Terry Gilliam gets to grips on the set of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

It was way back in 2005 that Terry Gilliam last managed to get a film on to a cinema screen. That was the ‘commercially toxic’ and ‘gruesomely awful,’ Tideland which while arguably being his most visually expressive work to date, even the best spin his long time friend and Monty Python cohort Michael ‘Mr Nice’ Palin could muster was the half-hearted “it is either the best thing he has ever done, or the worst, I can’t quite decide either way.�

Critical maulings have, however, been the least of Gilliam’s past woes, and never more so than his upcoming release The Imaginarium of Dr Parnussus (September 2009). Even in the myriad of mishaps causing the abandonment of his Don Quixote fill project documented in Lost in La Mancha, which have unfortunately come to typify his career, he has yet to contend with the death of his lead actor. But when the tragic death of Heath Ledger was announced last year, Gilliam’s cult of fans couldn’t help but place head in hand upon noticing that Ledger was barely two months into production of the jinxed director’s latest project. But for once there was a silver lining, the dreamlike plot of the film allowed for a certain artistic license in casting which meant that Ledger’s final work on screen could be salvaged. Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law were drafted in to complete his character’s unfinished scenes and donated their fees to a trust fund for the deceased actor’s infant daughter.

Gilliam hasn’t been so lucky in the past, he grew to prominence in the 1970s as Monty Python’s in house animator and when the group moved to the big screen, his role evolved into that of director. This, along with his early post-Python low-budget work (Time Bandits, Brazil et al), was highly lauded for its flights of surrealist fantasy, quirky visual glitches and trademark deep-lens focus. All was to change when he was granted his first big budget feature The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a film which, along with the name, Gilliam would become synonymous with extravagant fiasco. Gilliam’s uncompromising approach to creativity and the expensive special effects and set and costume design led to the film doubling it’s already purportedly large budget and then went on to flop commercially. The animosity surrounding the film’s production forever tarred Gilliam’s name as far as the studios were concerned, which somewhat explains why he has only managed to finish ten films in over thirty years behind the camera and the reason he wasn’t handed the Harry Potter franchise despite being JK Rowling’s first choice for the job.
And so an added intrigue becomes attached to The Imaginarium, as it might be Gilliam’s last chance to impress his credentials as a writer and director who can be trusted with a budget large enough to support his artistic vision.

The stellar cast and morbid fascination of Ledger’s last performance (he ad-libbed large parts of the dialogue) should provide a willing audience and media anticipation for a film he both penned (jointly with Chris McKeown, who he is working with for the first time since Munchausen) and had complete creative control over. It presents itself as the perfect opportunity for his redemption, potentially showcasing enough of the brilliant and bizarre unhinged dystopias of his greatest successes (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Twelve Monkeys) while simultaneously providing valuable receipts to eclipse the financers prejudices against him by creating a ready market for his future productions.

Thus this allows him the an opportunity to recast the image of his career: rather than the Quixotic figure of the Lost in La Mancha who is beset by failure and tortuous luck, he is a visionary director with a uniquely intricate and fantastical eye that could only be constrained by budget.

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnussus is out this summer TBA

By David Ellis