The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

It's a rare movie that manages to have a completely understandable plot and still make next to no sense.

Here's what I get: a millennium ago, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) showed up at Doctor Parnassus's (Christopher Plummer) monastery, where the monks continually tell the eternal story because the universe would cease to exist if they didn't. Nick stops them from telling the story, and the universe continues to exist, but it doesn't sway the good doctor's faith. Nick makes Parnassus a bet: first one to 12 disciples wins. Parnassus gets immortality as a reward, which turns out to be a curse. 1000 years later, Parnassus falls in love with a young woman but can't woo her as a homeless old man. Nick strikes a new deal: Parnassus is young and more powerful than ever, and all he has to do give up any offspring at the age of 16. The woman and Parnassus are happy together for years until she's pregnant at 60 and dies in childbirth. Parnassus raises the girl, Valentina (Lily Cole), alone, and we join the story a few days before her 16th birthday, where she is part of Parnassus' traveling magic act, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, along with Anton (Andrew Garfield) and Percy (Verne Troyer). Nick shows up to make new bet: first one to five souls wins Valentina.

Pretty straightforward, right? I mean, magical and all that, but nothing you can't follow. But you may have read that whole thing and thought, "Wait, isn't this Heath Ledger's last movie? Didn't they hire three other dudes to also play him?" Yes, and I'm glad to tell you that with only a minor bit of re-writing by Gilliam and Charles McKeown, having Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell step in as Tony does make sense. Each time he enters the imaginarium (basically your imagination amplified so that you can walk into it), he does so with others, and thus must compete with their imaginations.

That part, surprisingly, is the part that makes sense. Everything else about Tony, particularly and mostly importantly to the story his motives, remains essentially unknowable. That's not a crack on Ledger's acting -- he plays Tony as unknowable and each of the other three actors tasked with taking up the part do manage to pick up elements of his performance and weave it into their own (though Law's, in particular, seems at first oddly hammy). But why Tony has to be such a mystery and why it must remain unsolved is as unclear as the character. Ledger's a slippery, charming con artist who seems equal parts self-serving and selfless with a rather unhealthy interest in a 16 year-old girl, and I had forgotten how fantastic his voice is. The whole thing -- light but rich -- makes his death feel unreal.

There are other details that don't entirely add up (why is Percy also an immortal?), but for everyone of those there are mitigating circumstances, like the delightful Garfield who absolutely shines as the put upon Anton or Cole, who's just the right amount of radiant to make everyone fall in love with her.

But I don't get it. The movie's in a class by itself: stunning to watch, utterly impossibly to comprehend. What's real? What's fake? What does it matter? Like the movie suggests, the story isn't critical. It's the telling.>B+