Change Your Image
Projectionist85
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Yes, Your Tide Is Cold and Dark, Sir (2013)
As Confusing as it is Pretentious
I recently attended a local film festival where this happened to be showing, and it may very be the worst film experience I've ever had during such a festival.
The film starts off positively enough with some decent shots of the Delaware landscape as well as a brief exposition detailing the dilemma at hand. It appears that Rudy "Clay" Claitonowsky, a local musician who has amassed a cult-like following in his home town of Lewes, has disappeared along with three of his students. Clay's son, Cliff, has returned to Lewes in hopes of finding out what has happened to his father as well as closing the book on several chapters of his life.
Before moving on, I'd like to say one thing about this film; the premise and initial concept of this movie is quite good. We have a local musician who is so charismatic and charming that the local populace have almost begun to deify him. They worship and praise nearly everything this man does to the point that they trust him with their children, and even when this trust is betrayed, it seems as though most of the townsfolk is willing to forgive him (with the exception of the missing kids' parents). At its core, this has the potential to be a great story. We have a prodigal son returning home to find that he is loved by nearly everyone he meets, not because of who he is or who he used to be, but because of his relation to a cult of personality. I'd love to watch that movie.
However, that is not the movie I saw this evening.
What I saw was a pretentious, insipid waste of a film which thinks it's much smarter than it really is. What was initially a sound and intriguing premise quickly turned into David Lynch's Circus, devoid of any artistic meaning or merit. Let me stress that I love symbolism and surreal imagery in film, but simply throwing these aspects into your narrative without any context or significance is utterly pointless. I'm sure meaning can be found in these scenes, but only by those who considered themselves to be the most conceited and hollow of hipsters.
I cannot recall the number of times during this screening that I wanted to stand up and scream, "You're trying too hard!" This narrative doesn't need to be surreal. Hell, it doesn't even have to be complicated! All you're telling is a "father and son" story that just happens to revolve around an idolized father and a dislocated son, so why insert random and pointless surrealism? This only serves to further complicate the narrative, which by itself is quite hard to follow thanks to numerous subplots running rampant throughout the movie. These include the son having a romantic relationship with a former nurse of his mother, another centered on his father's former mistress, and another involving land disputes and a land mogul trying to take over the town, none of which have any bearing on the movie's resolution.
The film only further frustrates the viewer when the performances range from dull and tiresome to exaggerated and melodramatic. The main antagonist of the film (the aforementioned land mogul) is so stereotypically over-the-top that I expected him to be stroking a cat whenever he was on screen. This character appears to serve as the movie's comedic relief, although I cannot tell if the laughter associated with this character is due to the actor's terrible performance or his awkward dialogue. It is this so-called comedy that serves to confuse me the most. Shortly before entering the screening, I read a small description of the film in a pamphlet provided by Wilm Film which described the movie as a "dark comedy." You can imagine my confusion when I went on the film's official website later that night where is it described as a "neo-surrealist drama." Amazingly, neither of these descriptions fit. The movie can certainly be dark at times, but there is no sense of comedy at all, although one could consider the lame attempts at surrealism the funniest parts of the film.
The movie concludes with a sudden bout of incoherent scenes and phrases, and as the credits role, my mind is racked with unintelligible imagery and metaphors, all of which make me wish I had snuck in a flask. My girlfriend and I slowly exit the theater, exchanging dazed and defeated looks between ourselves and other patrons. She makes a quick joke about how she would love someone like the Nostalgia Critic or OanCitizen to do a review of this movie, and it suddenly dawns on me that "Yes, Your Tide is Cold and Dark, Sir" is eerily similar to another infamous film which has been torn apart by both internet and professional critics alike. The film in question features a man pulling triple duty as an actor, writer, and director, not unlike the film we just saw. It was also advertised as a drama before critics started shunning the film, then the studio and director suddenly changed their tone and said it was meant to be a dark comedy, so it appears both of these films are suffering from an identity crisis.
The movie I speak of is "The Room," and while "Yes, Your Tide is Cold and Dark, Sir," is not as bad as that piece of cinematic garbage, I do think that with this film, Delaware may have found its own Tommy Wiseau.