The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
He’s not a “Doctor” in the conventional sense, but a Buddhist monk from the deep past. It’s a world like Beowulf’s — a tad surreal, purer and braver — when drawn up by the pen of a contemporary writer lamenting the death of story-telling.
On the mountaintop where Parnassus lives mere chant keeps the earth spinning. And he’s quit content to do nothing but hum until the day the devil arrives on horseback. In exchange for eternal life, the top-hat-wearing trickster enters a millenial battle for souls with the young monk. We join the two in contemporary London 1000 years later. One of them has got a few crooked vertebrae and a drinking habit. You can probably guess which one.
But this time, Parnassus’ bargain is made sweeter. In exchange for redeemed youth, the devil receives any daughter he might father upon her sixteenth birthday. The producer, Terry Gilliam, picks up the story in the days leading up to this ill-fated birthday. Chastened by a millenia of hard-knocks, Parnassus doesn’t have the courage to his now-seductive and eager young girl about the self-centered bargain he made that will make her the domestic partner of his tormentor. But she’s wise enough to understand her father is facing a battle of his own.The conflict takes shape when a handsome young man is found dangling from a London bridge. They rescue the fellow, who swallowed a pipe to thwart his would-be assailants. The trickster with a quick wit promises Parnassus’ daughter an adventure, and she’s quick to grant him the boat-rock he’s looking for. We discover he’s a petty thief masquerading as a philanthropist, hung from a bridge for selling children’s organs.
One premise gives the film its anything-is-possible allure: London passerbyers can enter Doctor Parnassus’ mind by walking through an ordinary portal. Transported to a world of his trance-induced making, a person enters their own imagination. Having done so, the visitor is given a choice: follow the easy road of wanton lust and consumption (and lose your soul) or take the more difficult path (and return ennobled.) The lesser choice gets you blown up like a lemming. The heroic choice sends you back to the real world, chastened. A visitor who returns from the imaginarium is no longer attached to the thing once-coveted.
The motif is transformation, but its lightly deployed. Not a character post-transformation gets a fleeting mention. It’s true: few chose to innovate with the devil. He’s just too scary perhaps. Al Pacino is a rare exception. In “Devil’s Advocate,” he wears a tuxedo and speaks several languages. Simple enough. But the “Imaginarium” that takes few risks with the monk, who neither learns from his past nor becomes ennobled by his failures. *Process* gives the film [4 out of 10]. Though the monk’s imagination is a Dali-esque landscape and sometimes well-painted, Gilliam’s hell-hound on a steed is just a mouse-tail from conventional. He’s got no pitchfork, but he’s the same old trickster. The biblical devil was the most ardent and wild of creation! But this writer-duo doesn’t depart much from the billiard hustler stereotype. They modernized Doctor Parnussus’ outdated side-show but left the devil in the 50s.
Gilliam teamed up with his screenwriter, Charles McKeown, to give artistic depth to the world-weary Doctor’s exuberant imagination. But there are few bridges between past and present, save the badgering and tiring nemesis. *Process* rooted for the poor monk to be absolved from his tormentor’s relentless deal-making. But alas, he isn’t, and we leave him begging once again on the tired London of tomorrow.
