This is a film that didn't have a huge budget considering what it could have achieved.
Maybe it's a film for actors- about waiting around for the show and the spectacle to start. The highlight is the Pythonesque policeman bit. Apart from that, it was like watching too short extracts from Willy Wonka and The Wizard of Oz.
It's a bit like a more static, stagey, version of Baron Munchausen.
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watch it again. Heath Ledger gives the best performance in the film, although Tom Waits and Chris Plummer are right behind him, and Andrew Garfield does pretty well also.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'
oh also, it's interesting actually what you say about it being "a film for actors", I never heard anybody say it quite like that before but hmmmm maybe. A film for storytellers and writers too, honestly. I like when Valentina gets mad at Parnassus: "you always stop in the middle of your stories!"
There's a lot of expectation on an "artist", the final product of your work is supposed to be something that is just amazing and transports everybody to some magical place. But the reader, or the viewer, has to do some of the work! Magic doesn't just happen everyday, like that. Plus, most artists are alcoholics or drug addicts. So you can only expect so much out of artists and "creative" people.
I mean, it's entertaining to me to see a guy who's made big-budget action movies with people like Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt, who's battled with the movie industry itself since the very beginning when he snuck in through the back door of Monty Python, sending out a film that's basically a big "F U" to half the audience and most of the industry. Maybe it's somewhat coded or symbolic but it's pretty easy to see.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'