So I Finally Saw It...
Published by J. M. Adkison under on 10:34 AM
So I am currently in Brussels, Belgium using a computer in the hostel lobby. Due to the fact that everything (from museums to fountains) is closed on Mondays-which is the only day we are here-we decided to go see a movie since a movie theater is located right across the street. Somehow, I got my friends to see "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus". Yes, it is the same movie title that inspired the title of this blog.
For those of you who don't know what this movie is about, don't ask me because I still don't know. It was one of the strangest movies I have ever seen in my life-and I still don't know if I really liked it. The beginning of it was great and had all of things I loved in a good movie...then it went downhill around the middle-and by the end it was nearly unbearable. I do not think that I have ever seen a movie where I loved it in the beginning and hated it in the end.
Alright, so a little bit on what the movie was about...I think...
A thousand years ago there was a monk named Parnassus who led a brotherhood that constantly told a story every minute of every day and every night, and they believed that if they stopped telling this story the world would end. One day a dark rider comes to the monastery with a proposal for Parnassus. The dark rider turns out to be the devil who tries to kill Parnassus's faith by stealing the voices of all the monks. But Parnassus, even with the devil's tricks, is not swayed and is determined that the story is being told elsewhere in the world, just in another version. So the devil and Parnassus make a game to see who can sway more humans to stories and imagination or to vanities and feeble desires.
A thousand years later and Parnassus is still making debts with the devil, but living in a world where he is losing more than winning. Because of a deal done ages ago, any of Parnassus's children would belong to the devil once he or she reached 16 years. Parnassus's daughter, Valentina, is nearing 16 and the devil is ready to collect his due. But Parnassus is still determined to win the game. So he travels across the world in a make-shift stage and carriage, with his magic mirror that allows people to enter the Imaginarium, a world limited only by your imagination. Within the Imaginarium, Parnassus tries to point contestants in the right direction toward purity and fulfillment. But the devil is always waiting in the Imaginarium, ready to use the human's vice to deter them.
The Imaginarium is fantastic. But it is not a dream world seen in so many other movies where animals talk and wizards battle, this is a world where all of your hopes and dreams exist in surreal form, quickly followed by your nightmares and fears. It is a world of a human mind, containing both pure and impure thoughts, and sometimes you can't tell the difference between the two. Both the devil and Parnassus are able to manipulate the Imaginarium to their own ends, but the human decides to follow Parnassus or the devil.
The rest of the story unfolds when the theater troupe that travels with the mirror and Parnassus discover a mysterious man named Tony, who has many, many secrets of his own. Tony is a wild card that neither Parnassus or the devil expected, but use to keep the game going. As Valentina falls for Tony and her birthday nears, Parnassus must find a way to save his daughter's soul.
I enjoyed the surreal Imaginarium, which was full of amazing effects and wondrous scenes. But Tony ruined it all with his lack of imaginative skill and yearning to be rich and powerful, corrupting the Imaginarium-where the movie goes down hill.
While the movie overall was strange and hard to follow, and there were some subtle stabs at Christianity (film-makers nowadays have nothing better to do than make those sort of jabs-they think they are being different but just fitting a mold a thousand other filmmakers have fit into of the ages).
But the idea of a world where our imagination alone crafts the physics and limitations is amazing to me. It is a world where everything you want to happens, happens in a glorious instant. So, I think I'll keep the title.
For those of you who don't know what this movie is about, don't ask me because I still don't know. It was one of the strangest movies I have ever seen in my life-and I still don't know if I really liked it. The beginning of it was great and had all of things I loved in a good movie...then it went downhill around the middle-and by the end it was nearly unbearable. I do not think that I have ever seen a movie where I loved it in the beginning and hated it in the end.
Alright, so a little bit on what the movie was about...I think...
A thousand years ago there was a monk named Parnassus who led a brotherhood that constantly told a story every minute of every day and every night, and they believed that if they stopped telling this story the world would end. One day a dark rider comes to the monastery with a proposal for Parnassus. The dark rider turns out to be the devil who tries to kill Parnassus's faith by stealing the voices of all the monks. But Parnassus, even with the devil's tricks, is not swayed and is determined that the story is being told elsewhere in the world, just in another version. So the devil and Parnassus make a game to see who can sway more humans to stories and imagination or to vanities and feeble desires.
A thousand years later and Parnassus is still making debts with the devil, but living in a world where he is losing more than winning. Because of a deal done ages ago, any of Parnassus's children would belong to the devil once he or she reached 16 years. Parnassus's daughter, Valentina, is nearing 16 and the devil is ready to collect his due. But Parnassus is still determined to win the game. So he travels across the world in a make-shift stage and carriage, with his magic mirror that allows people to enter the Imaginarium, a world limited only by your imagination. Within the Imaginarium, Parnassus tries to point contestants in the right direction toward purity and fulfillment. But the devil is always waiting in the Imaginarium, ready to use the human's vice to deter them.
The Imaginarium is fantastic. But it is not a dream world seen in so many other movies where animals talk and wizards battle, this is a world where all of your hopes and dreams exist in surreal form, quickly followed by your nightmares and fears. It is a world of a human mind, containing both pure and impure thoughts, and sometimes you can't tell the difference between the two. Both the devil and Parnassus are able to manipulate the Imaginarium to their own ends, but the human decides to follow Parnassus or the devil.
The rest of the story unfolds when the theater troupe that travels with the mirror and Parnassus discover a mysterious man named Tony, who has many, many secrets of his own. Tony is a wild card that neither Parnassus or the devil expected, but use to keep the game going. As Valentina falls for Tony and her birthday nears, Parnassus must find a way to save his daughter's soul.
I enjoyed the surreal Imaginarium, which was full of amazing effects and wondrous scenes. But Tony ruined it all with his lack of imaginative skill and yearning to be rich and powerful, corrupting the Imaginarium-where the movie goes down hill.
While the movie overall was strange and hard to follow, and there were some subtle stabs at Christianity (film-makers nowadays have nothing better to do than make those sort of jabs-they think they are being different but just fitting a mold a thousand other filmmakers have fit into of the ages).
But the idea of a world where our imagination alone crafts the physics and limitations is amazing to me. It is a world where everything you want to happens, happens in a glorious instant. So, I think I'll keep the title.
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