Steph returned from the City of Lost Angels Saturday evening, so we spent yesterday reveling, browsing bookstores, and wandering the frozen Common, and topped the evening off with a pleasant Chinese dinner where I got a chance to embarrass myself in rapidfire conversation with a gaggle of waitresses (I’m much less sure on my feet with Mandarin than I was in Anhui, though maybe I remember myself being more awesome than I really was).  Afterward, well-fed and happy, we staggered to the AMC for an evening inside Terry Gilliam’s head at the newly released Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Imaginarium massively improves with your acquaintance with its principals.  The more you know Tom Waits, for example, the more awesome his turn as a gambling addict Devil; the more familiar you are with Terry Gilliam’s particular brand of insanity, the more intuitive sense the surrealistic visuals within the Imaginarium will make.  A great deal of the draw to this movie will probably arise from Heath Ledger’s turn as Tony, The Mysterious Stranger, and that’s well-deserved; as Tony he devours the film a bit less than he did as the Joker in The Dark Knight, but he portrays a fiendishly complicated character nonetheless.

Gilliam’s awesome visuals catch the eye, but at its heart this is an actor’s film- the main plot revolves completely around the choices our imaginations allow us (or don’t), and this places an immense burden on the actors to become characters who make sense even after the audience has seen the inside of their minds.  Plummer, Waits, and Ledger own their screen time, and the other mains, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer, and the fascinatingly bow-mouthed Lily Cole all push their envelopes.

The ending leaves a good bit up to interpretation; I don’t expect anything less from a movie about art and decisions, and while I think I know what’s going on, I’d much rather leave you to decide for yourself.  Go prepared with a friend & have a pleasant place in mind to sit and chat afterwards.  Also, by way of warning, while this isn’t a funny movie per se, it probably helps to be in a Monty Python-ish mood for madness.

If you’re like me, one main concern will be how you can find a copy of the “We Are the Children of the World” ringtone Gilliam uses throughout the film; I haven’t found it yet, but I’ll let you know if I do.