BEFORE: From the freakshow to a traveling carnival, and another film from a director who I've met. I got Terry Gilliam's autograph at a book signing years ago, and my boss has had a few professional dealings with him since. I didn't have this film on my list of horror films, but after reading the plot summary, I found it might be just the film I need to fit here and bridge the topics.
Linking from "Freaked" is simple, since Randy Quaid was also in "Brokeback Mountain" with Heath Ledger (last seen in "A Knight's Tale").
THE PLOT: A traveling theater company gives its audience much more than they were expecting.
AFTER: As I approach the 1,000 film mark, I've been building a list of the films I've seen from the IMDB, so that I can get an overview on the ratings, and how my ratings compare to the public's average scores. It seems like I gave out a lot more 7's and 8's back in Year 1, and I'm not sure whether that's because my general outlook toward movies was more favorable, or since I had a larger list, I was able to select better films.
And this film puts me in a delicate spot, because I like Terry Gilliam, and he's made some of my favorite films - "Time Bandits", "Brazil" and "12 Monkeys" are all contenders for slots in my all-time Top 10. And much respect for his work in Monty Python, on the TV or the big-screen, it's all good.
Something started slipping, though, with "Adventures of Baron Munchausen", which was still a great film, but I started to get the sense that the fantasy elements were starting to overtake the narrative ones, and that the director might have started to lose a little perspective on what works and what doesn't - and then came that documentary "Lost in La Mancha" that showed him struggling with the concepts involved in trying to make a new version of "Don Quixote". So, I worried about, and avoided, films like "Tideland" (still on the list, though).
The fantasy sequences in "Brazil" were brilliant allegories, and were used to enhance the main storyline. In "Baron Munchausen", "Fisher King", and even "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", the fantasy/drug-induced sequences were gradually taking over more and more of each film - to the point where I'm not sure if the man can make a straight, narrative film anymore.
Which brings us to tonight's film - a large majority of which takes place in a fantasy world, which might be inside the mind of Dr. Parnassus, or it might be some cosmic limbo where people's fates get decided, or possibly both. The title character can't resist making wagers with Mr. Nick (the Devil), and the commerce they trade in is the souls of other people.
As near as I can tell, Parnassus's carnival transports them to this other world, where they are given some form of choice, and one choice brings them to hell, and the other..., well, that's where things get fuzzy. Parnassus's original bet with the devil was that he could get people to choose imagination and wonderment over darkness and evil, but is that still the choice? With such broad visual allegories in the fantasy world, I honestly couldn't tell which choice would lead to what.
If you're going to detail some Faustian wager, it might help to clue the audience in on exactly what the rules are, and how this crazy process works. Now I've got to go to the message boards and try to figure out just what was happening, and what it all means.
Gilliam, of course, was dealt a bad hand when Heath Ledger died before completing the film - so we'll never know how good the film could have been, if more scenes with Ledger would have made the whole deal more coherent. Other prominent actors famously stepped in to complete his scenes, and fortunately this was easily acceptable by stating that the character's appearance changes within the fantasy sequences, with the world's appearance being dictated by the imagination of the at-risk soul.
When you consider the fragility of life, imagine the heartless choices that a producer or director has to make, which are often dictated by money rather than human sensitivity. Do you shoot your film in sequence, or work the scheduling in such a way that all of an expensive (or high-risk) actor's scenes are together? Do you increase the chances of getting the film completed, but compromise the artistic process?
Still, that being said, I desperately wanted some more coherency from this film, to go with the stunning visuals. Way too much oblique allegory - what the heck does it all mean?
Also starring Christopher Plummer (last heard in "9"), Johnny Depp (last seen in "The Tourist"), Jude Law (last seen in "The Aviator"), Colin Farrell (last seen in "S.W.A.T."), Tom Waits (last seen in "The Cotton Club"), Verne Troyer (last seen in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"), Andrew Garfield (last seen in "Lions for Lambs"), Lily Cole, with a cameo from Peter Stormare (last seen in "Bad Boys II").
RATING: 3 out of 10 gondolas
SPOOK-O-METER: 2 out of 10 - some creepy fantasy sequences, and a not-at-all-scary devil.
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