Tideland Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.0

Tideland Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 10, 2018

Let’s just start by stipulating that Terry Gilliam is a visionary genius. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, Gilliam is also arguably one of the most frequent purveyors of cinematic excesses in the modern era, enough so so that any underlying heart in his films (of which there is typically plenty) can seem to get buried by the sheer audacity of the overall presentational style and plot conceits. This disconnect (if that’s what you want to call it) is completely in evidence in Tideland, a Gilliam film from 2005 that my hunch is even some diehard Gilliam fans aren’t overly aware of. Tideland was culled from a novel by Mitch Cullin which some critics compared to such masterpieces involving children in Southern climes as To Kill a Mockingbird, though which Gilliam himself in one of the supplements included on this new Blu-ray pointedly compares to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Perhaps only because it relatively recently appeared in my review queue, certain elements of Tideland tended to remind me of an early work by another filmmaker some might call a visionary genius, Vincent Ward, namely his Vigil. Both Vigil and Tideland feature young female protagonists haunted by the death of at least one of their parents, and who are prone to escaping into imaginary worlds where things are ostensibly at least a bit rosier. Both films also offer rather striking performances by the quite young actresses tasked with bringing surprisingly nuanced characters to life, which in the case of Tideland is Jodelle Ferland’s memorable work as little Jeliza-Rose. Ferland has gone on to more recognizable roles in franchises like The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, but she’s both touching and frankly more than a little weird here as a drawling tyke who runs around with Barbie heads attached her to fingers, heads which “magically” take on pretend identities of their own.

Within just the first few minutes of Tideland, the viewer is thrust into the somewhat horrifying life of Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), a little girl tasked with preparing a syringe of heroin for her father Noah (Jeff Bridges), an erstwhile rock star (or at least rock star wannabe), all while her harridan mother Queen Gunhilda (Jennifer Tilly) alternately berates and praises her, in what comes off as kind of an emotional ping pong match. And already Gilliam’s tendencies toward stylistic flourishes are in more than full flower, with weirdly skewed framings and all sorts of “lens magic” that adds weird warping to things. By the time Queen Gunhilda expires from some sort of unexplained seizure or choking incident just a few minutes into the film, many viewers will probably already feel lost in another Sea of Gilliam, wondering if there will ever be any kind of anchor to help stabilize things.

That leads to the film segueing to the locale of most of the rest of the story, an abandoned farmhouse that was ostensibly Noah's family's back in the day. It's here that the film really descends into "Gilliamisms", with yet another death and a slow accrual of totally bizarre supporting characters who kind of literally wander into the proceedings, pretty much at random. These include the visually impaired Dell (Janet McTeer, virtually unrecognizable), who comes off as more than a little witchlike, and her brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), who seems to be suffering from a different and perhaps more debilitating kind of impairment. Gilliam attempts to reference the iconic works of Lewis Carroll, but it's frankly hard to see how these two characters really fit into an "Alice" sort of environment, other than how unrepentantly bizarre they both are.

I’m frankly not quite sure what Gilliam hoped to achieve with this tale. It’s almost shockingly provocative at times, especially with a sexual subtext that kind of plays like the flip side to something at least hinted at in Vigil. There’s a sadness and melancholy suffusing this film that would seem to deliberately undercut its more whimsical proclivities, as if Gilliam weren’t quite sure if he were making The Fisher King or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (so to speak). Still, the film is full of Gilliam’s often jaw dropping visual sensibility, and the performances, while undeniably weird to the “nth” degree, also leave an indelible impression.

Tideland Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tideland is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains only the following generic verbiage on the transfer:

Tideland is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio [sic] with 5.1 audio. The High Definition master was supplied by Universal.

Despite some occasional slight anomalies along the way like a slightly variable grain field, this is a pleasing looking transfer of a traditionally gonzo looking Gilliam film. As mentioned above, Gilliam and cinematographer Nicola Peccorini play with framings and utilize things like fisheye lenses to give things a pretty hallucinogenic mein a lot of the time. That can lead to things like the edges of the frame being slightly out of focus, or what appear to be some optically zoomed shots losing a bit of clarity and grain structure. The palette is skewed toward yellow quite a bit of the time, not necessarily in the scenes featuring "amber waves of grain", but detail levels remain largely consistent throughout the presentation. Based solely on screenshots (always a risky gambit, as I've repeatedly stated), this looks pretty similar if not identical to the German release that Svet reviewed several years ago, and you can read his thoughts on that transfer in his Tideland Blu-ray review .

Tideland Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tideland features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which attains sporadic but noticeable surround activity courtesy of the many outdoor scenes, as well as a rather charming score by the Danna Brothers, Jeff and Mychael (if you only know these two courtesy of their film soundtracks, I highly recommend you check out some of their Celtic tinged concept albums, which are typically nicely lush and layered listening experiences). Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly throughout, and there are no issues with distortion, dropouts or other damage.

Tideland Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni


• Getting Gilliam (1080p; 44:46) is a 2005 documentary on Gilliam and the making of Tideland by Vincent Natali.


• The Making of Tideland (1080p; 5:26) is a brief EPK with some equally brief interviews, including source novel author Mitch Cullin.


• Filming Green Screen (1080i; 3:13) looks at some of the SFX and compositing work.


• Deleted Scenes (1080i; 5:59)


• Interviews

  Terry Gilliam (1080i; 14:30)

  Jeremy Thomas (1080i; 9:33)

  Jeff Bridges, Jodelle Ferland and Jennifer Tilly (1080i; 4:59)

• B Roll Footage (1080i; 20:35)


• Gallery (1080p; 2:01)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 1:54)


• Introduction by Terry Gilliam (1080p; 1:08) can be found under the Play Menu.

Tideland Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm a pretty unabashed fan of Gilliam, even when I recognize he subscribes to the motto "nothing succeeds like excess". But I just couldn't quite connect with Tideland for some reason, despite a rather winning lead performance from a very young Ferland as Jeliza-Rose, and a number of patently weird supporting turns by a typically eclectic Gilliam cast. Once again as is so often the case with a Gilliam film, the sheer visual audacity of the proceedings seems to overwhelm a somewhat undercooked story. Arrow has provided a release with generally solid technical merits and some appealing supplements, for those who are considering a purchase.