Wednesday 16 March 2011

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

A Good Homage - 3.5/5
So I saw this film yesterday called 'The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus'. With this film I found I couldn't help but focus my entire attention to the great Heath Ledger's performance, due to it being his final ever film. With this in mind, I found the film got off to a slow and slightly confusing start. To me, it was only when Ledger's character Tony was revealed to us that the film began to take off. Ledger's performance was definitely a truly memorable one. It shows how far he progressed from the days of '10 Things I Hate About You'. He performs in a very modest way in this film and his little facial expressions were absolutely captivating. The only one out the the three other stars in the film (Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell) was Farrell, who incidentally would be my favourite actor out of the three. He was the only one to really capture anywhere near the magic that Ledger brought to the film. In saying this however, his small role was dwarfed by Ledger.

In terms of storyline I must admit that I get a bit lost at times. I couldn't follow Terry Gilliam's train of thought as well as I had hoped. The film brought back images of 'Pan's Labyrinth', a film that is, at times, equally confusing. I don't think Gilliam took enough time to fully explain the story to the audience. Of course this has to be put down to the extremely unfortunate death of its main man part way through filming. The film was a great homage to Heath Ledger's legacy despite its flaws.

Another stand out role for me was Andrew Garfield as Tommy. I saw 'The Social Network' before I saw this film and I just didn't realise he had this sort of performance in him. He was truly stunning. His cockney accent and cheeky personality was convincing and whereas I found him a tad one-dimensional in 'The Social Network', here he showed us his full range of talents.

This is certainly one to watch mainly due to it being Heath Ledger's final role. He will be sorely missed and he was a treasure to the film industry.

2 comments:

Brittany Rivera said...

My favorite part about this film was how well the three replacement actors steeped in to fill Ledger's shoes. They were all very respectful of what he had created, which I loved. I agree that the film was hard to follow at times, but I think Gilliam more than made up for that with the visuals.
Also, I loved Garfield in both films. I think he is a great and versatile actor.

Jack Ibbetson said...

Although I would agree they were repectful of Ledger I still think he stole the show. The visuals certainly held their own in terms of award nominations and Garfield is certainly versatile.
Thanks for reading

Post a Comment

Search This Blog