it better paced.But worse, there are no sympathetic characters. You never really get to know anything much about the Doctor, so there's no reason to care for his plight. Added to which Anton gets jealous of Tony's relationship with Valentina and spends so much time being angrily jealous because of this that he becomes very annoying.Heath Ledger died before being able to film Tony's scenes inside the imaginarium, so Johnny Depp Jude Law and Colin Farrell fill in, as Tony takes on a different look every time he goes through the mirror. These bits work fine. As do all the scenes in the imaginarium. They are wonderfully done and look like live action versions of the cartoons from monty python. It's just a shame that what takes place in the outside world isn't as involving.This is a 12 certificate because it can be rather dark in tone at points and there are images of hanging, so it may not be suitable for younger viewers.The dvd has the following languages and subtitles:languages: EnglishSubtitles: EnglishAnd whilst the box promises fantastic extras, and there are a few of them, they're all rather short. Most range from five to seven minutes in length:Heath ledger and friends: a look at how his loss was dealt with.Heath ledger wardrobe test with commentary by Terry Gilliam: two minutes of film of him trying out costumes and style. The commentary adds to the visuals and is worth a listen.Deleted scene: a four minute long scene that didn't get into the final cut. This has unfinished special effects and also has an optional commentary from the director, which is worth a listen as it makes it work better.The imaginarium of Terry Gilliam: Approx six minutes about the ideas for the film.Behind the mirror: approx seven minutes about more of the ideas on show.Building the monastery: seven minutes about how one visual effects shot was achieved.UK Premiere feature: six minutes of footage - all rather blurry - of people arriving at the british premiere, and then six more minutes of Terry Gilliam introducing cast and crew to the audience at the premiere. By the end of which you might be shouting start the movie as it does feel like it goes on a bit.There's also a director's commentary on the movie.And the disc is audio captioned.The whole thing is thus like the movie itself. Not bad, but you can't help but think it could be a whole lot more.

I will start of by saying this is probably the hardest review I have ever tried to write as I know this film will be like marmite, you either love it or hate it.The imaginarium marks the final film that Heath ledger made before his untimely passing way and for this reason the film was nearly never finished. It was down to the friends of Heath that this gloriously sureal story was finished with appearances from Colin Farrel, Jude Law and Johnny Depp.The story is a complicated but well written tale of a 1000 year old monk called parnassus who has a travelling side show through which he tells his stories with the aid of people who participate by travelling through the mirror on the stage.The use of the other actors is possible as The passing through the mirror fascilitates the person that enters to see into the imaginarium through there own thoughts. So cleverly the character of Tony that Heath played can appear as anyone and so the 3 friends of Heath fill the role for him.All the storys have a moral based on the life of the person who steps through the mirror. After being persuaded by "Old Nick" to have a little bet with him Parnassus tries to point the right path for those who pay admission to save there soul. At the same time Old Nick played by Tom Waits of Swordfish trombones album and  Rain Dogs  fame tries to get there souls through temptation and greed.Parnassus though is constantly tricked by Old Nick and makes one bet too many involving his daughter who works on the show, that come her 16th birthday she will belong to him! They have 3 days and the 1st to win 5 souls wins the bet but no one wants to listen to Parnassus out of date show. Then enter the group Tony (Heath Ledger) who is saved from hanging under a bridge by the travelling show. He is not all he appears and Parnassus is at first sure Old nick sent him but even Old nick admits he isn't sure about Tony! So Tony helps modernise the show and the race is on for the 5 souls.The Blu-Ray quality is excellent and the Audio True HD. The Imagery of the film though intially around the less salubrious parts of London grows into a mind expanding vision of the imagination as folks enter the mirror seek there hearts desire.There are a whole heap of extras and a poignant optional introduction by Terry Gilliam marking The making of the film and the passing away of Heath Ledger.I personally loved this film and think its possibly the best work of Gilliams Career which is no mean feat considering the difficulty in making it.The more i think on this film the more i see in it and without wishing to sound arty or pompous perhaps the reviewing of this wonderful film says as much about the reviewer as it does the film itself. I only hope as Gilliam says himself that you can enjoy it as much as I have