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A grim tale from Gilliam
TIDELAND
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Certificate 15
THIS is another weird offering from Terry Gilliam. As usual with Gilliam films, it is well-made, well-acted, beautifully shot – but it also seems to suffer from the same problem which his other movies suffer from.
They can seem too clever for the majority of the cinema going audience, which can mean parts feel inaccessible and slow.
But while Gilliam’s previous films have a vein of absurd humour wriggling through them, Tideland, despite having the odd giggle is too dark to allow the viewer a chuckle.
Our hero, 10-year-old Jeliza Rose – played superbly by Jodelle Ferland (pictured) – has a problem. Her rock and rolling parents are heroin addicts.
When her mother dies, she is shipped off by Noah, (Jeff Bridges) her has-been rock star of a father, to a lonely house in the middle of nowhere to essentially fend for herself, with a little help from her favourite possessions, being a set of dolls heads. The house provides ample nooks and crannies for the youngster to explore – a good thing considering what the story has in store.
Her father overdoses and dies in a flea-bitten armchair. Poor Jeliza refuses to believe she is now totally alone as the corpse of Noah slowly rots away in the background.
Gilliam uses an Alice in Wonderland template, and seems to be paying tribute to the power of imagination. Jeliza uses her mind to escape from the grim place she finds herself in.
There are moments which shock. Watching her help her parents inject heroin is not very pleasant.
The film manages to couple the scariness of wide open spaces (her home is surrounded by dark, rolling fields that stretch for ever) with her own feelings of being deserted, firstly by her mother, and then through her father, whose habit means even when he is alive, he may as well be dead.
And this means although it is well made, it is not much fun, and probably won’t provide Gilliam with a hit.
The cinema is meant to offer some escapism from the humdrum of every day life and such an arty offering may be fun to look at for a while, it not much fun to watch and absorb. |
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