Having purchased it in DVD format earlier that day, during the evening of 2 May 2021 I watched one of the most extraordinary movies that I have ever seen. A joint Finnish-Canadian production entitled Imaginaerum: The Other World, it was part-dream, part-nightmare, part-fantasy, part-fading memories of a dying mind, and wholly spellbinding in its melancholy majesty and magic.
Directed by Stobe Harju, and released in 2012, Imaginaerum is the extraordinary cinematic brainchild of Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, who perform in several musical segments throughout this film and have released an accompanying eponymous concept album. No Hollywood stars appear in Imaginaerum, but this is fitting, because the movie itself is the star here.
Replete with flashbacks and potentially baffling albeit beautiful phantasmagorical imagery, the storyline of Imaginaerum is intricate and by no means easy to follow, especially upon first viewing, unless you have read anything about it in advance. As this happens to be a movie that I had indeed read about earlier (after having seen its DVD once before, a year or so ago, but failing to buy it back then as I wasn't at all sure what to make of it from its cover's description), I was thankfully equipped with a basic knowledge of what to expect, which proved exceedingly useful.
I have seen Imaginaerum billed as a Tim Burtonesque movie, but in my view it is much more mesmerizing yet far less macabre than his general output. Having said that, it does feature some seriously sinister, fright-inducing clowns, plus the most hideous, terrifyingly evil snowman that I have ever seen. The morbid fear of clowns has its very own official term, coulurophobia. After watching this movie, I feel very emphatically that there should also be one for the morbid fear of snowmen, for if you weren't suffering from it beforehand, you may well be afterwards! And in fact there is such a term, chionoandrophobia – so now you know!
As for this movie's inordinately intricate plot: here is my valiantly attempt to unravel and summarise it.
SPOILER ALERT: If you do not want to know the plot of Imaginaerum, read no further.
It begins with a young woman, Gem, at the hospital bedside of her elderly father, Thomas Whitman, a former musician but now in a coma due to advanced dementia. Gem has been estranged from him since childhood, as he has always seemed so distant and disinterested in her. Meanwhile, comatose Thomas's mind has regressed into a dark fantasy world where he is once again a child, a young orphan at the orphanage where he grew up, along with his friend Ann, after his mother had died and his father had placed him there. Playing for a while one evening with seemingly his only notable possession, a snow globe containing a dancing lady, Arabesque, he hears someone calling to him from his shuttered window, and when he opens the window, floating outside is the afore-mentioned frightening snowman, who calls himself Mr White and offers to take Thomas flying through the sky with him.
However, you can forget any similarity with the famous 'Walking In The Air' scene from the classic cartoon version of Raymond Briggs's children's story 'The Snowman'. Here in Imaginaerum, Mr White takes Thomas on a wild and scary aerial journey, in which they chase after Thomas's airman father Theodore's plane, before Thomas eventually falls precipitously to earth, where he encounters a broken-down rollercoaster track symbolizing his failing mind, and a mechanic symbolizing his physician who states that it is beyond repair. Gem is also there, as a young girl, who agrees with the mechanic, symbolizing her adult lack of empathy and sympathy for Thomas as her elderly father. Thomas also meets an elderly Ann, who warns him that Mr White is evil and not to be trusted.
After entering a house where a spooky musical/circus performance is taking place, featuring creepy clowns aplenty, Thomas enters a room where his father Theodore is sitting, only to see him shoot himself dead. An older Thomas is also present, who smashes the younger's snow globe, which symbolizes the older, traumatised Thomas becoming distant from Gem.
The story then switches back into the real world, where Gem has left the hospital and returned home, only to find the now-elderly Ann there. Ann turns out to have stayed friends with Thomas throughout their lives, becoming a member of his band, and the source of much resentment from Gem, who feels that Thomas was more interested in Ann than in her, his own daughter. However, Ann explains that Thomas's father, Theodore, had always been very distant and cruel to Thomas, causing him so much unhappiness that Thomas became determined not to be the same toward his own child, Gem. Tragically, however, his fear led him to pull away from her and, as a result, precisely what he'd tried to avoid duly took place – an estrangement between him and Gem that Gem had never been able to understand, until now – never having previously realized just how much he did, and still does, love her. Gem then finds a trunk containing many sheets of paper upon which Thomas had written in the form of an intricate pattern as many of his thoughts and memories as possible before his dementia took them from him. And as Gem attempts to arrange them in their correct form, she discovers more proof of his love for her.
Gem and Ann drive back to the hospital, during which time in his dying mind's fantasy world Thomas finally realizes that the malevolent Mr White represents his baneful father, Theodore. So he flees on the rollercoaster, relinquishing the snowman and therefore the bitter memories of Theodore that it embodies, and holding on to his last memories of his daughter Gem instead. Thomas opens his eyes, back in the real world at last, and sees Gem standing beside him. They make their peace, then Thomas closes his eyes for the last time, passing away in the knowledge that his daughter now recognises that he did love her, very much. There is a very poignant final scene that takes place when Gem returns home, featuring her late father's Arabesque snow globe, but I'll leave you to discover that for yourself.
Imaginaerum is appositely entitled – a haunting but fascinating exploration and depiction of human imagination, a veritable dream captured on celluloid forever.
If you would like to experience a fleeting foray into the rarefied 'other world' of Nightwish's Imaginaerum, be sure to click here in order to watch an official trailer for this dark yet truly mesmerizing movie.
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Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly
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