Introduction
Tuesday is a fantasy drama film produced in Britain and America in the year 2023. Directed by Daina O. Pusic, the film focuses on the emotionally daring elements exploring grief, death, and the complexity of a mother-daughter relationship. It revolves around a terminally sick teenager, her distant mother, and death, personified in the form of a shifting, talking macaw.
Tuesday is produced by A24, the BFI, and BBC Film and it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2023. Although it had a limited release, it is expected to reach wider audiences in 2024. The film presents a unique blend of magical realism and emotional intimacy, creatively exploring grief.
Plot Summary
Dora is a mother suffering emotionally knowing that her daughter Tuesday, 15, is terminally ill. She spends her time detached from her daughter by running errands and avoiding the painful truth. Unlike her mother, Tuesday is accepting of her condition, curious and open, and resigned but willing to explore the world around her.
The arrival of death changes everything. It now appears as an enormous macaw, black and oil-streaked, with an eerie voice and sickly mannerisms. Tuesday already knows the bird is death and, without fear, starts a dialogue with it. She requests death to wait for a while till her mother comes back to say a proper goodbye. Death agrees.
When Zora gets back home, she is shocked to see a giant bird. Out of fear, she frantically attacks the bird and, to her surprise, ends up swallowing it. This gets her to panic, which is what starts to disturb the natural order. Zora undergoes bizarre changes, both physically and emotionally. She grows or shrinks, while the world around her is experiencing strange lifelessness or remains alive in soulless states.
While Zora is filled with the burden death puts on her, she gets emotionally influenced by it and she dulls out. However, with an emotional boost from Tuesday, Zora starts to see the meaning of death. It is not solely annihilation, but a mercy and transition. She even takes up a couple of duties while death rests by helping folks move on.
Eventually, Zora sets Death free once more. Death takes Tuesday’s spirit and gently guides her out of life. As a result, Zora sinks into bleak despair, longing for death. Eventually, Zora is offered a chance, but she is not granted the peace she craves. Instead of drifting into the void, she is offered the opportunity to live and carry forth her daughter’s spirit. In the end, Zora chooses life. In the last scenes, she is gradually regaining her will to live, softly telling herself, “Get up, woman.”
Characters and Performances
Zora is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Julia’s political satire comedy formed many of us. Capturing Zora’s unraveling sadness and vividly portraying denial and emotional numbness to anger, which ultimately leads to redemption, reveals her dramatic side. She masterfully encapsulates a complex denial of a mother accepting loss as she learns to surrender love.
Lola Petticrew as Tuesday
Wise and wry, Tuesday grounds herself despite her condition. Petticrew expresses her character’s vulnerability to illness and the strength that comes from facing the end of life with quiet resolve.
Arinzé Kene as the Voice of Death
As the black macaw, Kene provides death’s voice which serves as an emetic to the film’s philosophical heart. It embodies the feel of great weariness and unexpected empathy, the macaw’s head design, dirty, ragged, and at times frightful, stands in contradiction to the wisdom Kene’s tone exhibits.
Leah Harvey as Billie
Billie, as nurse to Tuesday, portrays one of the more caring and supportive characters. She provides kindness and compassion, and therefore balances Zora’s early detachment.
Visual Style and Direction
A quiet and personal aesthetic punctuated by moments of startling strangeness defines the film’s visuals. Using natural light, Daina O. Pusik’s cinematography captures the emotional state of character’s through close framing while Betty’s illustrative CGI of Death is purposefully surreal in an otherworldly manner.
Silence, alongside the film’s use of quiet music, rap performed to soothe Death, creates isolation for the characters, solitude. Zora and Death’s changing sizes throughout the film symbolize the denial and overwhelming presence of grief. Notable is the effectiveness of long stretches of silence, coupled with the use of music, which mixed Dark Humor with humanity.
Themes and Analysis
- Grief and Denial
At its center, Tuesday investigates the ways individuals mourn. Zora’s denial of her daughter’s death stems from fear and her self-centered nature, in contrast to Tuesday’s acceptance and understanding. The film explores the various burdens which must be endured to be able to face pain in order to grow.
- Death as Compassionate
The film breaks with tradition to show Death as a gentle, burdened, compassionate being. Death must understand compassion in order to not be in fear and instead, partner in transition. Death becomes a partner in transition instead of a burden, allowing the person to move instead of bringing person destruction.
- Letting Go
Zora’s story arc is releasing control, illustrating the unconditional love a person can hold towards another. Tuesday reflects her letting go of her daughter both physically in a profound way. Supporting the film’s central message, Zora’s acceptance of letting go in her deepest love required her to transform.
- Scale and Perspective
Zora physically shrinking and growing displays her emotional turmoil. She dwarfs everything around her as she grows in fear. The distortion of self and reality reinforces how fantastical grief is.
- The Caregiver’s Responsibilities
Through Billie and Zora’s differing viewpoints about Tuesday, the film paints a detailed picture about the emotions involved in caring for someone, whether it be guilt, love, or even exhaustion. It critiques avoidance and emotional withdrawal, suggesting that one should be present even in the most painful moments.
Reception and Impact
Most Critics gave praise Tuesday for its originality, emotional intensity, and gripping performances. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stepped outside her comedic comfort zone and has been praised for a performance that is raw, powerful, and utterly convincing. Lola Petticrew’s performance in Tuesday was highlighted as equally powerful.
However, some viewers were conflicted about the film’s tone. The surreal and odd humor, including the giant bird and the unusual physical transformations, was jarring in its attempt to be a grief drama. It was evocative, disproportionate, and quite possibly unidentifiable in its attempt to dismantle the cliches of bereavement.
Regardless, Tuesday has been noted as a bold film that marks Daina O. Pusic’s imaginative debut as a creator and a storyteller.
Conclusion
Tuesday is one of those films that strives to view sorrow in imaginative new ways. Yes, it deals with death, but rather, it focuses on the life that goes on after: the enduring love, the love’s legacy, and the difficult path through grief toward acceptance. The film combines the emotionally raw and the surreal, providing a new perspective on well-trodden themes and offering the timeless, heartfelt, and sometimes painful, but ultimately hopeful message that in letting go, we are able to move forward.
With a mix of magical realism, humor, and deep sorrow, Tuesday is both a moving and profound examination of the human spirit’s resilience. This is not just a narrative about dying. This is a narrative about the journey towards learning how to truly live.
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