Contraponto

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.

Having watched Terry Gilliam's Tideland just a few hours ago, I sat down to write a review and find that I can't. I'm still too angry.

Not at Gilliam, no. I am angry because I half-dreaded turning on the movie to begin with. Critics largely reviled Tideland on its (minimal) American release -- Rotten Tomatoes calculates its positive receptions at 27%. And a fair number of online commentators, even fans of the director, have branded the movie as "awful," "a mess," "disappointing," etc., etc. So, while I felt interest in Tideland, I put off watching it. The reviews made me wary and I hated to see Gilliam flop. But today it came from Netflix and I thought, why not, and popped it in.

And now I am angry -- angry because I cannot believe this beautiful, scary, funny, mesmerizing, heart-wrenching movie is the same one discussed in all those reviews. Have I stumbled on some unique director's cut that no one else got to see? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of movies?

At the beginning of the movie Gilliam himself appears, in black-and-white, like Edward Van Sloan at the beginning of Frankenstein, to inform us that we may find the movie shocking, but that it should be seen as through the eyes of a child -- innocent. One can take this prologue either as a bold stroke or a move of desperation, but either way, he's right. Little Jeliza Rose (played by an astounding Jodelle Ferland) goes through absolute hell, set adrift in a bare landscape by a heroin-addicted father (Jeff Bridges). Having no protection, no support, no food, and nothing to do, she builds a new reality out of, simply, play.

The redemption of imagination is Gilliam's Great Theme, and has featured in all his movies, but never I think with the depth of feeling displayed here. The camera glides and bobs and darts, low to the ground, a child's eye view, and the tone of the movie stays true throughout, without a whiff of sentimentality. Jeliza's situation is bleak and terrifying, but she's occupied with other and more pressing issues -- conversing with squirrels, squabbling with her dolls, and befriending her alarming neighbors: a witchlike taxidermist and her mentally retarded brother.

But she's no fool, and Gilliam isn't either. The dreadful reality is always present, and Jeliza knows what's what; she possesses that paradoxical childhood perspective that allows a doll's head to be "just a doll's head" and at the same time a living person with an identity. The movie shows us the world as her imagination transforms it; she spins terror and tragedy into fable.

This movie staggered me; it's a genuine work of art, and it left me in tears. If that puts me at odds with 75% of the critical consensus, I'll live with that. When I think of the endless trite garbage that these same critics routinely praise, garbage that often wins awards or breaks box-office records, comfortable and self-congratulating hackwork that rarely has a scrap of the kind of creative courage or honesty of something like Tideland, it frankly makes me question what a good movie actually IS. Do feel-good escapism and drearily unnatural "naturalism" really comprise the height of cinematic expression? And does the idea of being made genuinely uncomfortable by art, genuinely challenged -- surely art's primary function -- have any current market value?

In short, if Tideland is not a good movie, then what are movies for?

This is a movie that does not rely on SFX to impress the audience. The storytelling is amazing.

Without noticing, I was pulled into the fantasy world that this movie is. Nothing is judged, no good or evil. No clichés, no heroes. Just the story. Not entirely unlike 'Brazil'. But this movie relies less on a 'weird' future world. Sure, the atmosphere is weird. But not the surroundings. Little events, happening all the time, make up the world. It is unclear whether they are happening inside the characters head, or they are real events.

Perhaps a bit too much for most American style 'junk food film' viewers, but I hope some of the 'Hollywood Junk' producers take notice, and learn.

Too bad this movie didn't show in more theaters. A real 'must see' for those who loved 'Alice in Wonderland'

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.

That little girl has so much talent she's almost scary. Or, maybe, it's just at the part she played was so scary. She plays the part of a girl who is far too sophisticated. She has seen and come to grips with drug addiction, death, hunger and madness. A child normally lives in a world where there is little difference between reality and unreality, but the director, Gilliam, has taken this fact and twisted it into a nightmare existence that somehow seems acceptable. That is what is so scary about this film. The viewer can see the horror that is and the horror that is right around the corner, and also sees that the child will walk into it with her eyes wide open and yet still full of trust. And when the final, inevitable catastrophe occurs, you are left not yet knowing whether or not, or to what extent, the child survives as a human being.