LuminoMagazine.com - Rough waters ahead in “Tideland”

Rough waters ahead in “Tideland”

Written by MICHAEL JAMES ALLEN

Tuesday, 31 October 2006

There are certain things you can expect when you’re getting ready to watch a new Terry Gilliam film: You can expect something interesting; you can suspect something bizarre; you can expect your eyeballs to hurt from the weird angles and constant zooming. Most of all, though, you can expect the unexpected. Gilliam has earned a reputation for making challenging films that are never quite what you think they’ll be.

"Tideland"

Entertainment

Art

Directed by Terry Gilliam
Written by Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni
Based on the novel by Mitch Cullin
Starring Jodelle Ferland, Jennifer Tilly, and Jeff Bridges
Rated R for bizarre and disturbing content, including drug use, sexuality, and gruesome situations, all involving a child, and for some language
Released October 20, 2006

His new one, “Tideland,” is no exception. From the trailer, you’d expect to see a movie about a precocious little girl coming-of-age in a locale directly out of a Norman Rockwell painting: No doubt she’ll meet some interesting characters, get into some high-spirited adventures, and learn a lot about the world. This, however, is not the case. The film you get, instead, is an examination of a girl’s disturbed psyche, with issues of drug use, schizophrenia, necrophilia, and pedophilia all prominently explored.

The little girl is Jeliza-Rose (a brave Jodelle Ferland) and, when we first meet her, she is sitting in a broken-down bus and talking to her collection of dismembered Barbie doll heads. Her mother (Jennifer Tilly) has just died of a heroin overdose and her father, Noah (Jeff Bridges), looks to be headed down the same path. To avoid a run-in with the police, Noah and Jeliza-Rose take a trip to the family’s country house in the middle of Texas. The scenery is beautiful (captured on film well by cinematographer Nicola Pecorini), but the house is rundown and the area is abandoned. With the exception of two bizarre neighbors, the twisted Dell (Janet McTeer) and the mentally-challenged Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), Jeliza-Rose has no one but her doll heads to talk to, and only her increasingly demented imagination to keep her busy.

Numerous references to “Alice In Wonderland” throughout the film are supposed to suggest that Jeliza-Rose has entered some sort of vivid fantasyland, but with all the deranged characters around her, the place feels more like Hell. Since it happens within the first ten minutes, I don’t consider it a spoiler to tell you that Noah dies of an overdose. That Jeliza-Rose continues to kiss and embrace his rotting corpse throughout the rest of the film is just one example of how clearly screwed-up the poor child must be. Another example is the romantic relationship that develops between Jeliza-Rose and the physically grown (but mentally underdeveloped) Dickens. I try to be objective when watching films, but the candid portrayal of this pedophilic relationship made me leave the theater for several minutes. And this is coming from someone whose favorite book is “Lolita.”

I would like you now to play close attention to the adjectives I have used in this review: Bizarre, disturbed, twisted, demented, and screwed-up. That is “Tideland” in a nutshell. Of course, all this is a conscious effort. It’s obvious from frame one that Gilliam will be unflinching, and is daring us to be offended—hell, he comes right out and says this in a filmed introduction that starts off the film. I’ll probably never get “Tideland” out of my head, and if that was Gilliam’s goal, then mission accomplished. But I’ll also never watch “Tideland” again, and I have trouble finding the merit in making a film with that goal in mind.

I can’t say you will enjoy “Tideland,” but I can say that it will make you think. What about, however, may be the problem.

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