So Dr. Parnassus has a gambling problem. He just can't seem to stop making deals with the devil. First he won himself eternal life, then true love. Except in order to achieve the latter, he had to make a bargain: the devil would get the doctor's daughter on her sixteenth birthday. As the lovely young Valentina rapidly approaches that age, it seems like all hope is lost until a stranger stumbles upon Parnassus and his traveling show, a stranger with many secrets - and plans that may save Valentina after all.
Visually, this movie is a psychedelic trip. The gimmick is that Parnassus, once he goes into a trance, can send people into a world of their own imagination, and as you might surmise, no matter how dull a person may seem, his or her imagination is generally a rich and dazzling place. Also a very, very weird place. Amidst all this phantasmagoria, there are madcap adventures aplenty and possibly also some philosophical questions about the nature of destiny and choice and the power of stories. Possibly.
I say possibly because most of the time I was trying to figure out what was even going on. There are a lot of interesting threads here, but director Terry Gilliam seems to have opted for handing us the work of tying the ends together and choosing to focus - at the expense of, you know, plot and characterization - on imagery. The film's focus is confused, giving us no obvious lens or point of view through which to see the events. We're instead left watching a group of insiders, people who always know exactly or near exactly what is going on and are not telling us. They are dressed in beautiful glitzy clothing and they draw us briefly into their imaginary world with expert performances and promises of magic. And they take us somewhere, just not all the way there.
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