Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discussion

[JarodRussell]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Now did they do the four actors playing one character thing because of Heath Ledger's death, or was that the intention from the very beginning?

 

[Klaus]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Now did they do the four actors playing one character thing because of Heath Ledger's death, or was that the intention from the very beginning?

It was an emergency response to his death.

Farrell was my least favorite of the replacements, but I think that in many ways he was playing a different character than Ledger did... Tony [and everyone else] was a character in a story he was telling about himself, projecting an idealized version for everyone else and maybe even kidding himself about his true nature. [insert Roger Clemens reference here ] One of the things Parnassus and the mirror do is take aspects of your inner self and create a world from them. Tony is more-repressed than most perhaps and has multiple levels of deception, thus it take three trips to expose all of the parts of him.

Farrell's Tony probably is the "real" one, sadly.

 

[DonIago]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Tony's the kind of guy who would be an extremely effective used car salesman because he's got smarts, wit, and charm. Dig deeper and you get to discover delightful things like egocentrism and immorality.

 

[RookieBatman]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Now did they do the four actors playing one character thing because of Heath Ledger's death, or was that the intention from the very beginning?

It was an emergency response to his death.

Farrell was my least favorite of the replacements, but I think that in many ways he was playing a different character than Ledger did... Tony [and everyone else] was a character in a story he was telling about himself, projecting an idealized version for everyone else and maybe even kidding himself about his true nature. [insert Roger Clemens reference here ] One of the things Parnassus and the mirror do is take aspects of your inner self and create a world from them. Tony is more-repressed than most perhaps and has multiple levels of deception, thus it take three trips to expose all of the parts of him.

Farrell's Tony probably is the "real" one, sadly.

That was the thing, though. I never felt like it was settled what actually was real about him. One could conversely argue that the things Farrell-Tony did in the dreamworld were things he wouldn't have done in the real world, just as a person might do nasty things in a dream because they know they're dreaming. I don't know; I guess it's probably one of those movies where the audience isn't necessarily supposed to know for sure. But in cases like that, I like to be a little more confident that the filmmaker, at least, does know, even if he didn't quite reveal all of it.

 

[DonIago]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Hm. I'll have to rewatch the commentary track.

 

[RookieBatman]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Yeah, I almost did watch that myself. Let me know if you get anything illuminating.

 

[Starbreaker]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Must have missed this thread back in the day... I didn't like it very much. Not that it was confusing, just boring.

 

[DonIago]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

Yeah, I almost did watch that myself. Let me know if you get anything illuminating.

I believe I rather enjoyed it the first time though, but I'm having trouble recalling any hard information. For obvious reasons Heath Ledger is brought up a number of times.

The opening shot of the wagon moving down a London street was the first concept for the movie that Gilliam had.

I'll see if I can think of anything else.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

I saw it late last year. I was really looking forward to it but I was underwhelmed by it. Here is what a had to say about it in the thread last year

I saw it today. I thought it was a visual treat but apart from that I was disappointed. I didn't find the characters to be very interesting at all. I give the movie only 5/10.

However the elderly lady sitting behind me seemed to have really enjoyed the movie judging from her laughter and squeals of delight. She was more interesting than a couple of the characters.

In in the poll for this thread I voted average but the visuals bought that up. I think the rest of the movie was slightly below average.

 

[PsychoPere]

Re: Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" grading/discuss

I very much enjoyed the film when I saw it in a local theater and made it a release day Blu-Ray purchase when the disc came out. Since then, I've watched it three or four more times and still love it.