What I Rented - Tideland

Terry Gilliam's Tideland is a colossal failure, a movie so misguided and ugly that it is a chore to sit through the first ten minutes let alone the entire two hours. There is the hope that some of Gilliam's enormous talent will shine through later on, but aside from the occasional fantasy scene he seems more interested in surrounding his lead character with bizarre whackos who engage in acts more at home in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The story, or what little story there is, follows Jeliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who moves with her father to a deserted house in the middle of the prairies after her mother dies from a drug overdose. Soon after, dad follows suit, and Jeliza is left to fend for herself, communicating solely with four severed doll's heads. Eventually she meets up with some more characters and they form a disfunctional family unit. Lots of bizarre sexual situations, violence, and depravity follows.

Tideland is first and foremost an exercise in excess. Without any restraints, it appears that Gilliam was allowed to do whatever he wanted, and while there is certainly an abundance of ideas, there is no sense of pacing, story, or even visual grace. A little girl simply walks around and finds herself in troubling situations, but unlike Alice in Wonderland (a story Gilliam repeatedly references), Jeliza's journey is witless, satire-free, and dull.

One of the main problems is that the Gilliam never allows the audience to truly get inside Jeliza's head. According to Gilliam's bizarre intro, he claims that he wants the viewer to see the world through the innocence of a child. Fair enough, but why then does he constantly show the reality of the scene?

For example, in Jeliza's world, Dickens, her neighbour, is a heroic submarines captain who hunts and kills sharks. Yet, aside from one extremely over-the-top fantasy scene, the camera consistently shows the grim reality of the situation. Dickens is a mentally disabled boy who spends most of his time in a tent where he plans to blow up trains and other moving vehicles. Jeliza simply wanders into his world, mumbles a lot of childish nonsense, and we're supposed to accept that Jeliza's imagination is working overtime to create a wondrous fantasy.

Every scene in the movie is essentially the same. Jeliza is innocently placed in a potentially traumatic experience, and instead of watching her interpretation of the event, the audience is treated to the gritty, hard-to-stomach reality. Because she is a child, and the plot would disintegrate if she actively tried to improve her lot in life, she is essentially reduced to a powerless protagonist, and the movie never lets her be anything more than a passive observer. Sure she occasionally takes action; freeing a squirrel, or putting two doll's heads inside her dead father's open carcass (yep that's the kind of movie this is), but more often than not Jeliza simply is in the right place at the right time and has an "encounter". Over the course of two hours, Jeliza's inaction becomes downright annoying. I know she's a child, but Gilliam spends so long trying to prove that she is a bright child, so it's thoroughly unconvincing when Jeliza is unable to sense that the people around her are downright insane.

Tideland is a terrible, terrible movie, made even worse by the fact that this is potentially fascinating material, placed in the hands of the one man who could have actually made it work. Gilliam's film is a depressing slog, an unrestrained mess, and one of the worst films I have had the displeasure to sit through.

Star Rating - O out of 4