TELLURIDE – At a festival full of gutsy films Daina O. Pusić’s directorial feature debut, “Tuesday,” may be the most visionary of them all. No small feat when you’re premiering opposite works from Yorgos Lanthimos, Pablo Larrain, Jonathan Glazer and Emerald Ferrell, among others. Then again, it’s not that surprising when one of the movie’s central characters is the eternal harbinger of doom embodied in the physical manifestation of a white-eyed macaw bird. Oh yes, Pusić and her anti-hero are here to remind you that death is coming and it’s coming for all of us.
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For most in the Western world, the parrot is a jovial bird, perhaps even a tad annoying with its ability to mimic the human language. Not necessarily what you first think of as a symbol of death. But Pusić’s inspiration allows us to not immediately look at our mortality with fear. One of many smart choices over the course of a very unconventional and creative movie.
The film begins with the macaw’s existence being inundated with the thoughts of those about to die. The pain in their voices is nonstop, never ending. It is stress inducing even for a creature born from the heart of the universe itself. The bird hears these cries and mystically travels around the world to quit them. It waves its gigantic wing over one person or another putting them out of their misery and, just as often, taking them away as they beg to stay alive.
Pusić follows the macaw on its numerous, non-stop journeys across the globe. And, almost immediately, the filmmaker tells us that this embodiment of death is not a cold-hearted killing machine. An old woman will peacefully collapse in its wing after passing. A fearful man will be allowed a brief moment to collect themselves. This is an entity with some empathy and even mild patience. When the bird begins to hear the sound of inconsistent breathing we are soon introduced to Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), a young woman at the end of a long and terminal illness.
Unlike many of the bird’s other subjects, Tuesday makes an immediate connection to the parrot as it enters her room. She’s in a medical bed, with oxygen tubes and medical monitors, but they engage in a conversation, the bird’s first in decades, perhaps centuries? Tuesday recognizes that the parrot may be a celestial entity but is suffering from panic attacks from all the cries flowing through its head. She gives Death advice on how to calm down and it works. She also begs it to let her say goodbye to her mother. Perhaps thankful for its respite, Death relents and Tuesday tries to call her mother on the phone. Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, quite good), doing everything she can to ignore her daughter’s diagnosis, refuses to answer the phone. So, unlike billions, perhaps trillions of other people over the centuries, Tuesday once again convinces Death to wait until Zora returns home. She even helps the macaw take a bath in the sink to clean off the years of grime on its wings. The parrot seems slightly grateful. Perhaps this time with Tuesday is an unexpected and needed break, but Death’s pausing its mission is also affecting the rest of existence (more on that later).
Unbeknownst to Tuesday, her mother has been spending her days pretending to be at work while a nurse, Billie (Leah Harvey), takes care of her. Zora is in such a depressive state she’s quit her job and has gone to extremes selling whatever she can find to keep them afloat. When she returns home this day, Zora introduces her to Death, who has been hiding in a minuscule form in her ear. What happens next takes the film in an even more fantastical direction, if possible. Let’s just say Zora will do just about anything to stop Death from taking her daughter. Anything.
As events play out, and Tuesday remains alive, the outside world seems to be experiencing the early stages of the apocalypse (uh-oh). A man whose legs have been cut off drags himself through the street screaming in pain. Swarms of flies dominate the sky and, at one point, Tuesday discovers a headless bird slamming its body against her window. This stalemate cannot go on forever and Death knows it.
The confidence Pusić has in conceiving this scenario is utterly impressive. She’s smart enough to embody the movie with humor (Death is blunt to a fault) and to not answer the biggest questions (why an apocalypse, exactly) or the smallest ones (it’s never explained why Zora is an American living in London while her daughter is British, what happened to Tuesday’s father, what she is suffering from, etc.). Of course, Pusić knows she has the embodiment of death right there and the consequences of Tuesday and Zora saying one wrong word could be dire. That’s pretty much all the narrative tension you need.
Intimidatingly voiced by actor Arinzé Kene (fantastic), this macaw of death is beautifully rendered through CG animation in all its different forms. It can swell to a gigantic size or shrinking small enough to be held in Tuesday’s hands. The fact Pusić is able to pull off such complicated visual effects with her actors in scene after scene while keeping her chosen tone is extraordinary for a young director (not to mention the confines of a relatively independent film budget). This sort of world building would absolutely falter in the wrong hands.
Eventually though our director begins to test her audience’s patience to the extreme, even if that’s clearly not her intent. Her biggest mistake, and perhaps a first-time filmmaker one, is the movie continues far beyond what feels like its natural conclusion. This happens often, but “Tuesday” may be one of the most egregious examples we’ve experienced in some time. And when you’re trying to maintain an unorthodox tone it begins to diminish the overall experience. Pusić also wades a little bit into too much in the “is there a heaven” and “what happens when we die” waters. The film doesn’t really need it and Pusić can’t really enlighten anyone with Death’s non-committal answers.
Still, this is the sort of movie that puts a director of Pusić’s caliber on the imaginary cinephile map. Trust, a filmmaker full of fresh and bold ideas is rarer than you might think. Moreover, “Tuesday” may turn out to be an unforgettable movie for many, but if the you immediately wonder “Who could even com up with this?” While watching it? Well, that’s high praise indeed. [B/B+]
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