When I saw a third of this movie, I suddenly thought of a Taiwanese fantasy TV series "The Eighth Pawnshop". You can choose to pawn what belongs to you in this pawnshop in exchange for what you want. Therefore, some people exchange their taste for talent here, some people exchange their children for their careers, some people exchange their vision for their mother-daughter relationship, and some people exchange their love for the applause of the world. The Doctor in this movie got a chance to bet with the devil, if he can defeat the devil, he can get eternal life. The Doctor won 12 believers first and then got eternal life. The doctor who can live forever only realizes that this kind of eternal life cannot coexist with love after encountering love. So he exchanged with the devil again, using his daughter's life after the age of 16 in exchange for love. When his daughter was 16, he tried to save his daughter with a gamble. The condition is to see the doctor and the devil who wins the souls of five people first. At this time, a fake philanthropist with amnesia joins the Doctor's magic show.
From the thread of the whole film, it seems to be exploring human desires. He kept exchanging his own things with the devil, but he didn't know that he stepped into the ambush of the devil's subordinates step by step. One day, he suddenly realized that he could no longer redeem himself. Fortunately, the devil the Doctor encountered had a little conscience, otherwise he could only imprison his soul in a glass bottle like in "The Eighth Pawnshop".
In fact, looking at the film from another angle, you can also see the director's irony about the world. Hundreds of years ago, when the doctor was a monk, he was "telling stories" to everyone. When a few hundred years later, the high-ranking doctor became a clown. To modern people, the so-called fantasy show is more like a clown. It's a circus. There were people coming and going in front of the stage, and no one stopped to see what the Doctor's world of consciousness could offer him. As the Doctor himself said, the world has changed and no one listens to the stories anymore. Therefore, when the doctor's fantasy show has attracted many rich women to spend a lot of money just to see fantasy after the makeover, the gambling between the doctor and the devil has become a contest between modern people's material and spiritual pursuits.
What everyone sees in the Doctor's conscious world is the dream world in his subconscious. Here, drunkards see beautiful women, children see fairy tales, rich women see all kinds of luxury goods, and girls see love. If we see such a fantasy show on the street, should we stop to see our dreams and experience the world of calls that we can't get in reality?
View more about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus reviews