Here it is at last: the last Heath Ledger performance that the world will ever see.

This performance is encased within a meticulous and frantic dream world, cobbled together by the half-mad Terry Gilliam and complemented by the addition of three generous performers who stepped in after Ledger’s death. For fans of Gilliam, the movie is a delightful and often sublime return to form. For fans of Ledger, there may be some disappointment.

Heath’s character Tony is more of a secondary player and for the sequences taking place within the titular Imaginarium, he is portrayed by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. Depp does the least speaking but looks most like Heath, Law’s is the most sympathetic and multi-layered, and Farrell hits most closely to what I think Gilliam was going for with Tony. And what of Ledger himself? He’s good for sure — one of the many ‘what ifs’ of Parnassus is what the film would have looked like if Ledger had been Tony for the duration. My suspicion is that it would have only improved things and added a unifying thread that the movie doesn’t quite have right now.

With that out of the way, though, let me say that The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a welcome surprise from Gilliam, who has long been one of my favorite directors, languishing amidst the zaniness and difficulty of his own projects. The last great movie he made was 1995′s Twelve Monkeys. Parnassus is no Monkeys, but it has that same delicious sense of the surreal, the absurd and the mythic with forlorn dreamers struggling against the grain and grit of the all-too-real mundane world.

Dr. Parnassus, played to obstinate, irritable perfection by Christopher Plummer, was once a monk who now wanders the Earth in his painful immortality due to a bargain he made with the Devil (Tom Waits) centuries ago. In the shabby backstreets of London, he and his entourage run a smoke and mirrors production referred to as The Imaginarium. Parnassus’ secret is that behind the dime store mirror is a world where the subject’s innermost fantasies are tweaked and twisted by both the doctor and the Devil in a war for their souls. Parnassus’ daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) becomes the next object in the bargaining war, and  the first one to claim five souls wins Valentina’s.

Heath steadies the sequences around the Imaginarium, and the colleagues who take over for him add elements of needed humanity to the overstuffed fantasy set pieces. But on the acting front the movie is won by Plummer’s Parnassus and Tom Waits, a black-hatted, pencil-mustached Mephistopheles who looks like Ron Perlman but sounds like Dennis Leary in need of a lozenge. They are playing mythical archetypes — the wily, old man and the deceiving trickster — but inasmuch as they can, they give their parts a playful sense of camaraderie.

Lily Cole is extraordinarily beautiful and the odd juxtaposition of her childlike features and womanly body work well for Valentina’s character. Her acting is good too and the chemistry she shares with Andrew Garfield as Anton lends her spot in the picture a sweet romantic light that doesn’t shine anywhere else. Verne Troyer has been given that thankless job of the little person in a Gilliam film (Percy) but he doesn’t play it that way. Instead, he’s Parnassus’ conscience, and rises to the fore in scenes with Plummer, which isn’t an easy thing to do.

The script is a strange nuts-and-bolts concoction that never feels completely thought-out at the story level, but has a certain rightness as a fantastic fable. Gilliam, for whom narrative cohesion is usually an albatross around the neck, sticks to the tale as much as he needs to and uses the Imaginarium as his outlet.  Jellyfish lift people out of the air and into a hovering, phosphorescent world, while children wander off across ephemeral vistas that look like Candyland, constructed by Salvador Dali. The moving parts of this vast dream world are mostly CGI, and Gilliam has yet to comfortably nail that technology, but his fierce imagination wins the day.

In the end, Dr. Parnassus is another odd love letter to the power of storytelling as viewed through Gilliam’s off-kilter lens. I fancy he sees a lot of himself there within Parnassus, the old man who wants the whole world to dream with him and keeps being disappointed by the demanding reality of life that nibbles the edges off his enchantment. When he pulled Ledger in to help him realize his vision, he couldn’t have imagined how the path would end. But here we are, and this Imaginarium is one that both Gilliam and Ledger may be quite proud of.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

2009 and 2010 will see the release of two films by master visionary directors — Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus by Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam. In a world that’s full to the brim of remakes and reboots, unoriginal thought after unoriginal thought, you’d think we’d be happy to see some artistic ingenuity. And before you start: yes, I’m aware that Alice in Wonderland is in no way a “new” idea, but it’s been quite a while since it has been brought to life on screen effectively.

This got me thinking though, with the release of Alice in March and Parnassus this coming December, that here we have two directors whose stylistic flair is almost inseparable from their body of work. Each has had their share of blockbuster successes as well as flops. When they flop, they tend to flop hard. I’m looking at you, Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

However, there seems to be a double standard at play: Burton has suffered through a vast amount of criticism in the past decade or so for continuing to adhere to his style of gritty, scratchy curvature and the grotesque, while Gilliam is associated with the word “visionary” as much as any working director today. Why is this? Is there some landmark in the directors’ bodies of work that justify these claims, or is it simply a matter of personal taste?

Gilliam gets praise immediately for his association with Monty Python — his artistry and involvement with the group that revolutionized comedy in the modern age solidifies his status as “important.” His Monty Python and the Holy Grail is an absolute classic, as is Brazil. He got some of the best performances out of Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt with 12 Monkeys. But then he’s got others: the aforementioned Munchausen, the critically panned Tideland, and the horrible Brothers Grimm.

Burton’s career kicked off with a bang — Edward Scissorhands is often considered his finest, followed by the blockbuster Batman and its sequel. He’s often associated with The Nightmare Before Christmas (a film he didn’t direct, but had incredible stylistic control over). But somewhere between those films and Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd, he fell out of favor with many.

This doesn’t seem to be a matter of possessing a classic embedded in your name — I would consider Nightmare, despite how Hot Topic culture has soiled the name, to be a classic of Burton’s. It seems to be a matter of engineering your films in a manner that matches your style. Gilliam has always been able to evolve his visuals — the design of 12 Monkeys is nothing like Holy Grail, but both are characteristically Gilliam. On the other hand, Burton collides his aesthetic with the subject material in ways that don’t necessarily congeal — Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an example of a story that simply doesn’t benefit from his designs.

I have a lot of hope in both Alice and Parnassus, though — the latter seems to be a wonderfully diverse film with Gilliam’s prevalent sense of bravado, while Alice seems to be diminishing Burton’s usual flair in an effort to capture the essence of the original story. This is Tim Burton’s chance to prove he’s an excellent storyteller once again, and not simply a great artist with an acquired taste. To see both of these directors go head to head within four months of each other is an exciting prospect.

Philip and I (above) will be there for your Comic-Con goodness!

What am I talking about when it comes to Thursday? Well I’m referring to the lovely absolutely wonderful list of panels to check out at this year’s 40th San Diego Comic-Con International. Amongst the glitz and glamour that the Con has brought into its hallways amongst the burst of popularity on comic book adaptations, the pure love of all things comics still reigns supreme.

From James Cameron’s Avatar, Terry Gilliam’s the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus to Summit Entertainment’s Twilight Saga: New Moon, there are plenty of movies to choose from. Those of us here from Atomic Popcorn will be going to the Con, so we will have by the hour updates on each big time panel from comics, television and movies and some interviews for you to watch as well. Interested in seeing what the list is? Tired of me typing and want to get your list ready so you can figure out how early you have to show up in front of Hall H to see your most anticipated panel of the day? Check out Thursday’s Comic-Con Schedule here and keep your eyes peeled. By the end of the weekend, the entire schedule will most likely be listed, so we will keep you up to date on that and everything else Comic-Con right here!