Tideland (2005) User Reviews (225)

touch of Gilliam

[goldenboy72 · 7/10 · 13 September 2005]

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.

A Dark, Bizarre and Insane Trip of Terry Gilliam

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 3 January 2008]

When the dysfunctional Queen Gunhilda (Jennifer Tilly) dies of overdose, her daughter Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) travels with her addicted father Noah (Jeff Bridges) to the old and abandoned house of Noah's mother in the country. While her father takes "a vacation" injecting drugs, Jeliza-Rose lives a world of fantasy with her heads of doll Sateen Lips, Glitter Gal, Mustique and Baby Blonde. Noah dies in his trip, and Jeliza-Rose meets the insane Dell (Janet McTeer) and her retarded brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), spending most of the time together.

I do not know whether Terry Gilliam was in an acid trip when he wrote the dark, bizarre and insane "Tideland", but it is one of the craziest movies I have ever seen. However, I liked the originality of the story. I could never guess the insanity of the next scene of this unpredictable film. I was also very impressed with the maturity and performance of Jodelle Ferland in her difficult lead work. This little girl is the story, and it is amazing and impressive, for example, the sequences with Jeliza-Rose preparing the dope of her father. The nightmarish atmosphere and the music score complete this original and unique journey to the irrational world of Terry Gilliam. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Contraponto" ("Counterpoint")

Not for everyone

[tonyjackie · 5/10 · 7 October 2008]

If ever there was a movie that divides opinion then it could well be this one.It isn't always easy to watch,there are moments of magic but ultimately it failed to hold my attention.I will try and explain why but it might not be that easy! The film starts off pretty uneasily with scenes of a young girl helping her Father to inject drugs.Then we meet the Mother(Queen Gunhilda) who is annoying and overacted to the hilt by Jennifer Tilly.Fortunately she doesn't last long but then again neither does Noah as played by Jeff Bridges.The film starts to go very odd indeed as we are introduced to a brother and sister,Dell and Dickens.They are played well by Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher but in the end they become irritating.As the young girl,Jodelle Ferland does a great job as Jeliza-Rose and pretty much holds the film together.It would take too long to go into the plot but the film is seen through the eyes of a child and when you take this into account it is a bit easier to follow the thread of the movie.

Terry Gilliam deserves credit for always attempting to make something different but his vivid imagination isn't always to my taste and there are scenes that made me cringe such as when Dickens straddles the young girl and they are almost touching tongues.OK,it is the way many children would act when they are fooling around but when one is much older than the other it bordered on cringe worthy awkwardness,at least to me.Or am I just a prude?Maybe I am as Dickens is a child also,at least mentally.I didn't like their kissing scenes though and that's a fact.The biggest problem I had really was I felt the film lost it's way after half way as the characters became a pain.Even Jeliza-Rose began to grate on the nerves a little with her doll voices.I didn't like the ending of the film either.It felt very contrived with Jeliza-Rose mistaking an injured passenger for Dickens and her finding another apparent lost soul.

I didn't hate the movie but I certainly didn't love it either.Terry Gilliam may just have too much imagination for my liking.The film has it's moments but loses itself in it's own very weird world.The director does try to make a different kind of movie but I did expect more.

Hell

[amy7_05 · 21 October 2006]

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.

A Very Disturbing Tale

[cheathamg · 6/10 · 15 May 2007]

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.

Terry Gilliam and the state of the art

[miloc · 10/10 · 31 December 2009]

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?

sometimes we all fall into our own fantasy worlds

[benvarkentine · 7/10 · 20 April 2007]

(For the record, this review contains a spoiler for the end of Time Bandits. But if you haven't seen that supreme and pure fantasy, go away and watch it right now)

Terry Gilliam's Tideland is a movie that deserved, and deserves, a much better reception than it got in the theaters, to which it was barely released, and from the critics, who found it "disturbing and mostly unwatchable" according to Rotten Tomatoes. Richard Roeper said it nearly made him walk out of the theater, which ought to be recommendation enough right there.

Disturbing it certainly is, not all in a bad way, but it comes to an end which is dramatically satisfying. Unwatchable it most emphatically is not. I'll believe Terry Gilliam is capable of making an unwatchable film when I believe I'd turn down an "indecent proposal" from Halle Berry.

Tideland is wrongly labeled a science fiction film at some sites. This is wrong. The film is no more an SF film than our lives are just because sometimes we all fall into our own fantasy worlds.

On DVD, the movie starts with an introduction from Gilliam that is not optional (you don't select it, it just comes up when you start the film). In this, he acknowledges that most people will not like the film, and talks a little about his hopes for it.

I kind of wish he hadn't felt the need to do that. A movie should stand on its own. On the other hand, it's the kind of audacious move I expect from him as a filmmaker-Terry Gilliam movies are a few of my favorite things.

At the end of the introduction, Gilliam says that at the age of 64, as he was at the time he made this film, he thinks he finally found his inner child. And it turned out to be a little girl.

The girl is Jeliza-Rose. When we first meet her, she's living as the enabling daughter of two drug-addicted parents (played by Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly, but it's not really about them).

Then her mother dies, and her father takes her on a trip far away, to the house where he grew up. But that was a long time ago; the house is the middle of nowhere and in a state of great disrepair.

And soon, her father departs himself on his own trip.

And Jeliza-Rose is left alone.

What follows is how she copes with a world which is increasingly turning crazy and dangerous. And how her imagination acts both as her source of escape and as her protector.

Members of Gilliam's cult of fans like myself will be able to make connections with other child heroes in his work, like Sally in Munchhausen and Kevin in Time Bandits. It's Sally's role in her film to keep the Baron going when all seems lost. And Kevin comes home to find a world in which his parents promptly explode. But Gilliam keeps Jeliza an individual, and the pain she faces could conceivably make Sally and Kevin curl up and die.

In a way, this story is about what might have happened if Kevin's parents exploded at the beginning of the picture instead of the end. Jeliza has to keep herself going, her Baron falls down no matter how many attempts she makes to prop him up.

Jeliza is played in one of the great unflinching child performances by Jodelle Ferland, for which the young Canadian actress was nominated for a Genie (that's Canada's Academy Award). Which is only right-if we don't stay with her character, the movie doesn't work, and Ferland carries it off shiningly.

Do not listen to anything else you've heard until you see this movie for yourself. Is it perfect? Oh hell, no. It's not a masterpiece like Gilliam's best work with the Python team, or a gem like his own Munchausen or Time Bandits.

But it is the best film he's made since Fisher King, and in many ways his most mature.

Bucket anyone?

[earthsign · 1/10 · 22 March 2008]

The most well written, acted and directed film I've wished I didn't watch. A masterpiece of twisted, sick and horrifying circumstance.

I take my hat off to the entire cast and crew for creating a mesmerizing movie so tainted with simplicity and perversity that I could not turn it off despite the desire to be ill which come over me on a number of occasions.

So powerful, yet such an unnecessary journey. I just can't appreciate Tideland's achievement in pushing boundaries simply for the sake of (..without any apparent intent or meaningful message..) having an impact upon people. I was left disturbed by how far this movie goes, and confused as to exactly what emotions I was intended to feel by such a depressing concept. I was too sickened to laugh.

Pan's Labyrinth in the least was based within some context of war, Tideland was based within.. who the hell knows.

BUT I implore any curious person to watch this film and have your own experience with it. Many people 'appreciated' this film, and I admit I did too.

For making me feel ill I award this movie 10 stars..

..and then minus 9 stars for it's total worthlessness in relation to everything other than itself.

Well done Gilliam, cast and crew! Absolutely fascinating!

Gilliam's return to form

[paulduane · 8/10 · 1 August 2006]

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.

Not a date flick!

[jeanvieve · 7/10 · 5 November 2006]

Terry himself has words at the beginning of the movie - you may like it, you may hate it, or you may walk away wondering what it was about. He succeeds on many levels. I loved the cinematography, the camera work, the Through the Looking Glass parallels. (With a nod to the rabbit hole.) The acting was great. The soundtrack, to which I think too few people pay attention save when it ruins a movie, was perfect. Jeff Bridges must have had a ball playing his part.

However, in the end, I think I will still have nightmares. It was tragically sad to see make believe games become like reality for a little girl pushed beyond what any child should have to deal. There were moments when I held my breath, fearful that it would go that one step too far into something that would have made me walk out of the theatre. Luckily, it did not, and I remained in my seat until the end of the world.

I got it, Terry. I understand the incredible resilience of your inner little girl, and am certain that she'll grow up to be an amazingly creative animator and film producer after years of normalcy re-mold her mind back to the other side of the fence. But I'll also cry for her, because she never got to do it.

Gents, if you take a girl to the movie, be aware that it may limit your chances after save for a few wild sorts. See it once. If you can watch it over and over, I hope you're not any of my neighbors.

Like watching a corpse rot for over two hours....

[hellbrunn · 1/10 · 7 April 2013]

I have seen A LOT of movies. A lot of grotesque blood-curdling, disturbing, avant-garde films--some were incredibly bizarre, imaginative, and provocative. But Tideland remains the WORST film I have ever seen.

Painful and sickening, perhaps its greatest attribute is that it succeeded in doing what no other film has been able to do--it made me feel like I was staring at a corpse rotting for over two hours. There is NO LIFE in this film, which is a perversion to the concept of cinema or "moving pictures." While the medium of film is supposed to "give life" to pictures, every single moment of Tideland I watched had been dead for several months or years. Art films like Decasia treat the materiality of film as decay, but Tideland is really embodied in the character of Jeff Bridges--a decaying corpse.

Another reviewer wrote that he/she had to take a shower after watching it. So did I. I felt that the rot from the screen had affected my own presence. I needed to be cleansed.

The Age Of Unreason, Or...Why Terry Gilliam Can't Catch A Break

[bad_eats · 10/10 · 18 November 2005]

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.

A movie that is both deeply disturbing and captivating

[rubyseeds · 7/10 · 22 October 2006]

First of all, bravo to Jodelle Ferland; she really did an amazing job playing Jeliza-Rose. I think I based my rating mostly on her acting, as it's been a day since I saw the film but I have no idea what to make of it.

I didn't dislike the movie, per se -- it had plenty of distinct positives, like the great storytelling, cinematography, and acting, as well as the dark humor, which was one of the things that held the movie together for me. The plot was interesting, though it would not nearly be that fascinating if it wasn't told through a child's perspective. That was also why the movie did not depress me much, despite the fact that the protagonist is in such a (for an adult) horrible situation throughout pretty much the entire 122 minutes. I did feel for Jeliza-Rose at times, though, when occasionally a hint of loneliness was felt through the sheer absurdity of what was happening on screen. Another thing I was amazed at by the end of the film was that it didn't really have a bad aftertaste, even if it was one of the most disturbing movies I have watched. I was quite thankful of that.

Initially, after I left the theaters I was pretty sure I hated the movie because it confused and disturbed me so much. Now that I've thought about it for a while, I'm not really sure whether I love it or hate it. As it was, probably, with the majority of the night's audience, I think it's a little bit of both.

Gilliam at his most self-indulgent; Two hours of pure tedium

[ink-stained · 1/10 · 6 May 2007]

On the audio-commentary track to the DVD version, Terry Gilliam makes repeated reference to the film being just too daring and too different for audiences to grasp. That supposedly is why it flopped at the early screenings and was never given a proper release. Well, Mr. Gilliam, if you are reading this, let me just say that you are deluding yourself. Your film sucks. It is the least interesting film you have ever made.

I say this as a fan. I love most of Gilliam's films. His adaption of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was dead-on. This film never approaches the excellence of his best works. Or even his best misfires.

Like all of his films, Tideland is about the crashing together of worlds of fantasy and reality. In this case it is about how a young girl's innocence and imagination shield her from the hellish world she is thrown into by emotionally damaged adults. The point is that what we would think would be a terrify ordeal -- the death of her parents, her isolation in a decrepit farmhouse, the antics of the bizarre Dell and Dickens -- is, when seen through the eyes of a young girl, actually an amazing adventure, maybe even the most exciting time of her life.

It's a great idea, unfortunately the film it inspired just doesn't work. Brief scenes of grotesque ugliness bookend a staggeringly dull, seemingly endless story where basically nothing happens. No tension builds in the plot, and aside from the young girl herself none of the other characters are remotely interesting. The sense of awe and whimsy a film like this needs to truly grab a viewer is simply absent.

You know the film is in trouble when Gilliam tacks on a prologue where he looks directly into the camera and begs viewers to watch the film through the eyes of a child. If the film actually worked, he wouldn't have to rely on such special pleading, would he?

Fairy tale the way it's supposed to be?

[Galina_movie_fan · 27 March 2007]

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.

Tideland: Unsettling, Engrossing, Insightful

[baphythegoat · 7/10 · 15 April 2007]

I picked this movie completely blind off the shelf of a Hollywood Video. I was attracted to the surreal image of the lead character sitting in the branches/roots of an inverted tree. The fact that Terry Gilliam was listed as a director sealed the deal for me.

The American reviews of this film I have read have on the most part (by viewers and pro-critics alike) have been pretty merciless... and unenlightened. To heck with 'em. It's one thing to say "hey, I don't like films that involve junkies, sex, retards, young children in physical/emotional peril, and I don't understand surrealism at all" and another to slap potential viewers with annoying, pithy comments like "a mess... horrible" without apparent rhyme or reason.

When I watch movies on DVD, If the director or writers choose to include an intro, I tend to watch them. Gilliam's was intense, concise... and very helpful in understanding the film. I found it striking that he opened this movie saying something to the point of *you may love this movie, or hate it... keep in mind it is from the perspective of being a child... this movie is about the resiliency of a child....*

You know, good ol' Terry wasn't lying. Jeliza-Rose is, indeed, a child. Her intense (to us, as adult viewers), bizarre experiences are created in large part, from interactions with the strange, selfish, and often ugly universes of the adults she is surrounded by. Her parents are useless, childish junkies who not only have their single-digit aged daughter well-trained in preparing/administering their smack (I believe this is where most American viewers got turned off of giving this film any quarter whatsomever...).Later in the film, her adult companions include a simple-minded brother (brilliantly portrayed by Fletcher)and a demented sister (another powerful, intriguing performance)... and of course, the personas the little girl has instilled in her sorry toys.

Gilliam delivers us the world of "Tideland" in sequences of "real life", dream, and a child's imagination. Did any of my fellow American viewers get this? Love, sensuality, loneliness, death... These are things children do experience, but many grownups don't handle very well.

I, personally, kinda dug this movie. I am somewhat squeamish (those junkie scenes really put me off- I hate looking at medical needles), and got a case of the willies from some of the implicit sexual content of the film, but you know what- good art often comes with challenges. The challenge of Tideland is to *see a world through the eyes of a child*

And I did. Go Gilliam!

Damn! I'm an adult!

[foomonger · 10/10 · 18 September 2006]

It's been a week since I watched Tideland, though "watched" is hardly the best word for such a brain-curdling experience. It's still on my mind, so it passes my first test of A Great Film.

But what's it all about? "The resilience of a child"? Or is it the resilience of the child within - if you want to call it that - *my* child within. The film was testing me, and I have to admit, at first, I failed. The images resonate so strongly; working with heroin addicts has amplified things; watching a nine year old girl cooking up a hit for her father disturbs me, maybe because I know how real it is, all over the world. It also looks like she's had years of experience.

I'm an adult; and from the first scene, I fear for the child; a feeling that only intensifies as the story progresses. I actually looked at time, twice; I just wanted to get to the end right away to make it stop. I literally couldn't handle it.

It was the scariest film I've seen in a long long while; scarier than all the masterful Japanese horrors I can think of, scarier than Hitchcock. My heart spent the whole film in my mouth; which is why, by the end, I could taste the thing first hand, becoming childlike; and in those truly triumphant moments, where I am falling, like Alice, deeper into Jeliza Rose's fantasy; like when I realise she no longer mouths the doll's words; they have become independent beings (a triumph also of acting; we will be seeing much more of the amazing Jodelle Ferland, for sure), or right at the end, where she tells Dickens "I love you", and BANG! I am falling and don't even notice where I slipped, or how; over and over again, tumbling into the void. Scary, for an adult.

But everything about the film is so beautiful, and as I am transported further and further into Jeliza Rose's fantasy world, like swimming into a beautiful painting, a joyous counterpart to my fear evolves, and I find myself at once incredibly disturbed, and supremely hopeful; as if the magic spilling out of this girl; beyond all my Earthly Adult conceptions of fear and pain and misery; will somehow find a way, even if I can't.

It's rare a film comes along that can't be faulted, film without flaws, but here it is, called "Tideland", by Terry Gilliam. Screenplay, cinematography, acting, directing; for the duration of the movie I was aware of none of them; disbelief completely and utterly suspended. This makes it easy to fall under its spell, so be warned; this film could trouble you.

Looking back this last week, the story just gets better and better in my mind, the fantasy and reality melding into a most coherent telling of the inner life of a child, and how she might deal with the most hellish scenarios that life can throw at a person. A sort of fantastical transmutation born of innocence, the "place where dreams are made". I think I want to read the book.

And of the film, I look back and I think, "Did she really pull that off?", and I'm talking about Jodelle Ferland, who is *yougottafeggincheckthisout* amazing at every turn, playing not one but five characters - those Barbie doll heads are quite separate beings, for starters. She pulls it off, and then some, drawing us into her dream world with the kind of magic only a young girl can get away with. If you are an actor, even a gifted actor, watch this at your peril; if you suffer from jealousy, this is gonna hurt!

That's not to say that the other players (only four, really) weren't spectacular; they were; and I could fill paragraphs praising their inspired, exceptional performances; Dickens, Dell, Noah, even the ghastly Queen Gunhilda; it's just that Jezlia Rose *is* the film, and everyone and everything else is rightly secondary to her. And anyway, it's probably best not to intellectualize acting too much, I think. If you are an actor, they could all make you jealous!

If you are a director, too; Gilliam does his best work here, visiting all his favourite places with a deftness that can only come from big experience, not just in making films, but in life. The Gods helped, no doubt. Dare I call it A Masterpiece? Better not; we don't want the daring Gilliam resting on his laurels! But it IS a masterpiece, and one that probably only Gilliam could better, if that's even possible. It's up there, with all the Great Films I've been fortunate enough to have witnessed. Yes, "witnessed", that's a better word. I was really there, and you will be too. The sea is real, the submarine too. I know; I was there.

Tideland is an astonishing piece of work, and one I fully intend to enjoy on DVD, as soon as possible. At least, next time I won't be so scared, I'm sure, I'll just take a Big Deep Breath before we begin, sit back for the ride and enjoy the magical beauty of it, falling, without snatching at the sides, desperately trying to break my fall, grabbing at those familiar handles, spilling drawers of "things" all over the piece. I'll just let go and fall freely, see where I land.

At least, as soon as I can shake the first "witnessing" from my head, not any time soon, then.

-fm

one of the strangest movies ever

[foxpoet · 7/10 · 18 April 2007]

The acting is simply amazing, the cinematography bizarre but effective -- but at times you find yourself wondering "what the heck am I watching?" The "Psycho/Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and drug use elements were actually less disturbing to me than the "Lolita/The Professional" elements. (Perhaps because the older target of the seduction was mentally challenged and sexually abused?)

I suppose I should have expected it to be disturbing -- it is Terry Gilliam after all -- but I was anticipating something more like Gilliam's "Baron Von Munchausen" mixed with Danny Boyle's "Millions." Instead, it was more like "Pan's Labyrinth" on a very bad acid trip -- and "Pan's Labyrinth" was very dark already!

I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone that isn't a fan of the dark and bizarre in cinema. Even a fan like me took issue with some odd pacing in the middle of the film that undermines much of the dramatic tension, but the character development made up for that. Watch this movie only if you think you might enjoy one of the most bizarre, twisted, deranged non- pornographic films of all time...

This movie made me physically sick

[timothyhilditch · 5/10 · 5 January 2022]

Follows the journey of a girl, she doesn't have parents she has 2 junkies. She has to escape into her imagination after her father brings her home into a nightmare. By 5/10 this isn't a normal rating this movie exists where few other movies go, once they hit a1 because of the disgust and degeneracy, it rebounds back up the rating because of the twisted vision or genius the movie creates. You will be disgusted by this movie, don't make the same mistake as I, don't watch on a full stomach. Once the twisted reality came to fruition, I felt my heart rise and intestines ache. First time a movie made me feel disgust in my core. This movie certainly is an experience, great acting certainly did not calm me. The way Terry Gilliam constantly keeps the camera at an angle, perfectly represents the experience of disorientation.

With adult themes throughout shown through the eyes of a child, keep away from children because this poison pollutes the brain.

One word: Amazing

[oenmet_een_k · 9/10 · 25 August 2006]

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'

This is the mother of all the movies with crazy people

[siderite · 7/10 · 13 April 2008]

I can't really grade this film, as it is so weird and at the same time compelling. Having seen it, I wish I hadn't, but both me and the missus could not stop the movie, we had to see it end.

Bottom line, if you are like me and you thought this is some fairy tale movie you are dead wrong. This is about a girl, raised by crazed drug addicts, going in the wild prairies, having both parents die, meeting insane neighbours and ending up with crazy town folk. All this while talking to herself and imagining she is somewhere (and somebody) else.

If you want to know what this movie is like, imagine one of those cliché films where some inbred redneck has a mummified parent in the attic and hunts innocent but horny teenagers in order to impale them into a hook or something. Well, this film is describing the childhood of the said killer, before actually finding out there are nasty horny teenagers in the world and are still blissfully ignorant of the world around them.

The Continuing Alienation Of Terry Gilliam.

[mulevariations · 5/10 · 27 March 2007]

Come on people. Gilliam is not God. In my not so humble opinion he has not made a good film since 1995's "12 Monkeys". With each subsequent release he has given us less and less to think about and ponder. Instead, his projects have become increasingly vain--making films only he will enjoy, not us, his fans.

"Tideland" is better than the insufferable "Brothers Grimm", but not much better in terms of being entertaining. I was completely suspicious at the beginning of my DVD seeing Gilliam himself explaining what the film was going to be about. Why? He's never had to do that before. Perhaps it was due to the poor reception of "Brothers Grimm"? "Brazil" didn't have a disclaimer at the beginning.

The main disappointment about "Tideland" is that I found it tedious. The story was not interesting much like "Brothers Grimm" and "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas". Boring comes to mind. Did Gilliam really think that a child actress would carry an entire film? I think she did a great job, but still.....that's all there was. The story didn't really go anywhere. I wasn't shocked by a single thing in this film, so I don't know what the big deal was that other reviews are so titillated by. I've seen far worse in films. Jeff Bridges is great, but the story doesn't involve much of him. It's mainly about this little girl who has been emotionally abused and neglected by her parents and how she copes with it. Gilliam doesn't give us anything to think about though--the story just is.

I sure hope Gilliam gets back on track some day. He had a string of solid films like "Time Bandits", "Brazil", "Baron Munchausen", "Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys". You've had your fun Mr. Gilliam, now it's time to give your audience what they want.

One of Giliam's Finest Masterpieces

[stephen-lynch-1 · 10/10 · 21 October 2006]

Completely forget any review you read by Richard Roeper, because it's true crap. Tideland was a brilliant view of a child, living in her very own fantasy world. She maintains her loneliness by holding conversations with her 4 doll-head friends, as well as squirrels and her new friend, a sexually confused brother of a crazed witch lady. The movie is full of brilliant humor as well as the realism of drug-crazed parents, mixed with the fantasy world of a little girl's imagination. This movie was so much more than I had hoped for. Way to go Terry, this is purely one of your finest. Right up there on the level of Fear and Loathing. Any critic that gives this film a bad review should seriously question their competency as a film critic (ahem Roger and Ebert)...

Jeff Bridges takes his ten year-old daughter

[ritera1 · 7/10 · 16 August 2022]

...to a remote house just after the death of her mother. Even though Jeff Bridges quickly dies from a heroin overdose, the little girl has a "magical" time running around the field of weeds.

Very odd movie, even for Gilliam. It was more a horror movie presented as playtime for this severely traumatized little girl. All as Jeff Bridges slowly rots away in the living room.

I usually really like Gilliam but I don't know what he thought doing this one.

Bad art

[MitchellXL5 · 1/10 · 5 June 2007]

Any film that starts out with a defensive disclaimer from the director explaining to the viewer how the film "should" be viewed is immediately suspect to me. It implies that what I am about to see wasn't done right and the director needs to do a lot of backtracking to make it seem like the whole thing was on purpose.

And that is exactly how "Tideland" unfolded.

Though sold as "bold" cinema for those who aren't happy to be placated by Hollywood junk, "Tideland" is nothing of the sort. It's a pretentious folly - it tries so hard to shock that it comes off like an old John Waters film without the youthful snickering and it seems to think that if you wrap it all in very forced allusions to "Alice in Wonderland," you've got yourself some art.

The first problem with the film is Gilliam's assertion that it is a testament to the resilience of children. The ending implies that adversity is bludgeoned from the soul with the right amount of imagination, but the whole film is populated with horrible adults who were not resilient children in the slightest - they are damaged, broken people lashing out. There is no resilience on display anywhere - and even the ending doesn't reveal resilience so much as dumb luck.

Furthermore, Gilliam's proposition is an either/or one, a simplistic proclamation of a complicated circumstance. Surviving does not mean wholeness, as Gilliam's rose-colored glasses ending implies. There are degrees upon degrees of subtle trauma that such survival entails - surely the topic deserves more than his standard theme of people retreating into their imagination in order to survive in the world they find themselves. It's the same story for every movie the man has made and it feels incredibly tacked on in this one.

The second problem is that Gillliam populates the film with cartoon characters that don't elicit any real sympathy or horror. I understand that he is trying to do the fairy tale schtick, but it doesn't work because the moral he is pushing is so flawed that it needs nuance more than archetypes to address the real thematic concerns that can come out of this story. Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly aren't particularly menacing, they're just goofy. They seem like Hollywood actors pretending to be camped-up degenerates. They are like something out of the Batman TV show.

The third problem is the lead actress, who just hasn't got what it takes to carry a whole film, particularly one that spends A LOT of time with just her talking to herself. She seems so directed, so controlled by what Gilliam wants her to do, that there is nothing natural in her performance at all - she is more like Gilliam's idea of what a child acts like rather than a real person - and the portrayal of this character is so grating between the actress' limitations and Gilliam's inept conception of her that she brings no sympathy to a character who should demand much.

The fourth problem is that it is long and boring. A good half hour needs to be cut out just to stop the meandering. The supposed shocking nature of the film comes off as the desperate attempt of an old director to prove he still has his edge - it's not jarring so much a coma-inducing. And that's the saddest part. For all the implications of the disclaimer at the end, it actually doesn't deliver in its promised provocation and it becomes obvious that it just never occurred to Gilliam that the reason some people didn't like it isn't because it's scandalous or because they don't understand what he was trying to do, but because he just didn't do it very well at any stage of the production.

I respect him for trying something different, but the nature of an experiment is that the chance exists that it might fail and anyone with any real grip on the creative journey needs to accept that and be able to examine what went wrong, rather than be defensive about it.