Rating: 7.2/10Genre: Dark Fantasy
Overall value for money and time: 7.8/10
A travelling theatre has a portal which allows its audience to enter a world of their dreams. The main attracting force of this movie is its star studded cast, especially the late Heath Ledger and it's colorful graphics. Well, these two areas of the film are sufficient enough reasons for anyone to go catch it.
The plot on the other hand, could either be fairly weak, or rather abstract. Reminds me of a recent movie I've watched, "Youth After Youth". There's the dilemma for story plots like this movie, you either like it, or you don't. The fantasy aspect of it could almost hit full marks - a world of another dreams coming true with what looked like high definition colors... but the links and the "morality" issues the portal provides was somewhat puzzling to me; for I didn't see what "choices" were there.
*spoilers ahead* I love how the movie explains the different faces of Tony (Heath Ledger) when he enters the "imaginarium" - initially I had thought it was because of the perceptions of those who entered it, and that because Heath passed away, the director had to find replacements of him... which made sense. But as the story unfolds, it was the different faces of him as Tony was more than meets the eye. Also, the subtleties with Valentina (Dr. Parnasus's daughter) floating and flying around in the imagarium when Tony was inside, not sure if it was intended or not, showed the fusion of both fantasies, of the audience and Tony, and indirectly relates to how Tony feels about Valentina.
However, just like Law Abiding Citizen, the "good" side of Tony went to the other extreme and that was one major part I didn't like about the movie. Almost had me questioning why the director had to include such a character in the first place... Just like how Gerard Butler was portrayed as fighting his inner demons through Law Abiding Citizen only to execute the ultimate bad deed at the end of the movie, it was similar in Heath's case... where he entered the imaginarium to save Valentina in the first place only to desert her in the end... Weird, extreme twists of events.
The ending scene with Dr. Parnasus and Tony was also... somewhat out of place. Why did Dr. Parnasus have to personally have a showdown with Tony? Where normally he would just appear to direct an alternative path for his audience who enters his imagarium?
Also, this movie shows the dark side of humanity and almost inevitably, after viewing it you might even think there's no good side of it. Even Dr. Parnasus wasn't a "good person" in the movie, yet, we still "cheered" him on at the ending sequence. I have a weird vibe about the movie's hidden content, but if you're not one to think or analyze films to this extend like me... I highly recommend this movie to anyone who loves fantasy movies.
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