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Tideland
Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.
Release : | 2005 |
Rating : | 6.3 |
Studio : | Téléfilm Canada, The Movie Network, HanWay Films, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Production Design, |
Cast : | Jodelle Ferland Janet McTeer Jennifer Tilly Jeff Bridges Brendan Fletcher |
Genre : | Fantasy Drama Thriller Science Fiction |
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Very Cool!!!
hyped garbage
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
The main trouble with this movie is simple - it is boring and not very captivating. Like Jean-Pierre Jeunets Delicatessen and the like the movie depicts a world filled with weird characters but Tideland does it in a bad way - I didn't feel any empathy for them - strangeness for the sake of strangeness... How its well done to portray a little girl fleeing into her personal fantasy-world to cope with the harsh circumstances of her world is shown in Guillermo del Toros Pans Labyrinth superb. If you compare those two pieces you will see immediately the difference - which movie is a masterpiece and which one a fail or at best a mediocre attempt and to compare this story with Alice in Wonderland counts imo almost as blasphemy ;) Ofc Gillaims is no newbie - the basics (cinematography, settings etc.) are well done and also the actors did there job well - and if the young Jodelle Ferland wouldn't have filled her shoes well, this movie would have been a total fail.
Two questions. Is this film any good? Easy! Yes it's a master piece!Will I enjoy it? This is much harder to answer.The plot and characters are strange, but unlike a lot of Gilliam work it is just fantastically implausible as appose to total fantasy. The story is simple and for the most part is just the main character, a young girl, playing. The girl in the movie is mesmerising! Which makes you feel a bit strange watching this in the first place. Add the scenes where the child experiences glimpses of adult life and the film becomes down right uncomfortable. The lack of progressive story line made the film feel a long watch (you don't feel like you are ever getting anywhere) but the direction of Ferland and her performance is something magical to behold.
I'm writing this review after my third viewing of 'Tideland' - a film by acclaimed director, Terry Gilliam. If you're familiar with him (and his 'ex Monty Python roots') you'll know that his films are always - to put it mildly - a little 'off centre.' Tideland is no exception. It's about a young girl who, after both her drug addict parents die, seeks refuge in both an abandoned farm house and her imagination (which consists of talking doll heads and squirrels). It certainly is different and it has numerous good points. First of all is the young actress who has the hefty task of carrying the film almost single-handedly. She plays the part brilliantly (and quite beyond her years) as she portrays a girl with a troubled past who has only really got her imagination to keep her going. She does meet a few others along the way and their acting is also top notch, too. No one can say that Terry Gilliam doesn't get the best out of his cast.Then you have the direction itself. It's brilliant. Gilliam uses every shot to get the most out of the location and he manages to create a truly weird, wonderful and dreamlike state to set the movie in.However, if you've seen his other films - Brazil and Twelve Monkeys - you'll know that Brazil was a success because it had such an excellent script which moved the story ever onwards. Twelve Monkeys was primarily a mystery concerning what happened to the planet. But where Tideland falls down is in the story. There isn't one.Yes, it's weird and wonderful, but it's effectively a series of bizarre (and brilliantly filmed) scenes which don't really go anywhere.It's certainly not a bad film, but the reason I've watched it for a third time is because I'd forgotten what happened completely. This could be down to the lack of real story for me to actually remember.If you like weird, wonderful and art-house-like films, you'll love this. Just don't go hoping for too much in the way of a story.8/10 stars for acting and direction. 6/10 for the story.
This is a film about a prepubescent child and her imagination that must be viewed through the eyes of a prepubescent child. Furthermore, one must have appreciation for and the understanding of the capacity young children have for creative imagination if it's not stifled and crippled by adult imposed structure 24/7 about what to do, how to do it and when to do it while they're growing up. Thus we have an opportunity to experience, albeit in an abysmally poor and at times gruesome environment, the self-organizing imagination of a young girl as she copes with a world around her she cannot control much. The story is told from that perspective, even if it's not all in first person. Gilliam says as much in the short video Foreword on the DVD and Blu-ray distributions of the film. I do not know if this was in the theatrical release. Failure to do this -- viewing it as an adult -- greatly risks seeing it superficially with gross misinterpretations and missing the complete depth it contains.There is plenty of fact and fiction, with reality and fantasy. However, there are also plenty of clues, some subtle, that the young girl, Jeliza-Rose, retains full capability to distinguish between all of them, even though she consciously chooses to ignore some facts and realities because it's convenient. That she grossly misinterprets what she observes in a couple of scenes is the result of *not* being an adult and therefore does not have the knowledge and experiences required to fully understand what is occurring. Thus, she develops her own based on what she does know and has previously experienced. What would be repulsive to an adult, isn't necessarily so to a child of 9 or 10 that doesn't have the depth of understanding that would make it repulsive. This is often called "innocence" and it can sometimes spare children from trauma as their lack of comprehension about what they've observed allows it to blow by.View the film with the eyes and mind of a 10-year old child, leaving behind the worldly knowledge and experiences of an adult, and appreciate the resilient imagination and innocence of childhood as it copes with a world containing poverty, abysmal parenting, tragedy and some gruesome events, without losing basic sanity. Gets an 8/10 from me for its effectiveness in delivering that through Gilliam's direction, the cinematography and excellent portrayal of Jeliza-Rose by Jodelle Ferland, a difficult role for a child her age.