WIRED Blogs: Table of Malcontents

Well, if it's a patch on the wonderful 'Brazil' it will be well worth watching ...

ps, apologies for the excessive use of 'fascinating' in my earlier posting re: Desert Island Discs. I was clearly rather excited ...

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The newest Terry Gilliam movie is best described as nightmarish. With no particular point, the end of the film evokes relief and embarrassment, as if you have just finished witnessing Gilliam pass an enormous kidney stone. One feels the urge to let go his clammy hand, pat him gently and ask him if he feels better.

The film stars young Jodelle Ferland (Silent Hill) as Jeliza-Rose, daughter of an aging, dysfunctional, but still affectionate smack addict, Noah. Jeff Bridges, reprising the Dude with harder drugs, plays Noah with an intense sympathy--the most engaging and intriguing member of the cast. Jeliza's unnamed (and ambiguously fat/pregnant) mother (Jennifer Tilly), spends the eight minutes prior to her heroin overdose alternately deprecating and cuddling Jeliza, and cramming handfuls of chocolate into her smeared, sad mouth. Then she dies in a grotesque splay, and it is all Jeliza can do to keep Noah from setting the horrible woman on fire.

The girl's life consists of playing nursemaid to her junkie parents and maintaining a shrill, running narration by her variously-personified disembodied doll heads. Ferland does all the voice acting for the dolls, which take on greater independence as the film goes on. Each of them possesses uncomfortably differentiated accents, and eventually Jeliza's mouth ceases to move at all when the dolls speak.

WIRED Blogs: Table of Malcontents