Terry Gilliam’s new movie, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” doesn’t make sense—at least not in the usual way. Usually, Gilliam isn’t trying to make sense, but for long stretches of this film it’s hard to tell what he is trying to do. While Gilliam’s fantastic and grotesque imagery has been his calling card throughout his career, starting with his cut-out animations for Monty Python, much of “Imaginarium” (es¬pecially what occurs between fantasy sequences) is flat-out ugly—murky, cut too fast, full of shaky-cam. The effect looks sort of like cinema-véri¬té, but the script is closer to vaude¬ville. People are usually yelling and whacking each other; a dwarf makes lame jokes; the devil (played by Tom Waits) skulks around smoking cigars. The performances are antic, the emo¬tional pitch shrill, the images clut¬tered—it feels like a bad day at the carnival.

Strangely enough, this is all purposeful, and ultimately there is coherence. Doctor Parnassus, like the hero of Gilliam’s “Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” is an old-fash¬ioned teller of tales who is little un¬derstood in a cynical modern world. However, unlike “Munchausen” and other Gilliam films, this one is plain¬ly not a “testament to the wondrous magic of imagination.” It is a grimly self-aware revision of the Faust story in which Gilliam examines his own strengths and weaknesses with humil¬ity and even despair. Centuries ago, Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) was an optimistic and deeply peace¬ful monk, engaged, with his brothers, in telling “the eternal story” in seclu¬sion on a mountain. But the devil (who goes by Mr. Nick) paid him a visit, and Parnassus made a bargain with him for eternal life. As it turns out, eternity is awfully long, and by the twenty-first century, Parnassus is tired of it. He still presents his Imaginarium to a jaded public, ac¬companied by a couple of perform¬ers and his restless teenage daughter, but mostly he drinks. The “magic of imagination” has become cheap and dirty.

What is the Imaginarium? It’s hard to say. It is the way Parnassus brings his visions and fantasies to the public; he invites them onto his makeshift stage and inside a mirror, where they explore an amazingly mal¬leable, mythic world of Parnassus’s invention. It is also Gilliam’s excuse to embark on flights of visual fancy. However, it is also a mark of Parnassus’ bargain with the devil; every custom¬er who enters the Imaginarium must, at a crucial point, choose between a pleasurable at¬traction offered by Mr. Nick and a more no¬ble path offered by Parnassus.

As this im¬plies, Parnassus and the devil are apparently in competition to “win souls.” What this really means, we don’t really know- sometimes people pass in and out of the Imaginarium, sometimes they are ab¬sorbed within it. Concerning how the Imaginarium came to be, we understand even less—the flashbacks to Parnassus’ past tell us noth¬ing about it. In fact, they tell us al¬most nothing, in expositional terms, that isn’t covered in present-day ac¬tion and dialogue. However, those flashbacks are the most beautiful and reverent thing in the movie; unlike the haphazard visions of the Imaginarium, they are carefully com¬posed, graceful, and even romantic. They are introduced by Parnassus as he leafs through aged, floridly illus¬trated parchment, as if he were di¬vulging the true and long-forgotten history of humanity. The substance of his tale often feels like a make-it-up-as-you-go affair, yet the whiff of ancient lore, of primal secrets of the soul, remains strong.
This is where Gilliam excels, and where the movie’s wild mess of fragments takes shape: in presenting a mythic moral vision, one which dwells, transfixed, on the mysteries of free will, identity, and death. Though Parnassus’ meditations appear to pow¬er the Imaginarium, the Imaginarium has power beyond Parnassus himself. When a slimy character, Tony, played by Heath Ledger (giving his final per¬formance) in the “real world” of the film, invades the Imaginarium, seek¬ing personal gain, he is confronted with the dark, chaotic side of his own psyche; each time he enters it, he is played by a new actor. In the film’s incredible, crystallizing climax, Tony journeys deep into the Imaginarium, encounters each of the film’s ma¬jor characters, and comes to a just end. Gilliam affirms the deep and creepy pull of imagination, of myth, of strange things beyond us. Most shockingly of all, he affirms judg¬ment and immutable consequence in a world, which, on the surface, seems infinitely mutable.

But the film doesn’t end there. In contrast to earlier Gilliam films like “Munchausen” and “Brazil,” where it is Imagination against the World-no middle ground-there is hope here that transcends the Imaginarium and its untrust¬worthy beauties. Although Tony is a highly unreliable character, he gets one of the best lines in the movie: “Nothing’s permanent… not even death.” The chaos of the Imaginarium brings, finally, death-but death is not final.
The devil has been known to quote scripture, so it seems appro¬priate that he expresses this mov¬ie’s thematic core. Asked about the state of one of the souls he has supposedly “won,” Mr. Nick replies, in Tom Waits’ copyrighted rasp, “How should I know? I don’t have her. I mean, she’s free, isn’t she?” Parnassus’ Imaginarium is beautiful but corrupted and de¬caying; even Parnassus himself is tired of its tricks, sinking into de¬spair and self-loathing. Yet in the climax of Parnassus’ wretched self-abasement, we see most clearly that he is free, and that his hope¬lessly corrupted Imaginarium can be salvaged. This movie is not a “testament to the wondrous magic of imagination.” It is a testament to the weakness, the chaos, the possible horror of imagination, and the expression of gratitude that, by some strange grace, man¬ages to live on.