DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The sad final chapter of the career of Heath Ledger comes to a close with the opening of his incomplete performance in Terry Gilliam’s colorful, carnival-esque fantasy. Gilliam had completed most of the location shooting for the film when Ledger died of an accidental toxic interaction of prescription drugs in January of 2008. Most of the remainder of the shoot was to be in the studio, of the fantasy sequences, in which the titular Doctor (Christopher Plummer) battles the Devil (Tom Waits) for the souls of ordinary folks who they trick into entering an alternate dimension. In order to avoid this film meeting the same fate of his famously disastrous Don Quixote movie, Gilliam rewrote the script so that not only does the world look different when one passes through the fake mirror on Doctor Parnassus’ ramshackle traveling sideshow stage, but so do the people who enter that world. Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell stepped in to take over the role of Tony when he passes over to that other side.
For the most part, the mid-stream change works. One still can’t help feeling that Ledger’s Tony should have returned for the very end of the film, but faced with a choice between trying to digitally place the actor’s face on another body, or just leaving one of his stand-ins in place, Gilliam wisely chooses the tasteful option and leaves it to Farrell to play the character through to the end.
All of the external tragedy aside, the movie itself is a solid, if over-adorned effort from Gilliam, who returns to some of the wild-eyed, candy-colored fantasy of The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, armed with a new bag of computer generated tricks. Honestly, I prefer Gilliam’s more rudimentary old-fashioned effects than the digital approximations of his trademark style that appear here, but it’s still an visually stunning world he’s created. Tom Waits is scene-chewingly fantastic in a role he was born to play, a sly, mischievous prince of darkness who seems more interested in the sport of winning souls than the actual attainment. Gilliam lets the plot spin more than a little out of control in the last act, but more than makes up for it with the crazy ride to the end.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at a number of area theaters.
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This weekend the Freer Gallery embarks on a nearly two-month-long festival of Iranian film, which will cover a half dozen features between now and the end of February, including the latest from the legendary Abbas Kiarostami, the experimental Shirin. Kicking off things tomorrow is A Man Who Ate His Cherries, director Payman Haghani’s 2009 film about a factory worker who goes to extreme measures in order to provide money for his ex-wife after their divorce. Consulting God, a short documentary about the increasingly prevalent Muslim practice of asking god a direct question via a cleric screens before the feature.
View the trailer.
Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery. The Iranian Film Festival continues through February 24. Free.
