by MATTHEW HAYS

Terry Gilliam acknowledges he’s had better days. He’s sitting down to discuss his latest film at the Toronto International Film Festival, and, as he concedes quite bluntly, he’s “brutally hung over.” It’s been a few months since he’s seen his friend Johnny Depp, and Gilliam says that “where Johnny goes, there’s a party. But I’m paying for it now.”

Indeed, Gilliam seems more affected by last night’s booze-fest than he does the savaging his Tideland is getting by critics. There has been an almost-universal critical consensus: Tideland is ranking right up there with Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny and Jane Campion’s In the Cut, films that arrived at the Toronto fest with scads of bad advance publicity, and then lived up to it. Now, Tideland is opening across North America and in parts of Europe, and the critics haven’t forgotten. Mainstream critics are reaching for their thesauruses, looking for new ways to say “stinking rotten.”

Still, enquiring minds and serious filmgoers will immediately recognize that when a film gets reviews quite this scalding, there must be something about it that merits a bit of intrigue (remember Showgirls?). And Tideland, I would argue, is easily one of the most audacious, weird and unapologetically outrageous films I have ever sat through. In certain respects, it is questionable—but I remained intensely engaged as I watched the thing unfold before me.

Novel idea

Gilliam says that the idea came to him when author Mitch Cullin sent him a copy of his cult phenomenon novel of the same title several years ago. “It sat on a pile of stuff I had to do for some time,” he recalls. “And then I picked it up and started reading it. Within about four or five pages, I knew it was something I wanted to film.” The book, and film, are told through the eyes of one nine-year-old girl (played magnificently by Canadian newcomer Jodelle Ferland) who is doing her best despite two very reckless heroin-addict parents. As the film opens, we see Ferland helping mom and dad prepare their smack so they can shoot up. It’s a shocking scene, made even stranger by the performances of Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly as the parents. Tilly devours the scenery, playing the junkie mom as an overweight, overwrought cartoon version of Courtney Love, chain smoking and gobbling chocolate as she shoots up. Upon hearing this comparison, Gilliam agrees: “Yes, one can see them as Courtney and Kurt if Kurt had actually survived.”

But within about 20 minutes, Tilly overdoses, leaving Bridges and Ferland to fend for themselves. They leave the city to head out to a dilapidated farm household in the prairies. There, Bridges dies. Ferland enters into a bizarre world of fantasy, telling stories through her dolls and propping up her dead father’s body at the dinner table, despite the fact that it’s decomposing badly.

Gilliam says he was watching the Toronto-festival audience response carefully. “The audience was laughing at moments. But then it was clear they were hunting for the appropriate response to much of the film, like perhaps they shouldn’t have been laughing. That is really satisfying to me—I love that point in a film where I can feel the audience being so uncomfortable. In London, it was much different: some people were really angry. Some called it a masterpiece. Others were calling it entirely offensive. Fights almost broke out over it.”

As Gilliam has stated in the past, he is not a big drug-taker, despite what many of his movies might suggest. “No, I still prefer a strong cup of coffee or a Scotch to any other drugs that someone might offer. And the story is fantastical, but we were following the book very closely. Mitch’s book is incredible. With this film, I feel like, at 64, I’ve finally found the child within. My inner child turns out to be a nine-year-old girl! I’m 64 years old and I’m playing with dolls!”

A Lynchian ride

With its acute strangeness, Tideland is already drawing comparisons to David Lynch. It’s very fitting, in that people who attempt to find psychological character motivation in this universe should make sure they’ve packed some Aspirin along first. “People have to be ready to come along for the ride,” pleads Gilliam. “One woman told me she didn’t like it, but then, after reflecting for some time, said that she would have enjoyed it more if she could have watched it through the eyes of a child. She felt that being an adult watching a child experiencing these things made it too difficult for her.”

Watching Tideland, one thing is certain: there is no way this thing would have been made if it hadn’t been for the considerable pull of Gilliam’s name. This is, after all, the director behind such wacky hits as Brazil, The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys. “At first, we really couldn’t raise the money for this at all,” Gilliam reports. “There were a lot of frightened people. The guys sitting on the pots of money were really unnerved by it. Women loved it though—this film wouldn’t have been made without some courageous women producers.”

And beyond its sheer weirdness, Tideland may also make some waves in our own national culture wars. The film did receive Telefilm money (it’s a British-Canadian co-production), which meant that the film was shot entirely in Saskatchewan. Conservative politicians, employing a what-about-the-children line of attack, could conceivably use a film this outrageous to justify slashing film funding (precisely what the Canadian film community doesn’t need).

Not surprisingly, our government film-funding crisis isn’t something that Gilliam has spent a lot of time thinking about. Instead, he seems rather amused at the controversial bit of lunacy he’s just hatched—and not really terribly anxious about the possibility that Tideland could tank. “You know, Jennifer [Tilly] was just so awesome in this. She only required about two takes to do her scenes, which were difficult ones. The cast was ready to get on board and go with it—very brave indeed. Jennifer said, ‘Usually, I have to worry about how to look perfect on screen. Here, I was supposed to look awful. I’m free at last!’”

Finally, I have to ask Gilliam one more question: what’s the story on the rumours surrounding a Monty Python reunion tour? “We were all together for the Spamalot premiere. A few of us get together for dinner every now and then in London. But you know, after all this time, even over dinner, you can see that we don’t pull together in quite the same way that we once did. It’s been a long time.”

Tideland opens Friday, Oct. 27

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