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Tideland (2005)

Director: Terry Gilliam

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From Time Out London

Terry Gilliam has had a tough run of luck in recent years, with the sad demise of his long-gestating Don Quixote project (captured in the documentary ‘Lost in La Mancha’) and the poor reception for his Miramax-funded ‘The Brothers Grimm’. ‘Tideland’ seemed a promising candidate to break the director’s slump: a low-budget, wholly independent effort shot in Saskatchewan, shepherded by producer extraordinaire Jeremy Thomas and starring the likes of Jeff Bridges and Janet McTeer. Alas, the movie does not signal the career renaissance that Gilliam’s
fans are craving, though it glints here and there with traces of his tearaway brilliance.

Co-scripted by Gilliam and Tony Grisoni from the book by Mitch Cullin, ‘Tideland’ imagines a modern Alice in a trash-palace Wonderland, framed in Gilliam’s patented low-angle, off-kilter shots – at one point, the camera all but keels over sideways. Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) is de facto caretaker of her no-hope parents (Bridges and Jennifer Tilly); the girl even preps daddy’s heroin fixes. After mum’s unlamented demise, father and daughter decamp to a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, where it becomes painfully clear that Jeliza-Rose’s fecund fantasy world – she keeps up a running conversation with her often hostile entourage of four doll’s heads – is a necessary escape from the mounting squalor and horror of her waking life. Gilliam’s brash disregard for conventional narrative rhythms and structures is one of the many thrills of his best work, but here his freewheeling navigations veer so far off-road that the passenger is left exhausted and bewildered, not least by the blasts of literally flatulent humour.

Author: Jessica Winter 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out London Issue 1877: August 9-16 2006

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jan 09 2008 16:04 Gilliam's film shows a certain chutzpah and spirit after the mechanical indutrialized effort of The Brother's Grimm. The wide open landscapes were pleasantly offsetting to the claustrophobic interiors and the placing of a young child at the centre of the film was brave. However there is an abscence of narrative and structure which makes it more hard going. Del Toro has a discipline as he enters into the labrinth of the child's imagination: a child who is also escaping a gruesome reality. This film was based on a novel but Gilliam has opted for anarchic broadsweeps in situation, character and staging. Saying that there were some elements that I liked. The young child's performance was brilliant and Gilliam's ability to take on this project while still enduring the heartache of Brother's Grimm knowing that this was not mainstream cinema and would be seen by very few people. If I had anything to add I'd say buy the excellent Dvd for the excellent Making of... alone to gain an insight into the devilmaycareness of this director.

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