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'sAlice'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.[4]
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."[10]
The subsequent mainstream reviews of Tideland were mixed, with Japan being the only country where it was both a critical and box office success.[11] The film was first released in Russia (February 2006) followed by the Netherlands (March 2006) and Greece (May 2006).[12] 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.[13] 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.[14]
Gilliam has openly criticized THINKFilm for the manner in which the company handled the American theatrical release of the film,[15] 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.[16] 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.[17]
Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman gave Tideland an "F",[18] 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"[19] and stated: "Terry Gilliam's grim fairy tale is another fantastic(al) showcase for his visual talents."[19]
The film received a "two thumbs way down" rating from Richard Roeper and guest critic A.O. Scott on the television show Ebert & Roeper. Scott said that toward the end, the film was "creepy, exploitive, and self-indulgent," a sentiment that was echoed in his The New York Times review of the film.[20] 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."[21] 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."[22]
The Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington,[23] however, praised the film,[24] further stating that "... it's crazy, dangerous and sometimes gorgeous ...",[25] and Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News wrote, "Tideland, for me, is a masterpiece", a blurb featured on the DVD release.[26]
Filmmaker David Cronenberg described the film as a "poetic horror film", a quote which was used in the advertising campaign for the theatrical release.[27] Filmmaker Rian Johnson named Tideland and The Fountain as his favorite films of 2006.[28]
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."[29]
Home media
The DVD of Tideland was released on 27 February 2007 in a 2-disc "Collector's Edition", with a commentary track, many interviews, deleted scenes (with a forced commentary over the original audio), and a making-of documentary entitled Getting Gilliam, made by Cube director Vincenzo Natali.
There has been some controversy among fans over the aspect ratio presented on the Region 1 DVD released by THINKFilm for the United States, which is 1.78:1, instead of the aspect ratio prepared and approved by Gilliam and the director of photography (in theaters, it was shown in 2.35:1, but Gilliam wanted to open up the image slightly for home video, somewhere between 2.10:1 and 2.25:1).[30]
There were early reports that DVD releases in Canada (Region 1) and other regions used the theatrical aspect ratio, but these have proven to be entirely false. The Region 3 DVD was rumored to feature the fully corrected transfer,[31] but this was later debunked on the same website where the claim was made; as shown in a purported screen capture of the Hong Kong release,[32] the Region 3 DVD uses the incorrect aspect ratio.
The UK (Region 2) release, does have a 2.10:1 aspect ratio.[33] The German EuroVideo–Concorde Home Entertainment release has been independently verified to use the theatrical 2.35:1 ratio, as is seen in screen captures from it.[34] OFDb.de also gives this ratio for the German release.[35]
Both THINKFilm and Gilliam have publicly stated that they are working on a solution to the ratio problem and will release a corrected version for sale as soon as possible.[33] That did not happen until the Blu-ray editions were released a decade later, long after THINKFilm had gone out of business.
Terrence Vance Gilliam is a British filmmaker, comedian, animator and actor. He gained stardom as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe alongside John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman. Together they collaborated on the sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974) and the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983). In 1988, they received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.
12 Monkeys is a 1995 American science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetée, starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt, with Christopher Plummer and David Morse in supporting roles. Set in a post-apocalyptic future devastated by an unknown disease, a convict (Willis) is sent back in time to investigate its origin.
Brazil is a 1985 sci-fi dystopian dark comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm.
Time Bandits is a 1981 British fantasy adventure film co-written, produced, and directed by Terry Gilliam. It stars Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan and David Warner. The film tells the story of a young boy taken on an adventure through time with a band of thieves who plunder treasure from various points in history.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 adventure fantasy film, co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams and Uma Thurman. An international co-production between the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, the film is based on the tall tales about the 18th-century German nobleman Baron Munchausen and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire.
The Fisher King is a 1991 American fantasy comedy-drama film written by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Terry Gilliam. Starring Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges, with Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer, and Michael Jeter in supporting roles, the film tells the story of a radio shock jock who tries to find redemption by helping a man whose life he inadvertently shattered. It explores "the intermingling of New York City's usually strictly separated social strata" and has been described as "a modern-day Grail Quest that fused New York romantic comedy with timeless fantasy".
The Brothers Grimm is a 2005 fantasy adventure film directed by Terry Gilliam. The film stars Matt Damon, Heath Ledger and Lena Headey in an exaggerated and fictitious portrait of the Brothers Grimm as traveling con-artists in French-occupied Germany, during the early 19th century. The brothers eventually encounter a genuine fairy tale curse which requires courage instead of their usual bogus exorcisms. Supporting characters are played by Peter Stormare, Jonathan Pryce and Monica Bellucci.
Tideland is the third published book by author Mitch Cullin, and is the third installment of the writer's Texas Trilogy that also includes the coming-of-age novel Whompyjawed and the novel-in-verse Branches.
Silent Hill is a 2006 supernatural horror film directed by Christophe Gans and written by Roger Avary, based on the video game series of the same name published by Konami. The first installment in the Silent Hill film series, it stars Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates, Tanya Allen, Alice Krige and Jodelle Ferland. The plot follows Rose da Silva, who takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill, for which Sharon cries while sleepwalking. Rose is involved in a car accident near the town and awakens to find Sharon missing. While searching for her daughter, she fights a local cult and begins to uncover Sharon's connection to the town's dark past.
Jodelle Micah Ferland is a Canadian actress. She debuted as a child actress at the age of four in the television film Mermaid (2000) for which she won a Young Artist Award and received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination, making her the youngest nominee in Emmy history. Her career progressed with roles in the television film Carrie (2002), the horror films They (2002), Tideland (2005), Silent Hill (2006) and Case 39 (2009), and the comedy film Good Luck Chuck (2007). She also led the television series Kingdom Hospital (2004).
Mitch Cullin is an American writer. He is the author of seven novels, and one short story collection. He currently resides in Arcadia, California and Tokyo, Japan with his partner and frequent collaborator Peter I. Chang. His books have been translated into over 10 languages, among them French, Polish, Japanese, and Italian.
Recorded Picture Company is a British film production company founded in 1974 by producer Jeremy Thomas.
BloodRayne 2: Deliverance is a 2007 direct-to-DVD Western horror film, set in 1880s America, and directed by Uwe Boll. The film is a sequel to the 2005 film BloodRayne, which was also directed by Uwe Boll, and stars Kristanna Loken. In Deliverance, Natassia Malthe replaces Loken in the lead role.
Case 39 is a 2009 American supernatural horror film directed by Christian Alvart, and starring Renée Zellweger, Jodelle Ferland, Bradley Cooper and Ian McShane. The film revolves on a social worker who attempts to protect a girl from her violent parents but finds that things are more dangerous than she had expected.
Peter I. Chang is a Taiwanese-born mixed-media artist, illustrator, and filmmaker. He has often collaborated with the author Mitch Cullin who is also his domestic partner.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a 2009 fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown. The film follows a travelling theatre troupe whose leader, having made a bet with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations and present them with a choice between self-fulfilling enlightenment or gratifying ignorance.
Tony Grisoni is a British screenwriter. He lives in London. His first feature film, Queen of Hearts, directed by Jon Amiel, won the Grand Prix at the 1990 Festival du Film de Paris.
La Rose de Fer is a 1973 horror drama film directed by Jean Rollin. It stars Françoise Pascal, Hugues Quester, Nathalie Perrey, Mireille Dargent and Michel Dalessalle. It was his first film not to feature vampires, a theme for which he was best known, but it still features all the dream-like qualities associated with his films.
The Zero Theorem is a 2013 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Mélanie Thierry and Lucas Hedges. Written by Pat Rushin, the story is about Qohen Leth (Waltz), a reclusive computer genius tasked with solving a formula that will determine whether life holds meaning. The film began production in October 2012.
Home Alone: The Holiday Heist is a 2012 American made-for-television Christmas comedy film directed by Peter Hewitt. It is the fifth installment in the Home Alone franchise. It stars Christian Martyn, Jodelle Ferland, Malcolm McDowell, Debi Mazar, and Eddie Steeples. The film premiered on ABC Family on November 25, 2012, during the network's annual Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas programming block. It is the second film, after Home Alone 3, not to focus on the McCallister family, although there are numerous homages to the previous films. Home Alone: The Holiday Heist received mainly negative reviews, although it fared better than the fourth film.
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