Finally, after a hectic weekend, I have managed to find time to catch the final appearance of Heath Ledger on film. Heath Ledger, talented actor, probably most famously known to play a psychotic killer clown and one half of a gay cowboy couple, passed away before his time in 2009, before being able to complete his scenes for this film. After his untimely demise, production on the movie was halted as the director pondered what to do with the movie with its lead actor unavailable. Thankfully, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrel stepped in to fill in the parts left un-filmed. The role of Tony, the amnesiac who encounters the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus was re-imagined into 4 parts, with Heath Ledger taking the main sequence of the main character outside of the world of imagination and Depp, Law and Farrel each playing different reflections of Tony’s personality within the world of imagination.

The first thing I want to complain about the show is the unwieldiness and length of the stupid title. It is an incredible difficult mouthful to get around when mentioning it in a casual conversation. Plus the fact that the movie was not well promoted here in Singapore, every time someone asked me to recommend a movie, the conversation would invariably go like this:

“What show is nice recently?” goes clueless movie-goer.

“The Imaginarium” I reply.

“Whah?”

“The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus”

*Blank stare*

“The I-maj-ji-nah-ree-yum of Doc-ter Pa-nah-suss”

*Eyes glazing* *Droplet of drool appearing on side of lips*

*Big sigh* “The one where Heath Ledger did before he died”

“Ooooh…..!”

Want to buy shorter versions of movie titles! Also, people who actually have a clue about Singapore’s movie scenes.

Besides the nitpick about the show’s title, the show on the whole was very watchable. However, be warned that it is not an easy show to understand. My girlfriend and I came out with quite a few question marks on our heads and I am still trying to figure it out. On the surface, the movie is an exploration of the landscape in the world of the imagination, where Dr Parnassus is the gatekeeper. The entrance to the Imaginarium is disguised as a prop mirror in a run-down travelling sideshow. The state of the sideshow contrasts heavily with what is found inside the Imaginarium. On the outside, the circus show is grubby, dingy and run-down, Dr Parnassus himself is an elderly, drunk immortal whom one imagines smells quite badly. His troupe consists of a bad-tempered midget with sharp teeth, his beautiful daughter (the designated damsel-in-distress) and her hapless suitor, who in another story would have been the protagonist but seems to have been relegated to the role of buffoon in this one. Tony, the above-mentioned amnesiac protagonist joins them later after being rescued from a hanging. The troupe clothe themselves in tattered remnants of their gaudy costumes to introduce the world of the imagination via the Imaginarium.