The Film:
In a career full of highly polarizing,
controversial films, there is little doubt that the most highly
polarizing, controversial film that Terry Gilliam has ever made is
Tideland; no small statement,
considering that this is the guy who gave us Brazil and
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
and whose The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has
got to be one of the most embattled productions in the history of the
medium. But Tideland's
reputation precedes it as one of the most unrelentingly bleak and
depressing films ever made about a child's loss of innocence. It
begins with an on-screen introduction by Gilliam himself offering a
disclaimer that a lot of viewers are not going to like it; an unusual
start to the movie if ever there was one, and one that, through the
semi-mythical status that it garnered online, further perpetuated the
reputation of Tideland
as something that is not for most people. Consequently, this has also
become one of Gilliam's least-seen films, getting a small release and
quickly disappearing into the ether of cult cinema for the
adventurous only. The new special edition of the film from Arrow
Video makes a strong case, however, that Tideland
is an excellent film that, while certainly not for everyone, deserves
a look, and greater appreciation. As a pitch-black tale of a girl
disappearing into an inner fantasy-world to escape a horrible life,
it is thematically rather similar to Pan's Labyrinth (and
is at least as grim and uncompromising), though the execution could
not be more different. Its Southern-Gothic, wind-and-dust-swept
portrayal of innocence amid horror very strongly recalls another
underrated and underseen film, Philip Ridley's brilliant The
Reflecting Skin.
Young
Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland, Silent Hill)
is a little girl with a rich imagination and a deep love of Alice
in Wonderland – two traits
which increasingly become important survival skills as she constructs
an elaborate fantasy-life in which to escape her bleak reality. She
is the daughter of two heroin addicts (Jeff Bridges and Jennifer
Tilly, in grotesque and haunting performances) who make no attempt to
protect their child from their drugged-out reality, to the point that
helping her dad shoot up seems to her like just a normal kid's chore.
When a sudden turn of events causes her dad to flee from the cops and
take Jeliza-Rose with her, they end up squatting in a crumbling,
abandoned farmhouse on a desolate southern prairie, and she retreats
further and further into her fantasy-world as her real word grows
increasingly more damaged and desperate all around her. What follows
is a film of profound tonal dissonance which, depending on your point
of view, is either darkly beautiful or deeply disturbing (or both).
We see everything through Jeliza-Rose's eyes, which means that while
many things happen that are severely messed-up and beyond dark, we
witness them all filtered through the rose-colored glasses of
childlike wonderment and innocence; she doesn't have the life
experience to know how damaged her situation is, so she just takes
things in stride and makes up ways to see the events to make them
seem not nearly as bad as we viewers know they obviously are. In
Gilliam's introduction to the film he talks about how strong and
resilient children are, how “when dropped, they tend to bounce,”
and he says that “if [the film] is disturbing, that's because it's
innocent.” As adults who can't see the world through that innocent
lens any longer, the friction of this contrast can be deeply
disturbing, but he is right: it ultimately isn't a story about awful
things that happen to a child, but a story about that child's
resilience and the inner strength that she doesn't even know she's
channelling.
That
dissonance between innocence and horror pervades every aspect of the
film. Jodelle Ferland's cheerful, optimistic, naïve performance is a
stark contrast to the grotesque and ghoulish damaged adults who
inhabit the world around her, especially her strung-out mom and
creepy neighbor (Janet McTeer), who are right out of a thoroughly
Gilliamesque nightmare. The same is true of Gilliam's art design,
which largely consists of decay, squalor, drought, and death, but
which we then see in fantastical sequences through Jeliza-Rose's
eyes, as she makes them into surreal places of strange beauty.
Gilliam's typical neo-expressionist whimsey is on full display in
plenty of scenes, but filtered through a macabre aesthetic of doll's
heads, taxidermied animals, and lots of dust. The atmosphere that he
creates perfectly nails both sides of the story: the innocence and
fantasy within which Jeliza-Rose emotionally protects herself, and
the darkness outside of that bubble. The world of the film feels
genuinely dangerous and unpredictable, as shocking occurrences early
in the movie create a sense that anything could happen, that our
young protagonist is not safe, and that no matter how dark the film
gets, it can probably find a way to get darker. The result is a film
that keeps the viewer in a state of anxiety throughout the running
time, just as unmoored from safety as our main character but without
the protection of childhood to shield us from the worst of the
situation.
As all
of that should make clear, this movie is not for everyone – its
level of darkness is one that plenty of viewers would find
offputting, and all the more so because it centers around a child.
But a lot of people will also really love it and its grim, lyrical
quality. It really is a close cousin to The Reflecting
Skin, that other southern-Gothic
tale of how “innocence is hell” that predates Tideland
by over a decade, and that
similarly casts a powerful, haunting spell. If you like that film,
you will also like this one, and vice versa (though I'm sure the
opposite is true as well). I would say that The Reflecting
Skin is the better of the two,
but that is not a criticism of Tideland,
but rather a testament to its predecessor. This is absolutely a film
very much worth recommending and worth seeing – provided you are
the kind of viewer who is up for the journey. It is a very different
sort of film for Terry Gilliam: a different kind of strange that
explores a darker-than-usual subject matter. But it is nonetheless
highly Gilliamesque, and a strong case could be made that it is among
his best films. It certainly is among the most personal and
instrospective.
The Transfer:
Tideland's
US distributor, ThinkFilm, did a very peculiar job of releasing it.
After highly polarizing initial screenings, they barely gave it any
theatrical distribution at all, and then their DVD cropped the film
down from its intended 2.35:1 to a less-sweeping 16:9, earning
protests from Gilliam in the process. As such, Arrow Video's new
blu-ray marks the first time that Tideland
has
been available in its intended aspect ratio since theaters. Given
what a visually powerful filmmaker Gilliam is, this itself makes this
transfer a huge step up over the DVD. It should be noted, though, it isn't
a new restoration, but an existing HD master provided to Arrow by
Universal. This is likely no fault of the company, and just the
nature of how the title was licensed to them, but it is somewhat of a
shame, given the beautiful 2k and 4k restorations that Arrow has been
doing lately. It is a very good transfer, with strong detail and
little or no noticeable defects, far and away the best the film has
looked in America, so I can't complain too much, especially since
this title likely won't sell enough to warrant a new 2k or 4k
restoration.
The
Extras:
The
good news about this special edition of Tideland
is that it has tons of extras, including some that are very
substantial. The bad news is that literally all of them are ported
over from the ThinkFilm 2-disc special edition DVD. Of course, this
is largely understandable since that DVD was packed with extras, and
basically covered most of the bases that Arrow could. We have a
commentary by Gilliam and his co-writer, interviews with Gilliam, the
film's producer, and Ferland, Bridges, and Tilly (which are
interesting, but much too short, especially since there is a distinct
impression that all we're getting are snippets of longer interviews),
deleted scenes, and two featurettes, one that is a general
behind-the-scenes piece and one that is all about the film's
green-screen work. But by far the coolest extra is the 45-minute CBC
documentary Getting
Gilliam,
which is part behind-the-scenes of Tideland
and part a profile of Gilliam and his creative process using this
film as a case study. Interestingly, this doc was made by Vincenzo
Natali, the director of Cube
and
Splice,
and it is very cool to see a reasonably well-regarded indie
genre filmmaker make a portrait of another cinematic auteur who was
clearly an influence on him. All in all it's a very solid bunch of
extras, with the exception of the skimpy on-set interviews. It's a
thorough enough package on its own, but still, it would have been
nice to get some new interviews for the disc; I'd love to know how
Ferland feels about the film now that she's an adult and can look at
the themes and content with a different perspective, and I would also
love to hear Gilliam think back on one of his most divisive and
least-seen films thirteen years later. A bit of a wasted opportunity,
but what is here is great.
All
in all, this is a pretty solid release of Tideland,
at least for those who don't already have the two-disc DVD set which
renders all the extras redundant. The extras may not be new, but they
are very strong, and the transfer is quite good, if not up to par
with Arrow's very best. But mostly, it is a great opportunity to
revisit the entry in Terry Gilliam's filmography which, perhaps more
than any other, deserves serious reevaluation, and to be more widely
seen. As he says in his introduction to the film, plenty of viewers
will hate it (or at least be severely put off by the darkness that it
puts its young protagonist through), but just as many will love it.
Hopefully this review gives you a clue as to which kind you will be.
Score
for the film:
Score
for the blu-ray:
-
Christopher S. Jordan
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