Tideland (2005) Reviews

• Gilliam's return to form

  paulduane2006-08-01

  I was very intrigued by the range of opinions about this film, and I'm kind of agnostic about Gilliam at the best of times so could have gone either way. In the event, it seems to me like a very personal, smallscale and risky film - the kind of thing major directors don't do often enough. Gilliam introduced the screening I attended by saying that plenty of the (invited) audience would hate the film. He also said that its subject is the resilience of children, in a world where we're encouraged to treat them as helpless victims most of the time. I was pretty much enthralled from the opening scene. Jeff Bridges plays a character who's like the dark side of the Dude. A semicoherent junkie who's trained his daughter to cook up his heroin shots for him, he'd be the world's worst parent figure if it wasn't for the mother, a grotesque Courtney caricature who seems to me to be the only person in the film Gilliam's unable to summon up any liking for. Events lead us into the wheatfields of the midwest and the story takes off into completely unforeseeable territory. There are countless reference points touched on over the next hour or so, in a very playful way - everything from Dorothy's farmhouse and her encounters with witches and brainless tin men, to the dinner table scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to Psycho, to Jan Svankmeyer and The Bride of Frankenstein, and in what's either a major theft or a loving homage, one of the plot points of The Butcher Boy becomes a central event here. The storyline takes detours into whimsy and the massively grotesque - there are two scenes here that will stay with me for weeks, one featuring a sex act in a taxidermist's workshop, the other best left undescribed - but there seems to me to be a central interest in the way that kids keep themselves sane through the most extreme circumstances, through imagination and play, and through projecting their fears onto made-up characters, that really shows an understanding of the way children's minds work. The main character, the kid, is tremendously convincing, funny and - in the end - heartbreaking. I think this film might just stand with classics like Voice of the Beehive and Bernard Rose's totally underrated Paperhouse as one of the great films about solitary children and their imaginations, and their ability to rise above their fears.

• touch of Gilliam

  goldenboy722005-09-13

  Bizarre. Fantasmagorical. Frightening. A story-book nightmare. Who else but Gilliam would give us a view of the inside of "The Dude's" ribcage?(Well, maybe Lynch) In Tideland we approach to the edge of what is acceptable to the average film-goer but I kept wishing we would go over the edge and see what's there. Others in the audience claimed they wanted to escape to the lobby. It leaves most viewers uneasy, as if the film is an unpleasant taste to be rinsed from the mouth. Whether or not you like it relies on the individual but what cannot be denied is that the film floats on the performance of Jodelle Ferland who plays 8 year old Jeliza-Rose as a modern day Alice though Tideland seems a far more frightening place than Wonderland. With the aid of her finger-puppet dolls' heads Ferland essentially inhabits 5 different roles withing the film. Easily one of the creepiest but most interesting performance by a child in years. Good film? Bad? This hard-to-digest film seems to remain outside of such judgments. Best to see it for yourself. One thing is guaranteed: it's an unsettling journey into the realms of the weird.

• The Age Of Unreason, Or...Why Terry Gilliam Can't Catch A Break

  bad_eats2005-11-18

  Poor Terry Gilliam. The visionary director just can't catch a break. Blessed with one of the most fertile imaginations in modern cinema, equally renowned as an animator, filmmaker, and iconoclast, he has made a handful of highly original, single-minded films, most of which are now considered classics (although it tends to take a few years before critical revisionism regards his work as such; I bet few recall The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen was first considered a costly bomb on par with Heaven's Gate). But of late he has had to suffer a critical beating for his mainstream-designed The Brothers Grimm, not to mention the well-documented collapse of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (why does the word schadenfreude come to mind?), and more often than not he is regarded as somewhat of a brilliant madman with integrity to burn, willing to battle Hollywood at any cost to keep his visions intact. Now comes his adaptation of Mitch Cullin's Tideland, a category defying film that is at turns poetic, disgusting, absurd, and darkly funny (think the languid pacing of Spirit of the Beehive, the fever dream of Alice in Wonderland, the wry insanity Psycho, and a large dose of Terence Malik gone insane). In many ways, this is the purest Gilliam film since Brazil (a film that also borrowed liberally from other sources while maintaining its own originality), and hearkens back to the days when auteurs were not only allowed to follow their wildest muse but were expected to do so. And that, too, presents what will no doubt be Tideland's greatest failing, as well as its highest achievement. Cinema has become so cynical in the last twenty years - so narrow in scope and so entertainment driven - that anything which requires viewers to experience a motion picture on its own terms is usually greeted with scorn. These would be very tough times, indeed, for the likes of a young Fellini, Kubrick, and Lynch. That's not to say Tideland is a perfectly misunderstood creation, although it should be pointed out that those who are screaming foul about this film being pointless, self indulgent, and too weird are likely the very same people who ridiculed Grimm for being unoriginal, mainstream, and plain. Yes, there were walkouts at its screenings, gasps of shock, even angry grumbling. There were also laughs, applause, and continued debates concerning what the film was really about (how often does that occur these days after a screening?). In the end, Tideland will likely please a select group who prefer to experience cinema rather than opposing it with their own expectations (there were those who were still talking about it two days following its premiere, even when they hated it). But for those who are anxiously wanting Time Bandits 2 or desire some degree of Pythonesque humor, Tideland will disturb, bore, and profoundly bother to the point of contempt. Nevertheless, it is a very unique and, at times, incredible film, infused with at least two amazing performances, beautiful photography, and one of the most enigmatic endings I've seen in ages. Hate it or love it, few will be able to deny the lingering, ineffable vibrations left by this film, or that it stands as further proof that its director has stayed true to himself. Of course, prepare for the yin/yang laments to come in spades: Grimm would have been a better film had Gilliam been left to his own devices; Tideland would have been a better film had Gilliam not been left to his own devices. Poor Terry Gilliam; apparently he can do no right even when he does.

• Damn! I'm an adult!

  foomonger2006-09-18

  It's been a week since I watched Tideland, though "watched" is hardly the best word for such a brain-curdling experience. It's still on my mind, so it passes my first test of A Great Film. But what's it all about? "The resilience of a child"? Or is it the resilience of the child within - if you want to call it that - *my* child within. The film was testing me, and I have to admit, at first, I failed. The images resonate so strongly; working with heroin addicts has amplified things; watching a nine year old girl cooking up a hit for her father disturbs me, maybe because I know how real it is, all over the world. It also looks like she's had years of experience. I'm an adult; and from the first scene, I fear for the child; a feeling that only intensifies as the story progresses. I actually looked at time, twice; I just wanted to get to the end right away to make it stop. I literally couldn't handle it. It was the scariest film I've seen in a long long while; scarier than all the masterful Japanese horrors I can think of, scarier than Hitchcock. My heart spent the whole film in my mouth; which is why, by the end, I could taste the thing first hand, becoming childlike; and in those truly triumphant moments, where I am falling, like Alice, deeper into Jeliza Rose's fantasy; like when I realise she no longer mouths the doll's words; they have become independent beings (a triumph also of acting; we will be seeing much more of the amazing Jodelle Ferland, for sure), or right at the end, where she tells Dickens "I love you", and BANG! I am falling and don't even notice where I slipped, or how; over and over again, tumbling into the void. Scary, for an adult. But everything about the film is so beautiful, and as I am transported further and further into Jeliza Rose's fantasy world, like swimming into a beautiful painting, a joyous counterpart to my fear evolves, and I find myself at once incredibly disturbed, and supremely hopeful; as if the magic spilling out of this girl; beyond all my Earthly Adult conceptions of fear and pain and misery; will somehow find a way, even if I can't. It's rare a film comes along that can't be faulted, film without flaws, but here it is, called "Tideland", by Terry Gilliam. Screenplay, cinematography, acting, directing; for the duration of the movie I was aware of none of them; disbelief completely and utterly suspended. This makes it easy to fall under its spell, so be warned; this film could trouble you. Looking back this last week, the story just gets better and better in my mind, the fantasy and reality melding into a most coherent telling of the inner life of a child, and how she might deal with the most hellish scenarios that life can throw at a person. A sort of fantastical transmutation born of innocence, the "place where dreams are made". I think I want to read the book. And of the film, I look back and I think, "Did she really pull that off?", and I'm talking about Jodelle Ferland, who is *yougottafeggincheckthisout* amazing at every turn, playing not one but five characters - those Barbie doll heads are quite separate beings, for starters. She pulls it off, and then some, drawing us into her dream world with the kind of magic only a young girl can get away with. If you are an actor, even a gifted actor, watch this at your peril; if you suffer from jealousy, this is gonna hurt! That's not to say that the other players (only four, really) weren't spectacular; they were; and I could fill paragraphs praising their inspired, exceptional performances; Dickens, Dell, Noah, even the ghastly Queen Gunhilda; it's just that Jezlia Rose *is* the film, and everyone and everything else is rightly secondary to her. And anyway, it's probably best not to intellectualize acting too much, I think. If you are an actor, they could all make you jealous! If you are a director, too; Gilliam does his best work here, visiting all his favourite places with a deftness that can only come from big experience, not just in making films, but in life. The Gods helped, no doubt. Dare I call it A Masterpiece? Better not; we don't want the daring Gilliam resting on his laurels! But it IS a masterpiece, and one that probably only Gilliam could better, if that's even possible. It's up there, with all the Great Films I've been fortunate enough to have witnessed. Yes, "witnessed", that's a better word. I was really there, and you will be too. The sea is real, the submarine too. I know; I was there. Tideland is an astonishing piece of work, and one I fully intend to enjoy on DVD, as soon as possible. At least, next time I won't be so scared, I'm sure, I'll just take a Big Deep Breath before we begin, sit back for the ride and enjoy the magical beauty of it, falling, without snatching at the sides, desperately trying to break my fall, grabbing at those familiar handles, spilling drawers of "things" all over the piece. I'll just let go and fall freely, see where I land. At least, as soon as I can shake the first "witnessing" from my head, not any time soon, then. -fm

• Hell

  amy7_052006-10-21

  I have never been so terrorized while watching a movie. The tension in this film is so greatly created but it makes you want to leap out of your seat, dash down the aisle, and never think about kissing again. I felt the need to take a long, hot shower after this film, as it left almost a pile of dirt on each my shoulders. When coming out of movies, I can usually express right away the emotional turnout the film provided but this left me bewildered, stunned, shocked, more adjectives. The art direction was probably some of the most beautiful I've seen, but it's hard to appreciate a film when you keep turning away and groaning in agony at what could happen next. I suggest seeing the film, as it is masterfully done and quite beautiful, but be prepared to be repulsed and saddened by all that you see.