Heath Ledger’s final on screen performance in Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ premiered at Cannes last night. We have some brand new images from the film and snippets of the first published reviews after the break…
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” from cult director Terry Gilliam had it’s first screening in Cannes last night, and some early reviews are already starting to surface. The film features the last ever performance of the late Heath Ledger, who passed away before filming was completed. In order to finish the film and pay tribute to Heath, Gilliam reached out to stars Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to complete the film in a twist that would see each actor play an alternate version of Ledger’s character.
Gilliam spoke to reporters in Cannes about the process of completing the film after Heath’s tragic death, saying: “The choice I made was to close the film down, I couldn’t see how we could finish it without Heath because we were in the middle of production. Fortunately, I was surrounded by really good people who insisted that I shouldn’t be such a lazy bastard and I’d better go out and find a way of finishing the film for Heath.”
On the casting of the actors to complete the film, he continued: “I started calling friends — Johnny Depp, and he said ‘I’m there’. And I basically was just calling people who knew and loved Heath. Everyone in the cast and everyone in the crew was determined that this film would be finished and everybody worked longer, harder and somehow we got through. It was really … people’s love for Heath that propelled this thing forward.”
We have collected a few snippets for you from the earliest published reviews of the film, and you can also find a gallery of just released still images below.
The Guardian says: “Heath Ledger takes a poignant final bow in Terry Gilliam’s loopy, sweet-natured but madly self-indulgent fantasia The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, showing here at the Cannes film festival out of competition….. When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. The moments when Plummer’s face looms hugely out of the hallucinatory landscape are great: a reminder of the old Python magic. But the film’s convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how “imaginative” everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were – the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum, with some very broad acting from the bit-part crowd players. Gilliam’s previous movie Tideland showed he still has teeth, and he bares them occasionally here. The dark side reveals itself, time and again, in the ruined, unsentimental locations in London. But this movie, though perfectly amiable, could be for fans only.”
Ain’t It Cool says: “THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is pure, unadulterated, unhomogenized, unrestricted Terry Gilliam. You see the best of all of his past work, including a scene (involving cops) that could have pranced right out of Python sketch. A return to form? Yeah, I think you could say that. It’s certainly a welcome return to fantasy, especially when we’re given such a flawed character as Tony to be our lead. I can see why Ledger was attracted to this role. Without giving anything away, you’ll think you know exactly where they’re going with him and his character about a quarter of the way through the movie and I’m telling you right now… You’re dead wrong. Let’s just say this character would not exist in a studio film. I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of word about the movie out of Cannes. I’m sure you’ll see those passionately against the film and those passionately for it, like all of his best work. Love it or hate it, this is pure Terry Gilliam.”
