CANNES -- Exactly 16 months to the day since Heath Ledger died in his Manhattan apartment, the doomed actor's "ghost" re-appeared at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday.

The appearance took place in Terry Gilliam's chaotic film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

The film itself will drive critics and audiences crazy.

It will generate reviews from raves to pans.

It is utterly enthralling and insane.

It is entertaining and infuriating.

But Heath Ledger will dominate all discussions, as he did in two separate Gilliam appearances in Cannes.

The freewheeling one was at the American Pavilion; the staid one at the official Cannes press conference. The film is an official selection but played out-of-competition last night, so no one can give Ledger an acting prize here.

Gilliam said his reaction to Ledger's death was very simple.

"It was one of the worst days I've experienced. We were horizontal. We just laid down on the floor and died. We did our best to die as well. All of us involved were just devastated by it because it was just so unexpected, so unexplained. Even now I just don't get it. But he's dead."

Gilliam was only half way through shooting Parnassus, a co-production involving Canada, Britain and France.

Tragically, one of the original producers credited with getting the film off the ground in the first place -- Canadian filmmaker William Vince, founder and president of Infinity Pictures and an Oscar nominee for producing Capote -- also died during the shoot. He succumbed to sarcoma cancer, in Vancouver, leaving behind a wife and three children.

Gilliam says the film was "a double tragedy."

In Ledger's case, Gilliam said he felt he had no choice.

"I actually gave up. I said the film's over. We closed it down and that was it because Heath was too central to it. And everybody beat me up, bullied me, and said: 'No, we're not going to do that. You have to finish this thing. You started it, you bastard! Now finish it for Heath!' And that's what happened."

The casting of Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to fill in for Ledger -- in scenes in which Ledger's character goes through a magical mirror and is transformed -- allowed Gilliam to re-start the film.

"I started calling around to people who knew Heath, who were close to him, because I only wanted people who were, in a sense, in the family," Gilliam said.

One irony is that Law had originally been offered the entire role of the romantic conman Tony, before Ledger was cast.

"There are forces at work on this film," Gilliam said. "Don't get me into my mystical mode ... but the film made itself and it was co-directed by Heath Ledger!"

Gilliam said he could never have cast just one actor to replace Ledger in the fantastical setting of the story, which is essentially a battle for souls between the good Doctor Parnassus (played by Canada's national treasure, Christopher Plummer) and the Devil (played by Tom Waits, a singer-songwriter whom Gilliam calls "America's national poet").

"I felt that was impossible and I didn't think it was respectful and I didn't think it would work at all," Gilliam said of simply recasting Ledger's role. "Because we had the magic mirror and Heath goes through it three times, I thought: 'Okay, three actors! That would be the way to approach it. It is more interesting, more surprising."

Depp, Law and Farrell walked into an upbeat situation, despite the dire circumstances, Gilliam said.

"It was quite extraordinary. Everybody in the cast and everybody in the crew was determined that this film would be finished and everybody worked longer and harder and, at last, somehow we got through it. It was really, I think, people's love for Heath that propelled this thing forward."

Gilliam met with Ledger's family in Los Angeles after the actor's death, and he explained his film plans.

"We started crying -- and then we started laughing," Gilliam says of spending time with these exceptionally humble people, who graced the Academy Award stage when they accepted Heath Ledger's Oscar and promised to hold it in trust for his daughter Matilda.

"Okay," Gilliam remembers thinking after his session with the family, "it's going to be a positive thing. It's going to be a celebration of Heath.

"What was important for me was to just make the film and have Heath's last performance up there alive and well. And I think they're going to be delighted by it."

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