Now I love me some Terry Gilliam, I even made a comic telling the story of the making of Adventures of Baron Munchausen for college once (if only so I could use a joke I stole from an issue of Promethea), so seeing Tideland for sale in my local HMV I thought 'sure probably going to want that'.
It's been about 24 hours now and it's still rolling around inside my head, whenever i try to think of words to describe it I realise that I'm using the wrong part of brain. It's not disturbing, or shocking, or freakishly twisted (well maybe a little twisted), but I feel that those terms are the ones most people would understand the film by.
I'd compare it to Pan's Labyrinth but it's the contrasts between the two that really make Tideland so potent. There's no shocking violence to show that the adult world is a horrible place, fantasy and reality have a very different relationship. Both are advertised as children's stories for adults but it's Tideland that is more accurately described.
As a viewing experience it felt so personal that I'm almost afraid to hear what other people think of it. I felt a very similar way after I read the novel of Peter Pan for the first time last year, it's primal, it sits in your mind like a stone. Like Gilliam says in his introduction, it's innocent and true, that's where the power comes from.
Perhaps it's just me.
Tomorrow I'll go back to my feeble attempts at humour, but for today you get the meditative Smithy thinking about doll heads and taxidermy.
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