Luke
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CibbuanoTideland
April 11th 2007 22:25
If there is one thing Terry Gilliam can be relied on for, it's not pandering to the studios or what Hollywood or mainstream audiences expect from a film. Even in the last days of Monty Python it became clear that Gilliam had his own thing to do - witness the brilliant opening twenty minutes or so of 'The Meaning of Life', it's like a whole other movie. Over the subsequent years Gilliam has evolved into one of the most unique voices in fantasy film, battling with studio executives to bring us brilliant films like 'Brazil', 'The Fisher King' and 'Twelve Monkeys'. Alongside Martin Scorcese, he's pretty much my favourite director. This film, 'Tideland', was quickly made during a break that Gilliam took whilst making 'The Brothers Grimm', and has proven to be the director's most controversial film in quite some time... I don't think it has even had a proper release in America yet.
Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) is the ten year old daughter of a pair of drug addicts. They live in a dilapidated dump of a house, and aside from the times she prepares their heroin for them, her selfish and scattered parents have very little time for her. Jeliza-Rose's mother dies, and so her father (Jeff Bridges) panics and absconds with her to the now-abandoned country house that he grew up in. From here, things get a little weird. Jeliza-Rose's only friends are an assortment of doll's heads and two niehgbouring strangers... there isn't really a plot after this point, just Jeliza-Rose's perception of the burgeoning imaginary world around her.
This is one disturbing, heartbreaking, screwed up and creepy movie. Gilliam gives us a hyper-real New World take on Alice in Wonderland, only Jeliza-Rose doesn't go down the rabbit hole - the rabbit hole comes to her. It's the least American slice of gothic Americana to ever be put on the screen, it's unlike any movie I've seen and is probably Gilliam's least inaccessible and most divisive film yet. It's not for everyone, that's for sure, but it's certainly out there.
At first I wasn't sure how to feel about this movie. At times it makes you feel uncomfortable, but I guess this is kind of the point - Gilliam plays on our adult experiences and how we interpret what happens on screen. Our discomfort comes from what we think will happen... Gilliam toys with our fear of paedophilia and necrophilia, amongst other things, to manipulate our experience of the film. In this respect, it's more horrific and squeamish to an adult than it would be to a child, as what a child doesn't know will ensure they interpret the film differently. Gilliam has said that this film is about the 'resilliance of children'... I don't really see it as being about 'resilliance' per se, I think it might be more about the ignorance or innocence of children, if you have to put a name to it. Jeliza-Rose might not react the way we would when confronted with the horrors of this bright new world, but I think this would be more because of her abnormal upbringing amongst drug addicts rather than because she's a child. Then again, I suppose this proves the point - she remains untraumatised by the terrible life that brought her to this point. It's strange, when I watched this film I felt like it wasn't going anywhere, but by the time it was finished I had all these conflicting thoughts running through my head. I apologise for the lack of coherency this paragraph might present you with, but there it is. Blame the film for making me think too much!
Jodelle Ferland gives a tour de force performance as Jeliza-Rose, she provides some great and distinctive voices for her imaginary doll friends and she manages to carry the film almost completely on her own without any sense of awkwardness and unnaturalness. Jeff Bridges is also great as her father, all too realistic as a drug-addled loser-rockstar in his own little world. Brendan Fletcher is also highly impressive as Jeliza-Rose's friend, Dickens, a child in the body of a man and would-be boyfriend to our ten-year old protagonist.
Gilliam's direction is great as always too, the whole thing plays out like one big drug-induced fever dream rich with fancies of the imagination and tragic pathos... a train becomes a monster shark, dynamite becomes the A-Bomb, and a lobotomised retarded man becomes a knight in shining armour (and, depending on the way you look at it, he does save our heroine!) I liked this movie a lot, I could never criticise a film as original and thought-provoking as this. It's cheers me up a lot to know that Gilliam can still surprise and shock as much as he did in his earlier days, this film is a worthy addition to his resume.
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I have waited forever for an australian release for Tideland. Love Terry Gilliam's work and this sounds like a tragic fairy tale of moving power.
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