TUESDAY - Mark Reviews Movies

Tuesday, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 13, 2024

The character of Death doesn't make a bit of physical or practical sense in Tuesday, and in a way, isn't that an appropriate and accurate way to embody the concept? Death is everywhere, and it comes for us all eventually. We know these things as cold, hard facts, but the facts nobody knows for certain have to do the experience of death itself. Doctors and scientists can theorize all they want, but it's not as if any first-hand accounts of actually dying are ever coming our way. Sure, there are near-death experiences, but "near" is the key part of that.

That makes writer/director Daina Oniunas-Pusic's Death somewhat believable, because it's so strange and mysterious and unlike any other embodiment of the concept that, well, death could be like this for all we know. Notoriously, nobody's going to come back to correct the filmmaker on the truth, so why can't Death exist as a talking, size-shifting parrot?

Obviously, the visual of Death as a parrot takes some getting used to. It is an actual bird in the film, rendered by visual effects, and, of all the creatures that have symbolized death throughout human history, this brightly colored exotic bird has probably never been high on anyone's list of potential candidates—if it has made it to anyone's list before now.

The animal flies around London in the opening sequence, finding a person who has been stabbed, another dying of disease, and some woman who's just sitting on the couch and enjoying her nightly TV programs. The bird has its job to do, and it does so without feeling, words, or much of a reaction to the unsuspecting lady who spits in Death's face once she realizes what's happening.

The film actually opens with the camera flying through the cosmos, throughout space and potentially time, before it arrives on Earth. The planet is really inside the eye of the parrot, which is resting, in a shrunken state about the size of a teardrop, next to the eye of a body from which the bird has just extinguished life. It's a lonely little thing—maybe the loneliest entity that has ever existed in the vast expanse of the universe (At one point, Death explains that its mother was a dark void that spit it out and never saw it again). With this task finished, the parrot soon hears cries of anguish all around it, so it's off again to end another life and then another and another after that.

In other words, Death may be a bird, while the bird is a visual effect, but it's immediately a fascinating and almost sympathetic character in the way Oniunas-Pusic portrays it. Death here is trapped in an eternal cycle of being in anguish over the pain and fear of the dying, and its only, momentary relief comes after the parrot raises one of its wings, waves it past some living thing, and ends that life. The concept of this character may be odd, but the filmmaker makes it feel real in only a matter of minutes.

The rest of the story, which has Death taking a short respite after meeting one dying girl, is also very weird, but Oniunas-Pusic gets at some emotional truth within it fairly quickly, too. The girl is Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), who has an unspecified illness that requires an oxygen tank and has weakened her body.

Her mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is out for the day, as she always is, pretending to be at work but just selling some personal possessions and wasting time at a café, before sitting and eventually falling asleep on a bench at a park. She's avoiding being home for as long as possible, because her daughter is slowly dying there.

Once the parrot arrives in front of Tuesday, we know it won't be so slow anymore. Well, it wouldn't be, except that Tuesday recognizes Death, takes some pity on its filthy state, and offers to give the parrot a bath. It accepts, and soon enough, the bird starts talking to Tuesday (Arinzé Kene provides the deep, raspy, and no-nonsense voice). She just wants to have a chance to say good-bye to her mother, and Death, which stops hearing all of the cries of the dying when it's with her, decides to grant her that final wish.

Somehow, the story becomes stranger still, on account of Zora's complete denial, even when confronted by Death, but the details of what she does and the consequences of that choice shouldn't be stated here. It's impressive how Oniunas-Pusic keeps surprising, though, as she takes the setup to its surrealistic ends. Meanwhile, the filmmaker also grounds the proceedings in the debate at the story's core—between a daughter who has accepted, as well as welcomed, death and a mother who refuses to do so, regardless of the consequences for herself, her daughter, and the wider world.

That emotional reality and the philosophical questions that inevitably arise from the premise allow Tuesday to be equally absurd in its conceptualization and sincere in its execution. That Louis-Dreyfus, running the gamut of her character's denial through to its inescapable end, and Petticrew, whose character faces death with a smile and her mother with compassion, are both great in their roles helps to keep the material on track. The film is imaginative and quirky, to put it mildly, but that gives also gives it the freedom to ask the difficult, troubling questions about death in its own unique and frank way.

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