Film gets by with help from friends
Quad, Derby Market Place, tomorrow, 2pm.
DR Parnassus' travelling sideshow arrives in town and Tony (Heath Ledger) is swept into a world of dwarfs, devils and anything else that the imagination has to offer.
Filming hit a snag, to say the least, with the death of Ledger, partway through.
Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight, only completed around half of his scenes and at one point director Terry Gilliam's modern fantasy appeared to be moribund.
But Ledger's friends and Gilliam's imagination enabled the movie to be completed.
Ledger managed to complete virtually all the sequences shot in our world but not any of the scenes in the alternate realities created by Dr Parnassus (Christopher Plummer).
So now, when he steps through Parnassus' mirror his face changes and he's played in turn by his old friends Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell. In a crazy film such as this, the deceit is barely even noticed and each of the trio of co-stars brings a little extra to the film.
Each week, Quad and the Derby Telegraph present a midweek film matinee. Every Wednesday at 2pm, Derby Telegraph film critic Nigel Powlson introduces a film. Tickets cost £5 (£4 conc), which includes refreshments.
Next week: A tale of hippies and rock music in Taking Woodstock (Cert 15) on Wednesday at 2pm.
FINAL ROLE: Heath Ledger
Comment on this story