Tideland (2005)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Terry Gilliam

Writers:

Tony Grisoni (screenplay) &
Terry Gilliam (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

30 March 2006 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Thriller

Tagline:

The squirrels made it seem less lonely

Plot:

A lonely girl gets trapped in an eerie fantasy world after her irresponsible parents die.

Plot Keywords:

Eccentric | Little Girl | Squirrel | Dysfunctional Family | Dinner Party

Awards:

1 win & 10 nominations

Cast

Jodelle Ferland	...	Jeliza-Rose / Voices of Sateen Lips, Glitter Gal, Mustique and Baby Blonde
Janet McTeer	...	Dell
Brendan Fletcher	...	Dickens
Jennifer Tilly	...	Queen Gunhilda
Jeff Bridges	...	Noah
Dylan Taylor	...	Patrick
Wendy Anderson	...	Woman / Squirrel's Voice
Sally Crooks	...	Dell's Mother

MPAA:

Rated R for bizarre and disturbing content, including drug use, sexuality, and gruesome situations - all involving a child, and for some language.

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

Canada | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:16 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | Japan:R-15 | France:-12 | UK:15 | USA:R | Czech Republic:12 | Slovakia:12 | Finland:K-15 | Singapore:M18 | Portugal:M/12 | Argentina:16 | Norway:18 | Australia:MA | Italy:VM14 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Canada:18A (Manitoba) (DVD rating) | South Korea:15 | Brazil:16 | Spain:18 | New Zealand:R16 | Mexico:C

Filming Locations:

Canada Saskatchewan Production Studios, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Company:

Capri Films

Trivia:

In promotion for the opening weekend of this film, Director Terry Gilliam crashed the ticket line for "The Daily Show" (1996). He signed autographs, told jokes, and took photos with fans, holding a sign proclaiming (in jest): "Studio-less Film Maker, Family to Support, Will Direct for Food". He is quoted as saying: "This is the state of independent film making. You got to get out on the street and beg again." "We have no shame anymore, just out on the streets hustling." "The first weekend is everything, if it doesn't do well the first weekend, it dies."

Quotes:

Jeliza-Rose: They were kissers.

Movie Connections:

References Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Soundtrack:

There's a Moon Out Tonight

Gilliam's return to form

I was very intrigued by the range of opinions about this film, and I'm kind of agnostic about Gilliam at the best of times so could have gone either way. In the event, it seems to me like a very personal, smallscale and risky film - the kind of thing major directors don't do often enough.

Gilliam introduced the screening I attended by saying that plenty of the (invited) audience would hate the film. He also said that its subject is the resilience of children, in a world where we're encouraged to treat them as helpless victims most of the time.

I was pretty much enthralled from the opening scene. Jeff Bridges plays a character who's like the dark side of the Dude. A semicoherent junkie who's trained his daughter to cook up his heroin shots for him, he'd be the world's worst parent figure if it wasn't for the mother, a grotesque Courtney caricature who seems to me to be the only person in the film Gilliam's unable to summon up any liking for.

Events lead us into the wheatfields of the midwest and the story takes off into completely unforeseeable territory. There are countless reference points touched on over the next hour or so, in a very playful way - everything from Dorothy's farmhouse and her encounters with witches and brainless tin men, to the dinner table scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to Psycho, to Jan Svankmeyer and The Bride of Frankenstein, and in what's either a major theft or a loving homage, one of the plot points of The Butcher Boy becomes a central event here.

The storyline takes detours into whimsy and the massively grotesque - there are two scenes here that will stay with me for weeks, one featuring a sex act in a taxidermist's workshop, the other best left undescribed - but there seems to me to be a central interest in the way that kids keep themselves sane through the most extreme circumstances, through imagination and play, and through projecting their fears onto made-up characters, that really shows an understanding of the way children's minds work.

The main character, the kid, is tremendously convincing, funny and - in the end - heartbreaking. I think this film might just stand with classics like Voice of the Beehive and Bernard Rose's totally underrated Paperhouse as one of the great films about solitary children and their imaginations, and their ability to rise above their fears.