DVD Review: Terry Gilliam’s ‘Tideland’

By: DThompson | in: Movies |

Terry Gilliam made two films in 2005, The Brothers Grimm, out on DVD for some time now, and Tideland, which is just out this week.

You might wonder why it took two years for this movie to be released but the real mystery was how it got released at all. In a black and white introductory bit Gilliam adresses the audience and the first words out of his mouth are “My name is Terry Gilliam, and I have a confession to make. Many of you are not going to like this film.” Which for me rang uncomfortably close to Stephen King’s “It’s the journey that matters” bit. Anytime a creator feels the need to excuse their work before you’ve even seen it you know choppy waters lie ahead.
I’ll give you the rundown. This movie is about a ten or so year-old girl, very sweet, very cute. Both of her parents are junkies who show her varrying degrees of neglect. That’s OK, really, since both of them are dead before the first act’s over anyway. But, before the father kicks off he manages to take his daughter out to a Gilliamesque clap board house in the middle of a pictureque field of waving brown prairie grass with no neighbors in sight. Ah, but there are neighbors, as the little girl soon finds out and the bulk of the story is her devloping relationship with them.
Gilliam used to make a habit of centering his films around child protagonists. Two of his first four films featured juvenile leads and the fantasy meilieu in both was explained as possibly occurring within the child’s imagination. Well, you can drop the “possibly” as the only reason Tideland has any fantasy elements at all is Gilliam’s desire to tell an astonishingly cruel and downbeat tale as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre without the cannibalism.

I was, well, I can’t say enjoying, but at least acceptant of the movie most of the way through until the story took an insanely uncomfortable turn as one of the neighbors, the retarded Dickens, describes being molested and the little girl decides he’s her “sweetie” and then her husband. Well, okay, she’s a kid and he’s got the mind of a child so their pseudo-sexual playing about is totally innocent and really revolves around closed lip kissing but I’m not a kid and it was pretty squirmy to watch. Terry took this about as far as he could without anything actually occurring and I began to see a disconnect between filmmaker and audience. Gilliam tells these “jokes” only to himself, though he may not realise this is the case. The child protagonist and Dickens are placed in increasingly compromising sexual situations only to be interrupted at the last available second by an unmotivated external noise or event. Now Mr. Gilliam, knowing because he’s in charge, that these two characters are never going to go too far, probably finds this quite funny. The audience, however, is left twisting because they know no such thing. The joke becomes a very private one indeed.
We are instructed by the director, in his opening salvo, to let go of our pre-conceptions and embrace child-like innocence. The trouble is, I’m no longer a child. Once you’re eaten from the Tree of Knowledge it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to put the apple back.

Though the film never loses its compelling watchability this side trip into pre-adolescent sexuality makes it a very difficult view. A sort of happy ending indicates that the girl may escape this living hell before she gets old enough to realise what a nightmare it really is. Unfortunately for the rest of us it’s already too late
So what is Gilliam trying to say; the world is crazy, unhappy and unkind? Or, is he just telling an interesting story? Either way, I can’t stop mulling it over. Tideland is at once the child’s fantasy adventure of Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen, the tale of broken lives of The Fisher King, and the wild journey of hallucinogenic excess of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. This is surely his most challenging and also most off-putting work to date.
VERDICT: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Official Tideland website

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Posted on March 24, 2007

Comments

9 Responses to “DVD Review: Terry Gilliam’s ‘Tideland’”

Emon on March 25th, 2007 7:47 am

Borrowing from comedian Steven Wright, 99% of Gilliam’s films give the rest of his a bad name. Now I have to spend the next day figuring out what I mean by what I just said.

Charbarred on March 25th, 2007 8:06 am

Thanks for making me think on a Sunday mate…

RustyCat on March 25th, 2007 9:21 am

I’m off to see the film now, big fan of Gilliam’s.

DThompson on March 25th, 2007 11:44 am

I’d be interested in what you think of it Rusty. Drop me a line or a comment or whateva. I’m still thinking about it.
Emon, which film is the 1% getting a bad name? I think he’s made a slew of excellent films: Time Bandits, Brazil, Baron Munchausen, 12 Monkeys, and Fear And Loathing are all top notch.
Jabberwocky, Fisher King and Brothers Grimm are a different story…
I was listening to the extras disc last night and Gilliam made what I thought a very interesting point. He said that as Brothers Grimm and Tideland were made back to back that Brothers was ABOUT fairytales and Tideland IS a Grimm’s fairytale. And he went on to grumble about how today we’re not used to seeing children placed in real danger in our popular entertainment. It’s certainly an interesting notion, Tideland as a Grimm’s fairytale, if I’d heard him say that before I started writing my review might have come out differently. But I doubt it.

Charbarred on March 25th, 2007 12:41 pm

What’s wrong with Fisher King D?
Mind you I watched it when I was a teenager, but I recall it was quite a cool movie.
Brothers Grimm on the other hand…ooh, that was a bad one.

DThompson on March 25th, 2007 3:32 pm

Well, chalk it up to personal preference, and I haven’t seen it since the theater, and I was coming off a Munchausen high, and Fisher King was like the anti-Munchausen. I’ll go rent it tonight and give it another look (a practice I highly recommend).
Brothers Grimm sure LOOKS great and no doubt it’s a Terry Gilliam film, but it misses his wit in its somewhat straightforward storytelling.

Emon on March 26th, 2007 7:07 am

What I meant is that Gilliam’s films are so Gilliam that the one or two he makes to cater to an audience, and please the studio so they would finance his pet projects, turns out, well, sucky. Did that make better sense than my first comment? I am a big fan of his, by the way.

Have you seen ‘Lost in La Mancha’?

Cassie on March 26th, 2007 12:48 pm

I have not personally seen this movie yet, however after seeing a review for it online I e-mailed my boyfriend and told him to pick it up from blockbuster because I want to watch it tonight! I am a huge fan of Terry Gilliam’s mindless and indulgent directing. The creepy fairytales that he leads the viewers through always evoke other emotions that are not always associated with the film. Though some of his films are pseudo erotic in an uncomforting sense I think that deep down inside it intrigues us all. If you are still debating whether or not to see this check out Roeper’s review for yourselves at http://www.atthemoviestv.com This site is great for current movie reviews for old and new movies with full length high-production video reviews. I just wanted to give you guys the inside scoop because I work with Ebert and Roeper.

DThompson on March 28th, 2007 2:02 pm

I have seen Lost In LaMancha. For such a depressing film it was fairly amusing. Sure changed my mind about EVER wanting to be a film maker!