The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, or, how to make this reviewer die inside, the hardish way

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: a film starring heath ledger posthumously

hmm. you know what's sad? heath ledger's death. it's bad. he was so talented, and had a baby that he loved, and maybe his demons got him or something but that's not any of my business and i'm going to respect that as it deserves. the death of anyone is sad. and heath ledger's death is sad--to say more, to give it more weight because he was famous, is to dishonor the fact that he was a person before he was an actor.


that said, the five thousand imaginariums of doctor p or whatever it was called was a stinky mess. i mean, you can cram all of postmodernism into a two-hour space and then mix it with MAGIC, but, astonishingly, even this recipe doesn't necessarily churn out a good movie.

i have to admit, there were parts when it almost had me. like the painterly school of the sublime, there were peaks of possibility that soared above the general morass. i thought the use of the mirrors was interesting--the moment at which the redhead (scrumpy?) chose hell was kind of interesting--the moments at which the heath-colin-jude-johnny character seemed to have a certain moral ambiguity were pretty interesting. at one point, a point at which h-c-j-j character seemed to maybe be depicted as having, like, a reasonable human morality, not too decent, not too indecent, i was in fact thinking to myself, "oh no! i'm going to have to start liking this!" but then it back-slid into its bombast-covering-for-total-lack-of-a-point mode, like a flip-flopping politician, and i experienced a distinct sensation of relief.

points in favor of doctor parnassorium's wonder imaginorium (or whatever it's called):
1. the acting. as usual, i don't want to blame the actors. i don't know what it is. i guess it's just that actors are generally so good nowadays, and if they're not good, they've got something else going for them: enthusiasm, looks, coolness, whatever. the ones in this i thought were very very good, ledger especially, but the redhead (volupte all over--she was a walking duparc song) and the one they called anton (i know i've seen him somewhere) were also just awesome. if terry gilliam had something to do with that, i blame him...less. also, always good to see tom waits as the devil.
2. um...
3. er...
4. i liked some of the less neil gaiman-y of the ideas. or, to concede to mr. gaiman (though without grace), i found some of the more neil gaiman-y ideas interesting: the story that's always being told, dichotomies between imagination and reality, the ever-expanding universe of the imaginary, etc. i don't agree with these ideas, but i do feel their appeal.

points against the animalia of graeme base (or whatever it's called):
1 through (where's the keyboard symbol for "infinity?"). COME ON!!!
(infinity plus 1). don't be that kind of barn owl, guys. give us a decent effort. STOP HIDING BEHIND WHAT YOU THINK PEOPLE ARE GOING TO WANT TO SEE. you think they're going to want to see heath ledger. that's valid. but do you think that showing them johnny depp saying something quasi-profound about death and then focusing on his face a split second too long will enhance their experience in any way that doesn't speed them toward acknowledging what ends up being force-fed to us as the inevitable inanity of the human condition? (sure, sra. whatever. try saying that last sentence five times fast.) the immigration of doctor paracelsus (or whatever it's called) in the end sells us a version of ourselves that is dull and dry, painted up to look super-cool, but stale and profitless, like putting good tuna salad on old-ass bread. i mean, what were the people who fell in imagining? what were they tempted by? my friend pointed out that imagination as depicted by such coated movies as the long vacation of steve and greg (or whatever it's called) is BORING AS SHIT. shoes. dancing. bars. gondolas. mothers...

yeah, what was the deal with the racism against russians?

...making these boring depictions of experience look exciting hurts our consciouses even worse than it would have if the movie had looked as trite as it was. our imaginations aren't limited by depiction, is what i guess maybe i'm getting at. if we long for home, that longing is miraculous and sad, private and immediate. if we long for someone else, the same thing is true. i don't quite know how to say it. i guess the fact that the aqua-terrarium of my younger brother (or whatever it's called) is supposed to depict the immense possibilities of imagination and instead just depicts whatever neil gaiman-like "thinkers" find fashionable in post-joseph-campbellian thought nowadays BUGS ME. the imaginarium of doctor parnassus just looks specific.

i don't know why i allow myself to rip into these things so wholeheartedly. i guess it's just that it makes me so angry when people who have the opportunity to depict something extroardinary end up depicting something even less than ordinary. i guess there are probably constraints--studio constraints, budgetary constraints (though they weren't in evidence by any means). and it's not like i don't have an agenda when it comes to human expression. i can't explain what they are, but i know i judge based on criteria that aren't necessarily either universal or accurate.

mmm, tuna.