The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is the latest film from Terry Gilliam since Tideland. It’s about a travelling performing troupe that invites people to enter into a magic mirror and explore their imaginations. We learn that the reason they do this is part of a bet that the troupe’s leader, Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) made with the Devil (Tom Waits). Parnassus is to collect a certain number of souls, failing which, he must give up his daughter (Lily Cole). This film is also notable for being the last film to star Heath Ledger who plays a slick businessman whom we first meet dangling by his neck from a bridge. His entrepreneurial knack provides a boost for the troupe when the Devil visits to collect his dues.

Heath Ledger died in the middle of production on Parnassus which, besides being a tragedy in its own right, threw a spanner in the works for the film. Gilliam’s solution is to have several different actors playing Ledger’s character, including Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. The explanation given in the film is that Heath’s face changes after passing through the mirror to serve the fantasy of whoever passes through the mirror with him. Despite being an obvious patch up to save the production, this actually adds an interesting dimension to the film.

The big draw card of this film is the spectacular visuals. Terry Gilliam has a natural tendency towards anarchy in his mise-en-scene. And like in Twelve Monkeys, he creates a great juxtaposition between a gritty dystopic contemporary reality and high fantasy. One of the great pleasures of Terry Gilliam’s films is his use of architecture. Twelve Monkeys could only be as affecting as it because of the spaces Gilliam envisions of decaying streets, abandoned buildings overrun with junkies, the austere mental asylum.

Terry Gilliam’s appreciation for architecture backfired on him during production of 12 Monkeys after being sued by the experimental architect Lebbeus Woods who rightfully claimed that Gilliam had plagiarised his work. But you know, it shows that Gilliam has taste. How could you not appreciate an architect who, faced with the prospect of designing the reconstruction of the World Trade Centre site, envisioned an enormous structure under perpetual construction which would grow continually to remain the world’s largest building? This guy is crazy awesome.

Where Terry Gilliam is most deficient is in his writing. I have a theory that Gilliam’s best films remain watchable because of outside screenwriters. Brazil had playwright Tom Stoppard’s gifts (Shakespeare in Love, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) and was based heavily on Orwell’s 1984. Twelve Monkeys was written by David (of Blade Runner fame) and Janet Peoples and based on Chris Marker’s La Jetée.

One of the really irritating things about the movie is Gilliam’s grandstanding. He obviously sees himself as Doctor Parnassus, a wise sage whose fantastic genius is no longer appreciated by the modern world. Heath Ledger’s character by comparison represents Hollywood: while he brings the troupe commercial success, he does so at the expense of corrupting their act with his flashy showmanship and bankrupt morals. Gilliam’s self-image becomes incredibly messianic when we find out about Parnassus’ golden age of winning over the souls of the masses with the pleasures of enlightenment and the power of the imagination.

Which brings me to my main problem with Parnassus: its peculiarly conservative morality. The character of Doctor Parnassus may be envisioned as a semi-eastern medecine man but the moral regime that Gilliam sets up is informed predominantly by the Judeo-Christian tradition: When people enter the Imaginarium they are faced with a choice and the wrong choice leads them to the Devil. Some of the choices are: going to the pub rather than climbing a steep cliff to enlightenment; or going on a boat rather than dragging Johnny Depp to a sex motel. Personally I would choose sex and alcohol over rock-climbing and boat trips probably nine times out of ten and it’s weird for Gilliam to categorise these acts in terms of good and evil. It’s disappointing that the anarchy of Gilliam’s visual style is betrayed by the narrative’s moralising.

Also disappointing is the film’s ending which, besides not making a lick of sense, unproblematically conceives of a happy ending for the character of Lily Cole as a state of domestic bliss. And not just any domestic bliss, but a retrograde fifties-style domesticity that has been constructed entirely from magazines and brochures. It would appear that the freedom of Gilliam’s imagination is not all that free.

Still, I prefer Gilliam’s flawed films to the by-the-numbers whimsy of Tim Burton. Gilliam has retained an admirable unwillingness to commodify his particular brand of fantastical imagery. Now he just needs to get himself a proper writer.

[Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and is currently based in Tokyo.]