Tideland

I don't know what to think of it. Beautiful? Yes, Creative? Of course. Disturbing? You bet. Funny? Hysterically. What could be funnier that Jeff Bridgess playing aged Dude - dad to the extreme, part II - "Duddy takes vacation to the point of no return"? Or Jennifer Tilly as a caricature of Courtney Love? Unpleasant? Very much so. Original? The director himself called his movie, "Alice in Wonderland meets Psycho" and these are just two references of many. You can name all novels, short stories or the movies about the little girls escaping their dreadful realities in the world of their imagination as well as "Wizard of Oz", Tennessee Williams' plays, Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" and one of the most stunning screen adaptations of "Alice in Wonderland", Jan Svankmajer's "Alice". Gilliam in "Tideland" borrows from them or rather meditates on the same themes, using his unique tools, and bringing his unique vision and talent in the familiar harrowing story of a child lost.

The movie is technically superb and visually arresting - it must be. If anything, Terry Gilliam is known as one of the most talented and wildly imaginative modern filmmakers, the true eccentric. He describes himself better than anyone ever would:

"There's a side of me that always fell for manic things, frenzied, cartoony performances. I always liked sideshows, freakshows. ...Absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless. I like things to be tasteless."

I guess, whether you'd like "Tideland" or not, would depend a lot on your sharing his fondness for the things "absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless" - there are plenty of them in "Tideland" yet strangely it is tender and sad, and in its best moments undeniably brilliant. Often called modern fairy tale for adults, the movie fits perfectly the description. Fairy tales, the unabridged versions of them are often scary, graphic, disturbing, violent, bloody, gory...and fascinating. Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson - his "Little Mermaid" is one of the saddest, even tragic tales ever written. Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, "Arabian Nights" - the real thing, not the adaptations for the children; myths and legends of ancient Greece - the myth of two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, the story of Oedipus - that's pure horror and tragedy. Well, back to the Gilliam's fairy tale. Did I like it? I don't know. What I do know that the very last shot of the movie, the one which supposed to symbolize the happy ending, that of the girl's face from the angle that distorts her features turning the angelic face into the sinister cynical mask that could belong to the creature of the darkest nightmares and with two huge black holes of eyes is the most horrifying one in the movie which is packed with the scenes of horror. None of them is as disturbing, unsettling and memorable as this face - happy end according Terry Gilliam.

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.

There's no way for me to talk about this film without making it personal. I can recall the age of eight, wandering around the square desert of my parents' backyard, action figures in hand, thinking up stories, doing voices. Tideland plays to that sort of nostalgia, but it balances it with a darkness visible on the horizon that cancels out whatever baser desires such nostalgia plays to. I imagine when I see the film's landscape (and the house)how wonderful the setting would have been to that sort of play, how much such play could benefit from that setting, and how lost one could get in it all. Permanently lost. The fields transforming into a sea is a great metaphor for that.

Tideland is a tragedy. We, the audience, know or suspect that Jeliza-Rose isn't going to turn out well after this movie's over, that her imagination may be keeping her alive and marginally sane, but it's out of desperation (and it's clear that she understands much more of what's going on than is explicitly stated - observe her knowing looks, as in the scene where Dickens leaves her alone), that the little girl is going through so much for relatively little. In a way this film is about what many viewers incorrectly believe Gilliam's Brazil to be about: the triumph of the imagination. But, if anything, in Brazil Sam Lowry's imagination is what causes the trouble to begin with, and in the end is his last resort. In Tideland, imagination is defeated. In the end it's like one of those horror films where the heroine survives all, only to be shown walking away with the monster/killer still behind her/in her house/in the backseat of the car/etc. But there's an emotional resonance here that can't be found in, say, Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street because Jeliza-Rose has no literal fate, has no death but life. She returns to the real world. And I suppose that's the tragedy.

This is Gilliam's most complete film since Brazil; it has an emotional quality, an imaginative quality, and a GENUINE quality that no other Gilliam film has, and which few other films, period, have these days (cinema as it is now being so choked with irony). With Brazil we may be tempted to cry at the end if we are quick to tears, but with Tideland we may be tempted to develop tears anywhere. It reminds me of Forbidden Games, of Spirit of the Beehive, of Truffaut's Small Change, of Renoir's The River, of The Wizard of Oz, of Curse of the Cat People, and in some ways of Ford's How Green Was My Valley. It has pedigree.

Ferland's performance is nothing short of supernatural. She carries the film when it wanders or when it becomes flat out strange. She is that human voice in the wilderness.

Not that there aren't some problems. The accents are fairly ridiculous all of the time and all the supporting characters are Gothic caricatures with performances to match, but then this is a child's world and a child's field of vision, and so I can accept these. The point is that reality doesn't much enter into it. There isn't much plot to speak of and this turns up in a few draggy sections. But this film has an absorbing quality too, and I find that if I turn it on I am compelled to watch all of it.

I keep thinking of Pan's Labyrinth, which was so critically lauded while Tideland was so despised. PL's an okay movie, but it's a cynical adult tale of childhood, detached in its understanding and sort of heartless and cruel. The problem is that there is such an obvious disconnect between reality and the imaginary world. They exist separately. Of course, the Spanish Civil War setting is really no more real that Ofelia's own world, no less cartoonish than the world of Tideland. But it tries so hard to be harsh and gritty. It is just so difficult for me to *buy* Pan's Labyrinth, to take it seriously OR to NOT take it seriously. Tideland is a story about a real person living in a believable (or at least buyable)world. And I suspect that this is why Pan's Labyrinth is so critically lauded while Tideland is so critically despised - because it is unwilling to offend. Also, where PL is unfathomably ugly, Tideland is quite beautiful.

Overall, this may the only film of last year I can honestly say I liked, that made me feel anything for it. So it's good.

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.

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.