Tideland (film)

2005 film by Terry Gilliam

Tideland is a 2005 fantasy film co written and directed by Terry Gilliam, following the story of Jeliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland), a young child who struggles to make sense of life in isolation as she lives with an eccentric adult brother and sister in rural Texas after the death of her drug addicted, abusive parents. It is an adaptation of Mitch Cullin's novel of the same name. The film was shot in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and the surrounding area in late 2004. The world premiere was at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival where the film received a mixed response from both viewers and critics. After little interest from U. S. distributors, THINKFilm picked the film up for a U. S. release date in October 2006. Despite the film's eclectic and unconventional themes, which included child abuse, decomposition, incest, flatulence, mental illnesses and heroin usage, Tideland featured a number of notable actors, including Jennifer Tilly, Jeff Bridges, and Janet McTeer.

Tideland centers on an abandoned child, Jeliza Rose, and her solitary adventures during one summer in rural Texas while staying at a rundown farmhouse called What Rocks, and focuses on the increasingly dark, imaginative fantasy life the girl creates with the aid of dismembered Barbie doll heads that she often wears on her fingertips. With names such as Mystique, Sateen Lips, Baby Blonde and Glitter Gal, the doll heads not only engage in long conversations with Jeliza Rose, reflecting different aspects of the girl's psyche, but also act as her companions while she explores the barren Texas landscape. After her mother overdoses on Methadone, Jeliza Rose and her father, Noah, flee to Noah's mother's home, a remote Texas farmhouse. Before they leave, however, Noah fears that with all the drugs in their house he will lose Jeliza Rose and be sent to prison, so he attempts to set it alight, although Jeliza Rose manages to stop him. They find the farmhouse abandoned, but they settle in anyway. Their first night there, Noah dies from a heroin overdose. For much of the rest of the film, Noah's corpse remains seated upright in a living room chair with sunglasses covering his eyes. As her father slowly begins to decompose, Jeliza Rose doesn't readily acknowledge his death because she has grown accustomed to him being unconscious for long periods at a time. Instead, she retreats deeper and deeper into her own mind, exploring the tall grass around the farmhouse, relying on her doll heads for friendship as an unconscious way of keeping herself from feeling too lonely and afraid. During Jeliza Rose's wanderings, she eventually encounters and befriends her neighbors, a mentally impaired young man called Dickens and his older sister Dell who is blind in one eye from a bee sting. At this point the story begins to unfold, revealing a past connection between Dell and Jeliza Rose's deceased father. The eccentric neighbors take the girl under their wing, going so far as to preserve Noah's body via taxidermy (which Dell and Dickens did to their own dead mother). Amorous feelings, initiated mostly by the much younger Jeliza Rose, begin to creep into the childlike relationship between her and Dickens, and it is revealed that the deeply troubled Dickens, a man child who once drove a school bus in front of an oncoming train, keeps a stash of dynamite in his bedroom that he intends to use against the "Monster Shark" he believes is roaming the countryside. The Monster Shark is, in reality, the nightly passenger train that travels past the farmhouse where Jeliza Rose and her dead father reside. It is also revealed that Dell and Noah were once "kissers", as Jeliza Rose finds pictures of the two in the room Dell shares with her own taxidermied mother. At the end of the film, following a violent confrontation between Dell, Dickens and Jeliza Rose, a train wreck is caused by Dickens' dynamite, creating a scene of chaos near the farmhouse. Wandering about the wreckage, and among the confusion of injured travelers, Jeliza Rose is discovered by a woman who survived, and she assumes the little girl is also a victim of the train wreck. The film ends with the woman embracing Jeliza Rose, who stares with stunned confusion at the wreckage.

Tideland, despite being set in rural Texas, was filmed in the prairies of western Canada, with interiors shot in Saskatchewan. Terry Gilliam was enamoured by the original novel by Mitch Cullin, having discovered the book in a stack of unread books on his desk in 2001. He described the novel as "funny, touching and disturbing all at the same time", and while the film's crew had initial trouble financing the film, they were eventually able to get things in order. Rather than Jeliza Rose narrating the story in first person like she did in the book, the screenplay was instead third person with more confusion and uncertainty than in the original novel. Qu'Appelle Valley served as the location for the decrepit house of Dell and Dickens, and also for Noah's old family home where he takes Jeliza Rose. The harsh Canadian weather meant that the crew had to rush to finish the film before the winter. Casting Jeliza Rose was also difficult; roughly 400 Canadian girls auditioned for the role, none of whom Gilliam felt had "a real soul" for the character. A VHS tape from Vancouver was submitted that featured Jodelle Ferland, whom Gilliam agreed was perfect for the role. While acting in the Stephen King miniseries Kingdom Hospital, Ferland prepared for her upcoming role as Jeliza Rose. Jennifer Tilly, who played Jeliza Rose's morbidly obese, abusive mother, wore excess padding to make herself appear overweight, but for the most part the chosen cast merely relied on makeup and behavioural mannerisms to accentuate their characters. Production designer Jasna Stefanovic, who worked on most of the aesthetics and sets for Tideland, took heavy inspiration from Andrew Wyeth paintings and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. While the film portrayed disturbing and grotesque scenes of taxidermy and a trapped live squirrel, no animals were actually harmed during the production.

Tideland was released in theatres in 2006, but had first appeared in the autumn of 2005 at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Donostia San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film was later released on DVD video in 2006–2007 in various countries, and a streaming version exists on Apple TV.

At Spain's 2005 San Sebastian Festival, Tideland was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize, selected by an international jury of critics The jury consisted of Andrei Plakhov, Russia, President (Kommersant), Julio Feo Zarandieta, France (Radio France Internationale), Wolfgang Martin Hamdorf, Germany (Film Dienst), Massimo Causo, Italy (Corriere Del Giorno), and Sergi Sanchez, Spain (La Razón). In response to the controversy surrounding the film's FIPRESCI win at San Sebastian, jurist Sergi Sanchez wrote: "Gilliam's was the only one that dared to propose a risky and radical image, without any concessions, on a specific matter: madness as the only way of escaping in the face of a hostile environment. All this is endlessly coherent with the director's body of work, which has been frequently misunderstood by the critics, the industry, and audiences alike." Defending Gilliam's film while also placing it in the context of the director's previous works, as well as explaining the jury's decision, Sanchez concluded by stating, "Fighting against windmills is, after all, the same as fighting against the prejudices that trap creative freedom." The subsequent mainstream reviews of Tideland were mixed, with Japan being the only country where it was both a critical and box office success. The film was first released in Russia (February 2006) followed by the Netherlands (March 2006) and Greece (May 2006). After almost a year without any US distribution, the film was picked up for American release by THINKFilm, and subsequently opened in the US, earning just $7,276 from one theater during its first week run. The film's release was then expanded, but to only nine theatres, for a total domestic gross of $66,453. Since then, several independent cinemas and art museums have presented the film as a special event, including IFC Center and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Gilliam has openly criticized THINKFilm for the manner in which the company handled the American theatrical release of the film, and their unauthorized tampering with the aspect ratio of the film for its US DVD release. He has also gone on record as saying that nearly all his films have initially garnered mixed reactions from critics, and in at least one interview, as well as in the introduction to Tideland, he has stated that he believes many moviegoers will hate Tideland, others will love it, and some just would not know what to think about it. Gilliam has also said that Michael Palin, another former member of Monty Python, had told him that the film was either the best thing he had ever done, or the worst—although Palin himself could not quite decide either way. Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman gave Tideland an "F", calling it "gruesomely awful". In the subsequent review of the DVD release, Gleiberman's fellow Entertainment Weekly critic Clark Collis gave the film a "B" and stated: "Terry Gilliam's grim fairy tale is another fantastic(al) showcase for his visual talents." Like Scott, Roeper had a strong negative opinion, saying, "I hated this film," and "I came very close to walking out of the screening room. And I never do that." In the Chicago Reader, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film was "hallucinatory and extremely unpleasant" and warned readers, "Enter this diseased Lewis Carroll universe at your own risk." The Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington, however, praised the film, further stating that " it's crazy, dangerous and sometimes gorgeous ", and Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News wrote, "Tideland, for me, is a masterpiece", a blurb featured on the DVD release. Filmmaker David Cronenberg described the film as a "poetic horror film", a quote which was used in the advertising campaign for the theatrical release. Filmmaker Rian Johnson named Tideland and The Fountain as his favorite films of 2006. In the 16 July 2007 online edition of Independent Film Channel News, Michael Atkinson published a comparative film review of Harry Kümel's rarely seen Malpertuis (1971) and Tideland. Atkinson posits that a historical perspective has made Kümel's previously scorned film a more viable creation when far removed from the cultural context in which it was first released. He goes on to argue that Tideland could be the 21st century counterpart to Malpertuis, suggesting that Gilliam's film "is a snark hunted freak just waiting for its historical moment, decades from now, when someone makes a case for it as a neglected masterpiece."