Review of Tideland (2005) by Kenneth L — 19 Jun 2012

Well, it's hard to know exactly what to make of this movie. The director, the often-wonderful Terry Gilliam, actually appears before the movie starts to warn you that many people will hate the movie, and indeed they might. I didn't hate it, but I do feel like this movie quite possibly does go overboard. It's Terry Gilliam all over, but it brings out all the problems of his style just as clearly as its strengths.

The story, such as it is, follows a little girl named Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who is being raised by two hopeless heroin addicts (Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly). After her mother dies, her father takes her to her grandmother's old abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. She spends the rest of the movie in her own little fantasy-world, interacting only with her two crazy neighbors (Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher), the heads of dolls who speak to her, and (spoiler alert) her father's decomposing corpse.

Now, it doesn't bother me per se that Gilliam mixes childlike fantasy and the macabre - in fact I rather like that sort of thing, and think it was done brilliantly in both Coraline and Pan's Labyrinth. What's more bothersome here, I guess, is the overload of Terry Gilliam's style, and the way it completely overwhelms the storytelling. It really feels like there are more shots here at askew angles than straight ones, and the movie's combination of constant close-ups, quickly moving characters, and fast editing often make the experience of watching it feel like trying to hold a screaming toddler who's trying to writhe away from you. It's just too much. It's very hard to get a feel for the characters' motivations or even understand what's going on much of the time.

I should mention that young Jodelle Ferland was really excellent as the central character, who's in every single scene of the movie. Her thick country accent did make it hard to understand what she was saying some of the time, but she did manage to turn in a really believable performance in an otherwise unbelievable movie. Janet McTeer has a strong presence as her witch-like neighbor, but it's basically impossible to understand the character. Brendan Fletcher gives a clearly very dedicated performance as the other neighbor, an epileptic, mentally retarded young man, but again the way the movie is made renders his character hard to understand. The most comprehensible adult performance comes from the reliable Jeff Bridges, but then he spends most of the movie just being a corpse.

Apparently Terry Gilliam has asked that people see the movie twice before forming their final opinions. Well, I don't have time to watch this again anytime soon, but maybe some day far in the future. Until then, I'll have to say that I think Terry Gilliam's at his best when at least somewhat anchored to clear storytelling - for Gilliam at his best, see The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. If you're new to his work, definitely don't start with this one.