Heath Ledger’s final movie will open in theaters across the US this weekend, giving fans one last chance to see him on the big screen. In a bold move, director Terry Gilliam opted to complete The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law filling the role vacated when Heath Ledger died in 2008. All three actors agreed to donate their earnings in this film to Heath’s daughter, Matilda.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is the second Heath Ledger movie released since his untimely death. The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan’s follow up to Batman Begins, was released July 18, 2008 to nearly universal acclaim and garnered Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar for his dark and deranged portrayal of the Joker.
Heath Ledger was only 28 years old when he died of an accidental drug overdose on January 22, 2008, cutting short what many believe would have been a long and successful acting career. Heath had been nominated in 2006 for the Academy Award For Best Actor for his role in Brokeback Mountain and had received considerable praise for one so young. A year after he passed, he was posthumously awarded the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009 for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight.
Many thought The Dark Knight would be Heath Ledger’s final movie, but he had already begun filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in London in the fall of 2007. Terry Gilliam considered other options, he might have recast Ledger or he might have created an animated sequence, but in the end he chose to use other actors, friends of Ledger, to flesh out the role and complete the movie.
Reviewers’ responses vary for Terry Gilliam’s solution to the problem of completing The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus without Heath. Gilliam took the footage of Heath he had shot in London and then created an alternative world which Ledger’s character enters and changes form into one of the replacement actors (first Depp, then Law, then Farrell). It is a creative risk that fans are sure to appreciate now that they have a chance to see Heath Ledger’s final movie this week.
