DAYS OF HELL

So I went to see Terry Gilliam's Tideland at a preview screening in DC Thursday night. I'm still not sure what to think of it.

But you've just got to love a film where most prints have a tacked on introduction by the director telling the audience that they might not like what they're about to see. We didn't get the intro. We had Gilliam, who intro'd the movie by saying, "Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it, and a lot of you won't know what to think. I'm going to go have dinner."

It's a weird movie. Probably Gilliam's strangest. It feels like a mix of Fellini, Terrence Malick, and David Cronenberg, yet it's still undeniably a Terry Gilliam picture. It's grotesque and shocking. I didn't think anything in a movie could shock me anymore (most of it's fake, and you know how the trick is done) but there's one moment in Tideland that just floored me (and I knew it was fake and I knew how the trick was done). And I'm not going to talk about it.

It's a movie about childhood and the resilience of children. It's a movie about fantasy and how it makes reality bearable. It's populated with strange, damaged people and filled with horrible, beautiful images. It is difficult and punishing and joyous and sad.

And I still don't know what to make of it. But I think I'm going to see it again.