The first thing I thought upon hearing about Heath Ledger's death was "Oh crap. Not again." Being a Terry Gilliam fan, I had already heard about Ledger (and more importantly, Tom Waits) being cast in Gilliam's latest project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. And although I think Lost In La Mancha is one of the most amazing documentaries ever made, I really wasn't ready for another Gilliam film to go belly-up. Thankfully Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown came up with a way to simultaneously keep Ledger in the film (and thus satisfy the movie's financial backers) and recast his role.

The title character of the movie, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), is a former monk and current sideshow mystic who has attained immortality through a series of wagers with The Devil, also known as Mr. Nick (Tom Waits). There is, of course, a price: Any child that Dr. Parnassus fathers belongs to Mr. Nick on their sixteenth birthday and the good doctor's only child, Valentina (Lilly Cole), only has a few days left as a 15-year-old. Fortunately for Parnassus, the devil is the sporting type, and offers him one last chance to save his daughter: the first to win five souls gets Valentina.

Before the contest can begin, Parnassus's troupe saves a man (Ledger) who has been strung up under a bridge. Although the man has amnesia, and Parnassus assumes him to be a servant of Mr. Nick, The Devil soon shows up and informs the doctor that the hanged man is Tony Sheppard, a disgraced philanthropist. Knowing that Tony is not working for The Devil, and trusting in his Tarot cards (which had earlier revealed The Hanged Man), Parnassus begins to believe that Tony can assist him in winning his latest wager with Mr. Nick.

The winning of souls from people takes place in "the imaginarium," which is a part of Dr. Parnassus's mind entered through a magical mirror while the doctor is in trance state. Once inside the imaginarium, which takes the form of a dream world specific to the person who entered, a person is asked to make a choice. The choice isn't so much between good and evil as between the mundane and the wondrous. Those who choose the former are destroyed, their souls taken by Mr. Nick. Those who choose wonder return to the outside world happier (and perhaps even better) people, and Parnassus is credited with the soul. Although Tony starts out as a sort of barker, luring people into the imaginarium, he soon finds himself regularly going through the mirror, each time with a different face (with the role taken over by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell) determined by the imagination of the person whose imagination is currently in control. The plot gets really good from there, but I can't say more without spoiling it.

As is to be expected from Gilliam, the visuals of the movie are absolutely incredible. They probably share the most in common with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (also co-written by McKeown), but there also several set pieces that look like Gilliam's Monty Python-era cartoons brought to life. Although Gilliam's lifelong exploration of imagination is the primary theme of the movie, darkness and death are always just below the surface, making a few scenes downright spooky in light of Ledger's demise during filming. One scene, for example, talks about Rudolph Valentino, James Dean, and Princess Di as people who died young and therefore gained a sort of immortality.

The acting in the movie is everything you'd expect from the cast. Plummer plays the role of the ancient, sometimes drunken mystic Parnassus with gravity and a perfectly subtle brand of humor. Verne Troyer, who plays the doctor's longtime friend and apprentice (who seems to have gained immortality along with Parnassus), proves himself to be a much better actor than his previous roles have allowed him to show. Lily Cole is appropriately beautiful and impetuous as Valentina. Andrew Garfield's Anton, who rounds out the Parnassus crew, is both a comic relief character and the glue that holds the group together, and Garfield pulls it off amazingly. As for Tom Waits as The Devil, he's exactly what you'd expect from Tom Waits playing The Devil, and therefore not to be missed.

That leaves Tony, the hanged man initially cast as Ledger. While by no means on par with his Joker performance, Ledger portrays Tony as smooth, cocky, and a little bit shady, and does a fine job. The truly amazing thing is the way Depp, Law, and Farrell step into the character when Tony steps through the mirror. Although the face is different, each of these actors is unquestionably playing the character that Leger has established without trying to out-Tony one another or put a new twist on the character. This may be due to the fact that, from what I've read, all three men were personal friends of Ledger who felt that their only job was to help bring the movie to completion (they even donated their paychecks to a trust fund for Ledger's daughter). In that light, Gilliam's decision to turn down Tom Cruise's offer to play Tony because he did not know Ledger personally was probably a wise one.

Although my favorite Terry Gilliam movie is usually whichever Terry Gilliam movie I've seen most recently, this is probably the most well-made film Gilliam has ever done. This is in part because special effects technology has finally caught up to Gilliam's imagination, but it goes well beyond the visuals or even the top-notch acting. The storytelling in this one is much more structured and (perhaps most importantly) much more accessible than some of Gilliam's other work. The only thing that might make this movie better is if Tom Waits had contributed to the score in addition to acting in the film.

Recommended: Yes