by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Daina Oniunas-Pusic
CAST: Julia Louis-Drefyus, Lola Petticrew, Arinzé Kene (voice)
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Fresh
PLOT: A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
Movies about death are a dime a dozen. Movies about “Death” with a capital D, as a character, are a bit rarer, and for a movie to make its mark in this subgenre, the personification of Death incarnate must be something interesting or unusual. Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen portrayed Death in the expected way, a skeletal figure cloaked in black and carrying a scythe, but it could also disguise itself. Meet Joe Black dressed Death in a tux and gave it Brad Pitt’s face and body – perhaps unlikely, but good for ticket sales. And in the most famous movie version of Death, it was a pale man in black who played chess with Max von Sydow in Ingmar Bergman’s uber-classic, The Seventh Seal.
But no movie that I’ve ever seen has ever approached the character of Death itself the way Tuesday does. In this film, Death is a bird. A parrot with dirty gray feathers. A parrot that can change size at will, sometimes as tall as a house, sometimes as tiny as a toad (or smaller), and sometimes just parrot-sized. And, as we eventually discover, it can talk and mimic voices.
Tuesday looks and feels like an early Spike Jonze film, back in the days of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. It is filled with imagination and unexpected plot turns and laden with meaning, but it never feels pretentious or preachy. It tells a familiar story – we must make peace with Death one way or the other – but the uniqueness of Death’s form and what happens after it reveals itself had me riveted for the entire running time of the film.
In this film, Tuesday is a 15-year-old girl (Lola Petticrew) who is dying of an unspecified disease that has relegated her to home-hospice care with an attentive, if slightly impersonal, nurse (Leah Harvey) and her mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, giving the performance of her career). Zora has not seemed to get past the first stage of grief, denial. She literally sneaks past Tuesday’s room so she can leave the house just as the nurse arrives, without having to speak to her. Instead of going to work, Zora spends her day going to pawn shops and coffee shops and sleeping on park benches.
On one such day, Tuesday looks up and sees…this parrot. The overall vibe of this parrot is hard to describe. It looks beat up, it’s dingy, it’s blind in one eye, but there is a sense of menace to it. Tuesday immediately intuits what the parrot is and why it’s there. As it approaches her to perform its duty, Tuesday stops it by telling a joke. (It’s the one about the cop who stops a guy who has twelve penguins in his car.) The parrot takes it in and…laughs. I’ve never been in the same room with a laughing psychotic, but I would imagine it would sound pretty much the same as when Death laughs.
And then the parrot opens its mouth and talks to Tuesday. They have a conversation. And suddenly Death seems to suffer some kind of panic attack, as the voices of all the creatures on Earth whose time has come assault Death’s ears. Tuesday instinctively coaches it through a breathing exercise. The voices go away. She recommends a bath. They bond. She pages through a history book and gets Death’s commentary on dead historical figures. Stalin: “An absolute prick!” Jesus: “Oh, He LOVED irony.” It mimics Jesus’ voice. Whatever you think Jesus’ voice really sounded like, I promise you will be surprised.
Also, don’t get the idea that this is an all-out comedy because of the above dialogue. Keep in mind that this is Death we’re talking about. Death’s voice, when it speaks, is low, gravelly and menacing, even when it’s cracking jokes. At one point, Tuesday plays an old song on her computer, and Death, being eternal, is familiar with it. It even sings along and dances. At least, as far as any parrot CAN dance. Yet even in this moment of levity, there is still that sense of menace in the offing because of that brilliantly chosen voice, provided by an actor named Arinzé Kene, who is unknown to me, but if I ever see that he recorded an audiobook, I’m buying it.
This whole time, I’m watching the movie thinking to myself, WHERE is this GOING. I was fascinated by this exceedingly odd couple. The direction by first-timer Daina Oniunas-Pusic is just as assured and risky as anything by Spike Jonze or Sofia Coppola. I was worried that it was going to veer off into a weird tangent where Death falls in love with Tuesday, but nothing like that happens. Death knows its function, and so does Tuesday, so the problem now is how to deal with Tuesday’s mother, who is clearly not prepared to deal with Tuesday’s death, imminent or otherwise.
…and from here on out, I am going to give no more story specifics. To say that I went into this movie cold is an understatement. Trust me, the colder you are, the better it will be. The ultimate message of the film, as I said, is not that far removed from any number of other films. I would even compare it to the first Inside Out from Pixar, which demonstrated that sadness is an ultimately necessary part of becoming who we are. Tuesday also uses a CG character (in the real world) to remind us that the only way to make peace with who we are is to make peace with where we’ll all be in 100 years. The final words of the film are a call to action to everyone watching.
[Ed. Note: Tuesday is one of those so-called rarities, a completely original studio film, released in movie theaters before heading to a streamer, that’s not a sequel or insanely high-budget. It’s intelligent, compelling, and non-stop surprising. And it had absolutely zero publicity, at least in my area. I saw no trailers, no posters, no internet hype. According to boxofficemojo.com, it has grossed a little over $320,000 since its domestic release on June 7th. Not exactly setting attendance records. If you’re interested in seeing it in theaters, I’d say your window is extremely limited at this point.]
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 