The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) on Netflix
PG-1320092h 3mAdventureFantasyMystery
Doctor Parnassus leads a traveling troupe whose magic mirror opens onto the Imaginarium. In three days his daughter Valentina turns sixteen, the age at which the Devil claims her.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.7/10158,345 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes64%
Trailer
Plot summary
The troupe of Doctor Parnassus includes his daughter Valentina, the barker Anton, and the dwarf Percy. Their attraction is a mirror that leads into the Imaginarium, a dream world that changes to match the desires of whoever passes through. Long ago Parnassus struck a bargain with Mr. Nick, the Devil, trading his immortality for youth, and promised that any child of his would belong to Mr. Nick at sixteen. Valentina is three days from that birthday. Mr. Nick offers a new wager: whoever wins five souls in the Imaginarium keeps her. On the road, Anton spots a man hanging beneath a bridge and rescues him. The stranger claims amnesia and joins the troupe, and Mr. Nick tells Parnassus the man is Tony Shepard, a philanthropist hanged by Russian gangsters over debts.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Production shut down when Heath Ledger died in New York on 22 January 2008; his casting had been a 'key factor' in financing the film, and director Terry Gilliam's first thought on hearing the news was, 'The film's over, it's as simple as that.'
- Tom Cruise offered to step in as one of the actors replacing Heath Ledger, but Gilliam turned him down because Cruise had not been a close friend of Ledger's, saying he wanted to keep the recasting 'in the family.'
- Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown based the con-man character Tony on former British prime minister Tony Blair, who they felt 'would say the most insane things and probably he'd believe them himself.'
- Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law all redirected their wages for playing Ledger's character to his young daughter Matilda, who had been left out of an old version of Ledger's will; Gilliam also changed the film's credit from 'A Terry Gilliam film' to 'A film from Heath Ledger and friends.'
- After Vancouver filming wrapped, producer William Vince died of cancer just two days after model shooting had finished in London, and during post-production Gilliam himself was hit by a car and suffered a cracked vertebra.
- Gilliam and cinematographer Nicola Pecorini shot with a new 8mm Zeiss lens, wider than anything used on a Gilliam film before; his previous widest had been a 9.8mm Kinoptik, despite Gilliam already being known for extreme wide-angle imagery.
Stills
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