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Mank (2020)
Not Sure What This Film Wants To Say
It had such potential. With the likes of George S Kaufman, Charlie Lederer, SJ Perlman, Ben Hecht, and the like we had none of their wit or humor. We were stuck with a miserable washed up Herman J Mankiwiecz, an egomaniacle Orson Welles, and a power hungry Louis B Mayer. I'm assuming that was the point of the film. But it was sad and pathetic and didn't engage me. Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst were the highlights of the film, but were too little to carry the film. I get that Gary Oldman was playing an old sloppy drunk. But it came across as boring and lazy. And in the end I'm not even sure what the theme of the film was supposed to be. I guess I just wish the film had focused on someone else and maybe call it Hearst vs Kane or something.
Tideland (2005)
It's not the drugs... but the bizarrely fantastical reality.
Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python alum, is considered one of the most talented... if not all-around craziest... directors making movies. He has, for the most part, tried to steer clear of the troubles and turmoil of Hollywood that he seems to feel are debilitating to the creativity to people like him.
After directing "Brazil" which has now become his magnum opus, Hollywood shunned his vision and ideas and cut the movie to embarrassing shreds. You can see the piece of crap that they tried to release in theaters and what was shown on TV in the Criterion Collection box-set. It's worth it to watch just to see how insanely disrespectful the studio system was to Gilliam. He had successes with "Fisher King", "12 Monkeys", and most recently "The Brothers Grimm". But for the most part the director has tried to go with independent financing, which unfortunately has led to major upsets as evidenced with his films "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and the never released "The Man of LaMancha", documented in the biography "Lost In LaMancha".
"Tideland" sees Gilliam returning to his independent roots, but based on a book by an obviously very disturbed Mitch Cullin. The premise of the film, and I would guess the book, is a happy 10-year old girl charmingly named Jeliza Rose who is forced into a life of drugs, depravity, and horror. However, the old expression, "what you don't know, can't hurt you" follows suit for the little girl as she happily prepares her parent's heroin needles, without any seeming knowledge that what she's doing is wrong or may have any horrific outcomes.
The horrific outcomes arrive as her schizophrenic white-trash mother suddenly dies and her father, somewhat thankful that the harpy has left them, whisks his daughter away to go live with his mother. Terry Gilliam's talent lies in throwing such staid and nasty atmosphere into the imagination and fantasy of Jeliza Rose. Her mother's death and subsequent deaths that happen around her do not ever phase her. It's as if balloons are popping and life is going on as it should.
We glimpse Jeliza Rose's fantasy world in the form of old worn Barbie doll heads that she uses as finger-puppets and relates to as normally as she imagines a mother should talk to a child. Each doll head has an individual personality voiced by Jeliza Rose and they act as her confidantes and friends. Her fantasies draw, we are led to assume, from movies, as well. And at some points she mocks the pain and suffering of reality by overly emoting into the mirror while quoting Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind" with a sigh and a withered hand to her forehead. "Oh me, oh my!" Jay Carr in his review of the film in the newspaper AM NY, said after her father dies, "...She plops her grandma's blond wig on his dead head and freshens up his decomposing corpse with makeup. Then things get weird." And weirder it gets. We are introduced to a menacing Wicked Witch of the East character, who's epileptic brother has had a lobotomy to help him but has resulted in making him mentally slow. The boy's mental capacity is around the same as the 10-year old Jeliza Rose, and their relationship becomes creepily disturbing when they start playing "kissy face" together. Nothing ever happens and it's done in an almost whimsical way. But I couldn't help but think that there was no horror movie I had ever seen that was scarier or more disturbing than this.
Weirdness is always expected from the likes of Terry Gilliam. However the subject matter and story, which I can only assume comes from the warped mind of Mitch Cullin, takes a lot of swallowing. As you can imagine, there were people who walked out of the theatre. But the adventure Gilliam takes you on, is almost worth the pain and suffering. In the end, Jeliza Rose finally confronts reality to some extent. Although, the end comes somewhat abruptly, with some unresolved unknowns about the other characters. At 2 hours, maybe Gilliam was told yet again he had to cut it down.
As a somewhat bizarre, but understandable precursor to the film, Terry Gilliam, himself, in an uncomfortable close-up, in black and white, and lit in shadows looks out at the audience and gives a charming and smiling disclaimer that "some of you may hate this film"... and adds hopefully with a twinkle and a grin "but some of you may love this film". And he adds that we should all laugh at the laughable. It's the juxtaposition of fantasy and horror that makes the film wholly intriguing.
No, I really can't recommend this movie to anyone. What anyone can handle is completely subjective and to sit through the film is disturbingly weird. But because of the elements of fantasy as seen through a child's mind are there, it becomes something alluring and undeniably brilliant. With blatant references to "Alice In Wonderland" I'm sure Gilliam would like you to consider this a modern version of the story... complete with bong-smoking caterpillars, and mushroom munching rabbits.
Gilliam also directed the Hunter S. Thompson novel "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", which was all about the drug-addled adventures of a "gonzo" journalist. There are comparisons that can be drawn, but in "Tideland" it's not the drugs that distort reality, it is the mind of a sweet talking Southern Belle named Jeliza Rose that brings us into this nightmarish faerie tale.