Tony: If he has the power to control people's minds, why doesn't he rule the world?Anton: He doesn't want to rule the world—he wants the world to rule itself.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus hinges on that bit of dialogue. It is the story of a traveling show that seems strangely disjointed from time. The story takes place in the present day, but the horse-drawn show seems much more like something from the Victorian era. In fact, the owner of the show is immortal. He's been at this for centuries, maybe millennia. He has the power to guide people's imaginations when they enter the world inside his magical mirror. There they face choices to be made—choices that may lead to happiness or to sorrow.

What is really going on is a game between a pair of demigods: Dr. Parnassus, who hopes people will choose well, and Mr. Nick, who entices them to other choices. The gift of immortality may not be a good as we think. Parnassus has grown weary and bored. He continues in his work more out of momentum than any sense of mission. Through the centuries these two have made a series of bets on who could gather a certain number of souls first. Losing one of those bets years ago meant that Parnassus's daughter Valentina is due to go to Mr. Nick on her sixteenth birthday. A few days before she comes of age, Mr. Nick offers another bet—first to five souls gets to keep her.

All of this is told through the wonderfully fantastical imagination of Terry Gilliam who has previously created bizarre worlds in films like Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen. We go back and forth between the surreal world inside the Imaginarium, where people's true nature comes out, and the real world where Parnassus and his troupe are perhaps more fantastic than what is imagined.

It must be noted that the making of the film itself acquired a sense of surrealism. This film may be best known as the film Heath Ledger was making when he died. Such a tragedy could well have doomed the film. Gilliam's first reaction was to scrap the project. Instead, with a little rewriting Gilliam added Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law to replace Ledger in the role of Tony and completed the film. The three substitutes play Tony inside the Imaginarium. The result actually works very well. If one didn't know the reasoning behind the changes, it would be easy to assume that Gilliam had this in mind the whole time.

Although "good" and "evil" really don't come into play in the film, the choices people must make are always the way offered by a benevolent Dr. Parnassus and the way offered by the somewhat creepy and vile Mr. Nick. Nick really doesn't have to do much to lure souls away from Parnassus. Inside the Imaginarium, people are confronted with a way that may lead to happiness, but it isn't always an easy way. Often it seems to be a long stairway made of four-foot high steps that must be climbed one by one. Off to the side is a little roadhouse with Mr. Nick's neon sign. It is reminiscent of a passage from Jesus' teaching from the Sermon on the Mount: "For the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

The game being played between Dr. Parnassus and Mr. Nick for an occasional soul isn't so much a cosmic battle of good and evil as it is an exposition of the way people are constantly exercising free will. Free will is the gift God entrusts to humankind as an offer of a chance (as Anton tells Tony) for us to rule the world. Sometimes we may be willing to follow dreams that are difficult—even seemingly impossible. Other times we may opt for the easy road that looks to be more comfortable and achievable. Perhaps one of the paths leading to "destruction" is failure to imagine. Maybe that is a part of what it means to live by faith: that there can be more to life than what we see.

Imaginarium offers us a chance to consider our willingness to enter the world inside Parnassus's mirror/mind. It is a leap of the imagination, and quite possibly a step in faith.