The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Heath Ledger died midway through the shoot. He had completed all his real-world scenes as Tony - a slippery, seductive drifter who falls in with a travelling magical theatre. But he had shot none of the scenes set inside the film's enchanted mirror-world where reality bends and identities dissolve.

Terry Gilliam could have abandoned THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS. Instead he asked what the film was actually about, and found his answer already built into it.

Inside the Imaginarium, Tony changes face. He becomes Johnny Depp, then Jude Law, then Colin Farrell - three separate actors each playing a different version of the same mercurial, untrustworthy man.

What could have been a desperate workaround becomes something more resonant than the original plan might have been. Tony was always a character about deception, reinvention, and the impossibility of pinning someone down. The shifting faces only reinforce that idea.

All three actors donated their fees from the film to Ledger's daughter Matilda.

Gilliam has made a career out of beautiful, chaotic, compromised films - Brazil, The Fisher King, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - but this is the one where the chaos was not just behind the camera but also inside it, where real grief became part of the film's visual grammar.