Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Daina O. Pusić
Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, Arinzé Kene
There are some who believe that a film's message is more important than
how it actually delivers it to the audience. Badly made movies are excused
because they're well-meaning or their hearts are in the right place, or
because they highlight a vital issue, regardless of how poorly executed
they might be. But a bad movie can dilute or even make a mockery of an
important theme, as is the case with writer/director Daina O. Pusić's feature debut Tuesday.
The movie has a pro-euthanasia theme, which is certainly commendable.
That governments still decide how most of us get to leave this world in
2024 is an absolute travesty. There is no crueller law than the one that
forces people to endure pain and suffering for the sake of some outdated
morality rooted in ancient texts, that turns loved ones into criminal
accomplices if they help to end said pain and suffering. We literally
treat animals better in this regard. Tuesday argues that sometimes death is the best option, the only real
option in some cases. It posits that death is part of the natural order of
things, something we should make peace with rather than vainly attempt to
cheat.
Unfortunately the film explores this idea in a manner that's cheesy at
best, offensive at worst. It's something of a knuckle-headed knockoff of
JA Bayona's A Monster Calls, in which a talking tree helps a young boy to prepare for his terminally
ill mother's imminent passing. Here the dynamic is flipped: the mother,
Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is the one who needs to come to terms
with the impending departure of her 15-year-old daughter, Tuesday (Lola Petticrew). The talking tree is replaced by a talking Macaw (voiced by Arinzé Kene). The bird is the personification of Death, but it's not here to play
chess. In an opening montage we watch as Death flies from one dying person
to another, putting them out of their misery with a wave of its wing.
Whether the victims are asking to be put out of their pain or begging for
their lives makes no difference to Death, who is cursed to silence the
agonised voices in his head.
When Tuesday is left suffocating in her garden, Death arrives on cue. But
while Tuesday has been preparing herself for this moment, she asks the
bird if she can say goodbye to her mother first. Her wish is granted, with
no explanation (it seems Death has more sympathy for middle-class white
girls than the working class people of colour he routinely dispatches in
the prologue). Zora refuses to answer her daughter's calls however,
leaving Tuesday to use her charm to persuade Death to delay his work until
her mother comes home.
As Death hangs around we see images of London falling into an apocalyptic
state. With nothing to end their suffering, various victims are left in
pain. Screams fill the air, and mangled bodies crawl on pavements. The
news reports "zombie cows" traipsing through the countryside. The natural
order has been disrupted.
It's certainly a great setup for a treatise on how we deal with death,
the most natural occurrence of all, but the film falls apart once Zora
returns home. After some misjudged slapstick comedy, Zora seems to accept
her daughter's fate and requests 10 minutes before Death does his thing.
While the rest of London cries out in pain, we're again left to wonder why
Death has decided this middle-class suburban family should be an
exception.
I won't say where the film goes from that point, but it takes a swerve
into silliness when it could have dug into its theme with more depth. The
idea of how Zora might use those final 10 minutes with her daughter is
fascinating, but it's quashed as the film takes a twist into far less
focussed territory. What could have been a great short film about a mother
being finally forced to confront the pain she's been avoiding (Zora has
been lying about going to work every day just to avoid spending time with
Tuesday) is instead stretched out to a rambling mess that loses sight of
its theme the further it descends into absurdity. The more Death provides
answers to questions about mortality and "what it all means," the more we
feel a filmmaker imposing their own ideas on such unanswerable questions.
I don't personally believe in any gods, but when Death firmly states that
"there is no God" I groaned loudly at the arrogance of such a statement (I
look to art for ambiguity; if I wants facts I'll turn to science). By the
end of Tuesday's exasperating two-hour run time you might be yearning for a release
from this mortal coil yourself.
Tuesday is on UK/ROI VOD now.
