Tideland. be like a child...

i think it's fair to say, the morning after, i loved this. this film really moved me at a deep level. a disturbing dreamlike fairytale that speaks some kind truth of how children cope with the adult world and the place of imagination in making the horrific bearable. a study of what we call innocence and love, in their presence and absence. a something-like-loving tribute to children, who so often seem to survive by creatively using whatever they are given to help them deal with the loss, aloneness and fear that comes with what they are given.
weird? yes. (it is gilliam.) beautiful? certainly. beneath the strangeness was a touching compassion... he somehow managed to convey a world where defining what was real and what was in the mind's eye was strangely irrelevant. this was jeliza rose's world, and her fantasy protects her and helps explain that which, at 10, she cannot comprehend or bear. and when you let rationale go, it makes for a beautiful kind of psychological and emotional sense. when faced with hurt, children escape, as of course do adults. and you realise in children the capacity to escape, with only the imagination to do it, is a downright miracle that ensures survival. that to survive childhood is perhaps psychologically an act of heroic bravery on the part of many of us.

it made me feel proud for the strength of the children we once were and that we carry within us still.

LB, x