by S Bond Herndon

Created on: June 29, 2008   Last Updated: December 09, 2010

It's not easy to find an original mind in the movie industry. Mainly, this is because so few can find the money to back them. Let's face it, making a film can be an expensive gamble and investors seldom enjoy taking a chance with their money.

Terry Gilliam knows this well; he has ridden on the outer edge of film for years, and in this sense, he has done so successfully. Enter exhibit A: a wonderful treat that he titles "Tideland".

Gilliam has always pointed his wide screen lens and simply allowed us to choose what we are going to look at while his story plays itself out. "Tideland" feeds the senses as a tidal marsh feeds the lowlands; parts of it are dying and being absorbed back into the food chain; fluids are being sucked out of or into one form or another. Gilliam's characters are given to us and tossed to one side; you can watch them rot, or pay attention to something else in the story.

In "Tideland" we have the added treat of a new face: Jodelle Ferland (playing Jeliza-Rose) who is left with no choice but to live in a gruesome world that sees her heroin addict parents (Jennifer Tilly and Jeff Bridges) die and leaves her in the desolate wilds of a north prairie farm house with certifiable lunatics as the only neighbors.

Jeliza-Rose has a way to deal with it all: she simply retreats into a make-believe world where the heads of her dolls listen to her holding forth and go with her on amazing adventures that open through the gristly remains of lost humanity.

When Jeliza-Rose meets up with her mysterious, ghost-like neighbor, things take an even stranger direction. While her father's body rots in the crumbling remains of his childhood home, Jeliza-Rose plays with her doll heads in the golden fields of grass that surround the land like a vast sea. With in these billowy waters she comes across a deranged man with deformed features who plays as if he is swimming and claims to own the only submarine in these parts.

His sister is the mystery woman, an old aquantense of Jeliza-Rose's fathers, and a taxidermist gone insain. She stuffs Jeliza-Rose's dad's body (complete with chicken wire re-enforcing) so he can join them all at the dinner table!

It is a look into madness and the human ability to cope. And, it is a masterpiece.

Chills will run amok as you watch. Insanity dangles like a vintage Buick from a piano wire, precarious inevitability that creates a delicious tension. There is no boredom in "Tideland".

This reviewer highly recommends this film, especially for those who had little trouble enjoying "Brazil!"

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

Running time 120 minutes

A THINKFilm release

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