Cast:Johnny Depp, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, Lily Cole, Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Andrew Garfield, Peter Stormare, Verne Troyer, Paloma Faith, Daniel Newman, Quinn Lord, Michael Eklund, Carrie Genzel, Richard Riddell, Cassandra Sawtell, Mark
The film opens as Doctor Parnassus’ (Christopher Plummer) travelling theatre troupe, which includes a sleight of hand expert, Anton (Andrew Garfield), a dwarf, Percy (Verne Troyer), and Parnassus’ daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), arrives to perform outside a pub in London. A drunkard heckles the performers and barges onstage, crashing through a stage mirror that is made of two pieces of reflective plastic. He is thrown into a perilous journey of the imagination that culminates in him being offered a choice between enlightenment and a pub. After he enters the pub it explodes. Parnassus is distraught, saying he has lost another one to Mr. Nick (Tom Waits).Later that night, Mr. Nick reminds Parnassus that in three days Valentina will be 16, at which point her soul will belong to him. As the troupe crosses a bridge, Anton spies someone hanging underneath it. They rescue the hanging man (Heath Ledger), who spits out a golden pipe when they revive him. Claiming to have amnesia, the man joins the troupe, performing as a barker. After a botched performance, Parnassus is despondent over the impending loss of his daughter. Mr. Nick visits Parnassus, incidentally revealing the hanging man’s identity as a disgraced philanthropist named Tony Anderson. He also offers Parnassus a wager: Valentina will stay with whoever wins five souls first.Tony convinces the troupe to update the show, making it sleeker and more attractive to contemporary Londoners. In an upscale mall Tony lures a woman into the mirror, where he appears differently (Johnny Depp). The landscape is powered by the woman’s imagination, featuring gigantic shoes and jewels. Tony dances with her, and they spy a motel run by Mr. Nick in the distance. Rather than going to the motel with him, Tony convinces the woman to go on alone, taking a gondola toward a pyramid, thereby winning a soul for Parnassus. The giddy woman emerges from the Imaginarium on a swing above the stage. She writes a blank check to Parnassus and dumps her purse into the collection bin. The other women watching the show clamor for a turn, and Parnassus quickly wins three more souls.A group of four Russian gangsters arrive and notice Tony, who owes them money. Tony flees into the Imaginarium and the gangsters follow him. Because the Imaginarium is controlled by the imaginations of the people inside it, the landscape is extremely chaotic. As the gangsters threaten Tony (Jude Law), Parnassus tempts the gangsters with a police recruitment song, promising they will enjoy being cops because they can continue being brutish. Mr. Nick tempts them with a giant babushka, whom one of the men addresses as being a maternal family member, beckoning the men who flee under her skirt. The skirt explodes, evening the score to four souls apiece.Parnassus reveals to Valentina that in an hour she will belong to Mr. Nick. He tells her that hundreds of years ago he ran a monastery. He and his monks were perpetually reciting a story in order to sustain the world. Mr. Nick challenged their beliefs, silencing the monks by sealing their mouths. The world continued existing without the story being told, but Parnassus claimed it was because stories were still being told somewhere else. Mr. Nick made a bet with Parnassus over which of them (Mr. Nick or Parnassus) could win over the souls of people to either crave stories and imagination (Parnassus) or addictions and feeble desires (Mr. Nick). Parnassus won over 12 souls before Mr. Nick, and in turn, was granted immortality by Mr. Nick.Because his body still aged despite his inability to die, Parnassus made a new deal with Mr. Nick so that he might be youthful again, in order to win the heart of a woman he fell in love with. In exchange, any child he fathered would become Mr. Nick’s property when the child became 16. Valentina wants to run away, but Tony enters the Imaginarium to give his soul to Parnassus. Anton has discovered that Tony is a fraudulent charity scammer and being jealous, struggles with Tony. In the scuffle, all three of them end up in the mirror.Inside the Imaginarium, Tony (Colin Farell) and Valentina float down a river in a boat and engage in an off-screen sexual affair, completing Valentina’s transformation to womanhood. Shortly after, an impoverished child on the river bank disrupts their harmony in the boat, Tony is suddenly back in his role as a philanthropist, speaking at a gala fundraiser with the President (Peter Stormare) in attendance. Anton appears as a small child and attempts to expose Tony as a fraud. An angry lynch mob storms after Tony as the landscape disintegrates around them. Anton falls into a void, and Tony flees into a desert. Parnassus appears and falls down before Valentina, who assumes he is dead in a classic Python-esque gag where an attending E.M.T. pronounces Parnassus "D d d d dead. D d d d dead, drunk." But too late, Valentina has already fled into a shifting landscape of broken glass and mirrors. Distraught by her father’s bargain, Valentina decides to give her soul to Mr. Nick. Chased by a lynch mob, Tony flees up Mount Parnassus as a heartbroken Parnassus looks on. Mr. Nick consoles Parnassus, offering to give back Valentina if Parnassus gives him Tony.Tony spies a gallows, but Parnassus confronts him, holding two copies of Tony’s pipe. Tony uses the pipe to brace his windpipe against the noose. Parnassus challenges Tony to choose which pipe is genuine and which is made of cheap plastic, which will break under the pressure of the noose. Tony chooses the wrong pipe and dies. Valentina is freed.Parnassus emerges from the Imaginarium a few years later, finding that Valentina has married Anton and has a daughter. Parnassus begins to sell replicas of his theater in an effort to make himself respectable looking enough not to frighten his granddaughter. Mr. Nick beckons Parnassus over, but Percy stops Parnassus and instructs him to continue his work.
Click play to watch samlpe online:
Movie files:
We recommend you to use such download managers as FDM, ReGet or FlashGet for more comfortable films download.
To achieve the best video quality download free video-codecs from Free-codecs.com.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus comments / review
Date: 2010-01-24 08:55:42
User: Movie Blogger
I’ve made no secret of my love for director Terry Gilliam throughout the years. Even when his movies are terrible—Tideland being his worst—he still manages to get his crazed sense of invention across. Unfortunately, in his more recent films, that sense of invention has gone hand-in-hand with an annoying lack of focus.
Most movie buffs and Gilliam fans know that his productions are often plagued with difficulty. The studio taking Brazil hostage, the over-budget drama of Baron Munchausen, and the complete destruction of the original production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote are but a few of his legendary travails. Most distressing was the death of star Heath Ledger during production of Gilliam’s latest, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Ledger had already filmed a bunch of scenes when he passed away in January 2008. Rather than scrap the film, Gilliam and friends came up with an idea to keep the project moving forward. The title character, played by Christopher Plummer, has a traveling road show that features a mirror. On the other side of that mirror is a “land of imagination” that feeds off the desires of the person who has gone through it. After the death of Ledger, the land of imagination also became a place where your appearance can change.
Gilliam sets up this trick with his intro, where we see a lecherous man’s face change into somebody else after a mirror journey. Later in the film, when Ledger goes through the mirror in three sequences, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell then play his part, in that order.
It’s a nifty trick, and it seems right at home in a Gilliam movie. Each of the actors, especially Farrell, bring a fun spark to the film. Gilliam comes up with a way to let the audience always sense the presence of Ledger throughout the movie, even when somebody else is playing his part. And Ledger, in his modern-day London scenes, is his normally reliable self, and it’s a good thing his final work was able to grace movie screens.
Alas, the movie itself doesn’t work as a whole. The main story involves Parnassus and his deal with the Devil (Tom Waits), a deal where he wagered the soul of his first born, Valentina (Lily Cole). The business between Parnassus and Valentina is garbled stuff and failed to keep my interest. I found myself waiting for the trips through the mirror for moments when the movie could pick up the pace a little bit.
As for the usually reliable Gilliam visuals, there are a few truly majestic ones. I liked the Parnassus balloon, featuring his nose and eyes. The Parnassus cop statue that pops up in the desert is another good one and has a cool Monty Python vibe.
But most of the fantastical imagery is done in by glossy CGI. Gilliam has gotten by with miniatures and hand-drawn animation before, but CGI started to make its way into his productions with The Brothers Grimm. This time, it’s almost all CGI, and the effects team simply fails to capture the magic of Gilliam’s past creations. It feels like a poorly produced, half-hearted Gilliam impersonation.
In the end, I have to give Gilliam the benefit of the doubt. He managed to put together a film that isn’t half bad considering the circumstances. Most directors would’ve probably thrown in the towel and walked away.
The movie is worth seeing to experience Ledger’s swan song, but it’s distressing to see such a great director continue to lose his touch. There’s been some talk of his reviving The Man Who Killed Don Quixote with Johnny Depp and Robert Duvall taking over the title role. That certainly sounds promising, and I still believe this director has some great work left in him. He just needs to calm down a bit.
Date: 2010-02-17 11:12:12
User: max
Download and watch the new movie Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The http://blog-movie.com/Imaginarium-of-Doctor-Parnassus-The.html
Home
We recommend you to use such download managers as 
