October 16th marks an important day, the release date for the last film of the late Heath Ledger (A Knight’s Tale, Brokeback Mountain, Casanova, The Dark Knight). A beloved member of the film community, Heath passed away on January 22nd of 2008 from an overdose of prescription medications, but his legacy lives on through his work. We were all blown away by his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight and it appears we will be able to enjoy his presence one last time now that his final film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, is hitting theaters.
The film tells the story of Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who roams around in an old-fashioned “traveling show” wagon and is disregarded by most people, who are all unaware that Doctor Parnassus is the real deal. The Doctor’s shiny mirror is a portal to an incredibly odd, colorful world filled with everything you can imagine. Now it appears the Doctor made a deal with the devil, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), for immortality but in return his daughter would become Mr. Nick’s property when she turned 16. With young Valentina (Lily Cole) approaching the aforementioned age, Dr. Parnassus makes a new bet with Mr. Nick, the first person to acquire five innocent souls would win Valentina. Here Parnassus requires the help of Tony (Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell), a multi-faceted individual with the necessary skills of showmanship to bring clients into the Imaginarium. The race is on, will Tony and the doctor be able to win back Valentina, or is she doomed to belong to Mr. Nick.
Now, back in 2008, the movie had just finished shooting in London when they received news of Ledger’s death and, minutes later, the film’s financiers were worried they would have to shut the movie down. This would have spelled disaster for most movies but that is not the case here. Terry Gilliam, writer and director of the film, worked with his daughter and cinematographer Nicola Pecorini to figure out some way to salvage the film. The financiers were pushing to get a “star of superior caliber” to take Heath’s place but Amy and Terry didn’t agree.
And then they stumbled upon something interesting. Ledger had completed all of his scenes in London, which were the “real world scenes” in the movie, and so Terry Gilliam had the idea to use other actors to play his character in each of the Imaginarium scenes. The idea was developed and eventually they managed to pull together Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to assume Ledger’s mantle in the remaining scenes.
In an interview, found on the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus Support Site, Amy Gilliam said that Ledger “was a phenomenal actor and he did it with such ease. He wasn’t about the limelight, and was a genuine, sincere, down-to-earth human being.” It is a shame he couldn’t be around to finish or see the film but Amy assures us that “It definitely holds its own: if Heath had been with us throughout we’d have had one actor’s vision but as it is we have four fantastic actors giving us their versions of Tony. Of course, watching Heath on screen is hard but there’s also a joy in it. Obviously, you think how could someone so young and so talented leave us? But that’s why we finished the movie: the world needs to see his last performance.”
This whole movie seems to be a phenomena filled with ingenius and I am very excited and interested to see how it will play out on the big screen, especially after seeing the mind-boggling trailer.
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