Heath Ledger's swan song, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,* explores a possible union of a shadowy Eastern philosophy (closer to Buddhism than anything else) with the Western Devil-as-Great-Tempter. The titular imaginarium is a gateway Parnassus creates, through which audience members can travel into their own imaginations.
Within their world-construct, the e'er-smoking and smooth-talking Devil offers the temptation of the audience member's most-desired material possession {alcohol, sex, normalcy} while Parnassus offers a transcendental Nirvana. The path to Parnassus's option is often hard {in the distance, up a ziggurat, in the clouds} but the Devil's choice immediately implodes, taking the soul with it.
Heath Ledger smooth talks the souls into taking Parnassus's option, which results in their renunciation of material possessions - which they then give to the troupe. The Order of the Imaginarium thus show the paradox of their position: while attempting to save people from the illusion of samsara, they are themselves trapped on the outskirts of society by their rickety show, by their appearance as stereotypical carnies/gypies, by their carnal desires.
What's more, the film emphasizes the modern vanity - the supreme importance of a singular choice that will forever trap the soul in samsara, or release it to nirvana, when human experience is never so clean, never so easy to encapsulate in the run-time of 120 minutes. Even if the soul chooses the "arduous" journey, it receives instant gratification, and we are meant not to ask just what happens to the individuals who have given up all of their credit cards and furs and riches. They presumably have wrought themselves into a state of poverty and suffering, but we should rejoice because they have reached, in the "A-B-C-s" of enlightenment, "z"?
* 2009, Sony Pictures (et al). Written and directed by Terry Gilliam.
1 comment:
Oh, Terry Gilliam.
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