Images via Just Jared
Wikipedia describes the film's plot thus:
In the present day, immortal 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) leads a traveling theater troupe that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession. Members of the troupe include a sleight of hand expert, Anton (Andrew Garfield), and a dwarf (Verne Troyer), Percy Parnassus had been able to guide the imagination of others through a deal with the Devil (Tom Waits), who now comes to collect on the arrangement, targeting the doctor's daughter (Lily Cole). The troupe, which is joined by a mysterious outsider named Tony (portrayed by Ledger, Depp, Law, and Farrell),embark through parallel worlds to rescue the girl.
Vanity Fair, meanwhile, notes on it's August 10th issue:
"The phantasmagorical dreamscapes in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus are, judging by the newly released trailer, as wildly, awesomely imaginative as anything director Terry Gilliam has done since his absurdist animations in Monty Python’s Flying Circus: stepping stones floating among cosmically large high-heeled shoes; Tom Waits morphing into a cobra snake; a hot-air balloon (that Gilliam staple) made of a dozen faces; giant flying jellyfish… (As a diehard fan of Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, another film that dissolves the curtain between theater and fantasy, I was disappointed only by the extent to which the director has relied on computer graphics to craft his illusions.)
The film was Heath Ledger’s last. From the few clips we of his performance, Ledger’s manic theatricality stands up to Gilliam’s, and might even live up to his own Oscar-winning tour-de-force as the Joker in The Dark Knight. In the August issue, Peter Biskind wrote about the actor’s final days—he died of a lethal mix of prescription medication halfway through the filming of Parnassus—and about how working on this film provided Ledger with daily respite from personal tumult".
Other Heath Ledger posts in Lunatica
A humble tribute to Heath Ledger
Possibly last video footage of Heath alive
Heath Ledger portrait nominated for award
Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell to sub for Heath in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus