Tideland

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, United Kingdom, 2005, 122 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Little Jeliza-Rose grew up in the city. When her hysterical mother dies of an overdose, her father Noah – an ageing rock guitarist – decides to take her to live on an isolated farm in the American Midwest, where he spent his childhood. Life on the old rural farmstead doesn’t offer the reclusive, over-sensitive little girl many diversions, and so she increasingly seeks solace in her own dream world. The only thing she talks to is the head of her Barbie doll. Then the neighbours start to form part of her strange world – the eccentric Dell, who is partial to taxidermy, and her mentally disabled brother Dickens. After the demanding filming of The Brothers Grimm (2005), Terry Gilliam finds some respite in an independent film after his own heart – a fanciful story inspired by the novel by Mitch Cullin. His “Alice in Wonderland in the American Gothic style” is a dark story about the relationship between reality and fantasy, set in a world where happy childhoods exist only in television commercials.

About the director

Terry Gilliam (b. 1959, Minneapolis) began as an illustrator and comic-strip artist. His name was linked for years with the British Monty Python’s Flying Circus (as an actor, director, screenwriter and animator for their TV sketches). He initially teamed up with Terry Jones to direct feature-length Python projects, but later went solo, working his way up to becoming one of the most fascinating directors of the present. Filmography: Jabberwocky (1977), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Time Bandits (1981), the segment The Crimson Permanent Assurance from the collection of Monty Python film stories The Meaning of Life (1983), Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Fisher King (1991), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Brothers Grimm (2005).