Tideland (2006)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Written by Tony Grisoni, Terry Gilliam
Starring Jodelle Ferland, Brendan Fletcher, Janet McTeer, Jennifer Tilly, Jeff Bridges
Release Date October 27th, 2006
Published November 17th, 2006
Writer-director Terry Gilliam has always directed his fantasies. Be they weird or myopic or paranoid, Gilliam directs entirely from his imagination, practical concerns be damned. His latest dream-scape is a perfect example. As Gilliam is forced to admit, in a bizarre opening behind the scenes prologue, Tideland is his own fantasy of what life would be like if he were a pre-teen girl. Based on a novel Mitch Cullen, Terry Gilliam's take on life as a tween girl is even more disturbing and bizarre than even his most ardent fans may expect.
Jeliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland), the daughter of a pair of serious heroin addicts, watches first her mom (Jennifer Tilly) and then her dad (Jeff Bridges), die of drug overdoses. The heroin prepared for mom and dad by Jeliza herself, causes her to recede into her self created fantasy world where a witch named Dell (Janet McTeer) and her mentally challenged henchman (Brenden Fletcher) become her pseudo family and the doll heads she wears as finger puppets carry on long, imaginative conversations with her.
Terry Gilliam isn't kidding when he claims this is what his life would be like were he a pre-teen girl. Wild, imaginative, perverse visions of love, death, sex and parenthood are all themes that Gilliam has tackled before. However, Tideland takes Gilliam's extreme fantasies to a whole new level of perversion. Perhaps Terry Gilliam has finally tweaked a puritan part of my brain but I find there to be something very wrong about presenting a Terry Gilliam fantasy through the eyes of this little girl.
This is a fantasy that includes not just the drug overdose deaths of two parents from heroin doses administered by their own daughter but also the subsequent gutting, embalming, and slow decomposition of the father as the child continues chatting away as if dad were just napping. Then there is the creepy pseudo-romance. The pre-teen girl has a childish dalliance with the mentally challenged guy. In scenes that are both creepy and strangely sweet these two people who have no idea what intimacy is engage in the kind of childish exploration that would be cute if the mentally challenged guy weren't in his mid-twenties and quite insane.
There is, at the very least, some exceptional visual artwork in Tideland. Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini does some fine work giving vivid life to each of Terry Gilliam's most twisted ideas. For better or worse, the look of Tideland is as impressive as the story is disturbing and horrifying. And yet, Gilliam doesn't treat the horror as horror, there is a distinct sense of dreamlike fantasy, not light-hearted really, but Gilliam is not leaning into the horror that is very much present in this story and while some find that dichotomy compelling, I found it repellent.
Every experience Terry Gilliam's pre-teen protagonist has, from watching both parents die, to the creepy mentally challenged 'boyfriend,' to the presence of the witch in her fantasies, are all played to such a low key whimsy that they barely register. You may watch in horror as scenes of degradation and dark humor play out, but you will also likely find your mind wandering as Gilliam underplays the horror of the scene in favor of playing off a more goofball dispassionate response from this deeply troubled and traumatized young girl.
Terry Gilliam has demonstrated the genius of his myopic, selfish approach to film-making in movies as varied as 12 Monkeys, Brazil, and Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. In Tideland however, he takes that weird personal vision to its navel-gazing nadir. This is a movie made by Terry Gilliam for Terry Gilliam and while I admire any filmmaker who doesn't bow to audience concerns about what the majority of people want to see, that doesn't make a movie like Tideland fun to watch.
