“Hello. I am Terry Gilliam and I have a confession to make. Many of you will not like this film.” Uh oh. It’s not often a director takes the opportunity to apologise in advance. When the prologue continues with the dread words – “I suggest you forget everything you ever learned as an adult”- the fear only intensifies. This is, after all, Terry Gilliam, and while all right-thinking people are well disposed to his schtick, the filmmaker has spent a lifetime tilting at windmills to an extent that threatens to overshadow his successes.
Tideland is his Alice In Wonderland, and though we’re used to seeing Lewis Carroll’s classic fable being utilised for everything from The Matrix to the disquieting animation of Jan Swankmejer, Mr. Gilliam’s skewed version injects a fresh hellishness into the descent down the bunny hole. The remarkable Jodelle Ferland stars as a little girl surrounded by ghastly grown-ups. The film begins with the youngster preparing heroin for her junkie parents, as played by Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly, who manages to horrify more than her performances in Bride Of Chucky and Bullets Over Broadway combined. After that, things get really bad. Leaving corpses in her wake, our protagonist finds herself in the strangest place on earth with only doll’s heads and even crazier adults for company.
To paraphrase the first rule of thermodynamics, insanity in equals insanity out. Having no contact with anyone who could remotely answer to the description ‘functional’, it’s soon quite clear that even Dr. Phil wouldn’t know where to start with this kid. Tideland does a remarkable job of colouring the world through Ferland’s eyes, though the grotesques she sees around her make for unsettling company over two hours. A horrible paedophilic subtext only adds to the viewer’s discomfort.
This diseased companion piece to The Fisher King occasionally drags and often disturbs, but somehow, it’s never less than compelling.