Doctor Parnassus, like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, is a Terry Gilliam film in the service of a few wonderful visuals that doesn't quite hang together as a storytelling device. But Gilliam has made movies with the same elements that work: why does Brazil succeed while Parnassus fails? At first blush, I can't quite put my finger on it.
They both have surreal dream sequence-like scenes interspersed with the action in the "real world", and both feature love stories set against near-impossible odds. Could the difference really be as simple as:
- in Brazil, Sam and Jill love one another, we are invested in that relationship, and we (and they) understand what is keeping them apart, while
- in Parnassus, there is no appreciable mutual love between Anton and Valentine; it's all one-sided, and neither of them understands the danger from Mr. Nick through most of the film. For that matter, I don't really feel like I understand the history between Parnassus and Mr. Nick well enough. There's a scene in which Parnassus starts to tell Valentine of his history with the devil, but is interrupted, and Valentine complains that he never tells her the rest of the story. I have the same complaint.
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