Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with, I believe, our first review of Terry Gilliam's TIDELAND and boy is it a doozy. This will be THE Gilliam film. As much as I didn't hate BROTHERS GRIMM, I acknowledge it's Gilliam's weakest film (and I think he even acknowledges that, too). TIDELAND is supposed to be the Gilliam film that is really Gilliam, not just partially Gilliam. I'm dying to see this one! There are slight spoilers and tons of hope and excitement below! Enjoy!
Hi Harry,
RoloTomasi here, recovering from an exhausting but rewarding night at the festival. I won't talk about the leap of faith I had to make to get TIDELAND tickets. This was probably one of the hardest screenings to get into at the Festival this year, and I didn't get access through typical channels (Festival Lottery, Corporate connections, Craigslist). I just got away with it again.
The last film that Terry Gilliam brought here was THE FISHER KING, and that won the audience award. So this is a city that is very receptive to his visions. I haven't read the book that is the source material for this film so I can only comment on what I saw, and what I saw was pure Terry Gilliam.
Here's the brief synopsis - Jaliza-Rose (9-year old Jodelle Ferland) and her heroin-addicted Rocker Daddy, Noah (Jeff Bridges) split for the prairies when the Mom in this family (A gleefully grotesque, fat-suited Jennifer Tilly) O.D.'s on her methadone while trying to get off the Junk. Noah's isolated farmhouse is a perfect place for him to hide out from the world and continue his heroin-induced "vacations". These are dutifully administered by Jaliza-Rose, expert at administering Daddy's injections. With Noah lost in a heroin-induced stupor, Jaliza-Rose is alone with her four severed doll heads, who are her imaginary friends (and imaginary enemies, how many of us had those as a child?). On her own for most of the film, she carries on extended conversations with the heads, voicing their responses as the five of them escape into fantasy. Jaliza eventually meets her closest neighbours, Dell (Janet McTeer) and Dickens(Brendan Fletcher), a brother and sister whose grasp on reality is even weaker than her own. Dickens, who has been partially lobotomized, also lives in a fantasy world where Jaliza Rose finds escape and joy when she joins him on his adventures.
This is for my mind, the perfect pairing of material and director. So much in Gilliam's resume shows up here. The blurring of reality and fantasy has been a major element in every one of his post-python films, but thematically, this is closest to TIME BANDITS, where a child born to, but mostly ignored by, neglectful parents seeks refuge in his/her imagination. Jaliza-Rose is the focus of absolutely every scene, and Gilliam sets the camera about 3 feet high as he did in BANDITS so we are seeing the world from her perspective. Adults, buildings, shadows, rooms loom large. It's no wonder that Jaliza's friends of choice are all small, from her doll's heads to Dickens, hunched over to make his already short stature even shorter. Gilliam's trademarks are there, the squalor of drug life of the early chapters of this movie is reminiscent of FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, the literary & historical references of FISHER KING, BARON MUNCHAUSEN and TIME BANDITS are in evidence here. The Dutch camera angles. The Damaged hero Dickens is similar in some ways to Robin Williams' knight Parry from FISHER KING, each one on an allegorical quest to defeat the monster of their nightmares. Gilliam also tries some new tricks this time around, including an uncharacteristically sunny montage sequence set to a gospel song he co-wrote. I can only imagine the joy he got from writing gospel parody. The film is about imagination run wild in isolation, and I think Gilliam nails it. Jaliza-Rose is resilient because she can fall into her imaginary world and escape the nightmare of reality. All of these characters survive their isolation only through their imaginations and fantasies, although these can be dangerous, too.
Jodelle Ferland - wow. Gilliam has always had a great eye for casting child actors, Craig Warnock in BANDITS (Craig's brother was auditioning, but Gilliam offered Craig the role), Sarah Polley in BARON MUNCHAUSEN. Ferland has an altogether different challenge of holding the camera all by herself, sometimes carrying on 3 or 4 or 5 way conversations with her doll heads. If the wrong child had been cast, this film would have been dead before it even began shooting. Ferland's face is beautifully expressive, she has a gifted voice (Born and raised in Vancouver, she adopted a Texas accent for her character, and uses fake accents for her dolls, giving each one unique life, but voiced as a child would do it), she handles the physicality of the role as well, running through endless fields of wheat. She also shows Jaliza-Rose to have a wisdom that is beyond her years, although not a precociousness. It's expressed through her borderline romantic relationship with Dickens. Their friendship is sweet and innocent, but more than a little disturbing, being between an 20-something man-child, and a 9-year old girl. She is arguably the adult in this relationship. Ferland handles all this heavy stuff perfectly. She and a pre-teen blonde whose name I will not speak here will be competing for parts in the coming years.
Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly - As Father of the Year and Mommy Dearest, respectively, they both chew their scenery, Bridges with a thick and sometimes incomprehensible Texas Drawl, and Tilly, playing the hell-mom we imagine Courtney Love to be multiplied to the 10th power. Tilly is especially monstrous in a fat suit with Varicose veins running down her legs. There's a great moment early on where she expresses her regret over her inability to be a better mother to Jaliza-Rose, while in the same breath yelling at her for wanting chocolate. It's played in a Darkly comic fashion, but Tilly gives it real pathos.
Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher play the only other major characters in the film. McTeer,as Dell, the neighbour with an unhealthy interest in Taxidermy, goes from Madness to Maternal and back to Madness over the course of the film. Dell is probably the person closest to civilization out on the prairie (She actually goes to the village every now and then, we never do). But she is also more delusional than the other characters, believing her subjects to be capable of resurrection. Interestingly, her character is a devout Christian.
Brendan Fletcher captures Dickens' innocently destructive soul. He finds the right tone to play this damaged, essentially good man who finds no one understands him better than this little girl. Fletcher's scenes with Ferland are tender and moving, while maintaining a somewhat disturbing undercurrent.
This is a small, intimate, production. The things Terry Gilliam's films typically are not. The Fantasy sequences are not the explosive, elaborate setpieces of his larger films, so don't go in expecting big payoffs. But this is still very much a Terry Gilliam film. It's imaginative, provocative, and visually spectacular. The acting and writing are excellent. The film builds slowly, but rewards your patience. Terry, thanks for coming to Canada, glad you liked our polite film crews, shoot here anytime. The results are worth it.
Rolo Out. I'll be back later with my thoughts on THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES and BANLIEUE 13.
