Parnassus director refuses to let reality bring him down
Is there a director working today with a more distinct voice than Terry Gilliam? With the possible exception of Tim Burton’s gothic fairytales Gilliam’s outsized visuals and frenetic editing are more idiosyncratic than any filmmaker within spitting distance of the cinematic mainstream. Factor in the director’s fondness for exploring familiar thematic ground in films as varied as the Orwellian bureaucratic nightmare of Brazil the manically fantastical The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and 2005’s profoundly disturbing Tideland and you have the very definition of an auteur. Whether it’s a masterpiece or a muddled wreck there’s no mistaking one of Gilliam’s films for anyone else’s.
With The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Gilliam has re-teamed with Munchausen co-writer Charles McKeown for another exploration of the importance of imagination and the power of storytelling. Ironically the actual story behind Parnassus can be difficult to parse though it’s clear enough that it involves the centuries-old doctor (Christopher Plummer) who was granted immortality in a bet with the devilish Mr. Nick (a marvelously serpentine Tom Waits) his ragtag theatre company (newcomers Andrew Garfield and Lily Cole) and a mysterious stranger found hanging from beneath London’s Blackfriars Bridge (the late Heath Ledger in his last film role). Despite the reunion with McKeown though the director insists that the return to his pet themes is purely coincidental.
“It’s just that I don’t have any other ideas” Gilliam says with his ever-present laugh. “I think that’s what life is about. How do you define what life is without imagination? Because it’s kind of what we say in Parnassus — stories keep the world turning. That’s all it is. Everything you talk about or read or when you look at the world it’s a story formed. And it may be true or it may not be true but it’s a way to try to define what’s out there. I don’t ever limit things to just sort of material facts — I think life is as much lived in your imagination as it is in the world that you touch and eat and get run over by.”
Gilliam knows a thing or two about getting run over by reality. Though he’s been a critical favourite since 1981’s Time Bandits the director quickly earned a reputation for troubled productions first when the studio balked at Brazil’s bleak ending and again when the absurdly ambitious Munchausen went well over budget. His ill-fated adaptation of Don Quixote — its disintegration was lovingly documented in 2002’s Lost in La Mancha — only cemented the director’s sisyphean status in the public imagination.
When Ledger passed away midway through Parnassus’s production it was more than just another unwelcome dose of reality though. Ledger and Gilliam had become close friends since working together on 2005’s The Brothers Grimm and it’s obvious from the director’s effusive praise of the young actor that the loss still stings. Ledger’s death and the novel solution for finishing the film — the actor is replaced by Johnny Depp Jude Law and Colin Farrell when he visits Parnassus’s fantasy world — have overshadowed Parnassus in many of the interviews leading up to the film’s release but if Gilliam is bitter about a real-world tragedy once again overshadowing one of his films he doesn’t let it show. When asked if he ever wishes the media would focus more on his films than on the events surrounding them his answer is downright jovial.
“Uh yeah that would be nice” he says. “On the other hand I kind of want the movie to speak for itself. If I have to explain it I feel then I’ve failed. So on the one hand I would be quite happy if the movies came out and they attracted people on their own merit. It doesn’t work that way so I end up doing interviews and I’ll talk about anything. So if it’s about the failure of something or it’s a tragedy that’s all part of it because the making of my films seems to be so much interlocked and about the ideas of the film. It’s really frightening. When you think Parnassus is very much about mortality and… bingo.”
Mortality fantasy ambition happiness — Gilliam uses Parnassus’s magical elements to explore ideas that are at the very root of modern life. He isn’t always successful — his ambition has always been a mixed blessing — but the simple fact that he’s trying is part of the director’s appeal. After all the world needs storytellers who are willing to point out the magic in the world.
“There’s this wondrousness in the world that most people aren’t paying attention to” he says. “I think people are too distracted with the need to get a job make money get three-ply toilet paper all the things that are supposed to bring supposed happiness and fulfilment to them and they’re missing all the things that are right there that are free if they only just concentrated a bit more. We’re on such a treadmill that gets faster and faster and I think people are so frightened of slipping off it that they’d just rather close down their aspirations or avoid looking at things that might distract for fear of falling off and the world passing them by.”
