Tuesday

Grade: B+

If your terminally ill teenage daughter says to you “I’m going to die tonight,” you might laugh it off or (understandably) react the way Julia Louis-Dreyfus does in Tuesday, which is get angry and admonish her not to talk like that. A24’s Tuesday is a surreal allegory about death. It’s often thought of as a negative, sad thing, but here, we see what starts to happen when death doesn’t exist. Another one of Tuesday’s biggest morals is that you shouldn’t interfere with death. When it’s time for someone to go, let them go. Let them have that peace and rest, finally.

In Tuesday, death is in the form of a parrot who can be the size of an ant, a regular parrot, a human, a tree, in between and maybe beyond. When it receives word that it’s someone’s time, it shows up. Needless to say, its head is very busy and noisy most of the time, with a world full of signals coming through that the parrot is needed somewhere. Tuesday is the name of the teenage girl. She gets a visit from the parrot. Its speaking voice is slow, low, and gruff. Think Birdman with a British accent. I don’t know if Tuesday is immediately aware this is a “death bird” and wants to stall, or the parrot enjoys visiting with her because she’s the only one who quiets the cacophony in his head, but he doesn’t take her right away.

They have fun together. She puts on music (he says “I know this one – it’s a classic”), she shares her marijuana vape with him and gets him stoned, and he recaps for her what it was like to take some of the most famous figures in history, like Hitler (“He was such a prick”) and Jesus (“He was a bit of a sarcastic smartass”). It’s a few of many very funny moments and sight gags, where you laugh because you can’t believe all that you’re seeing and hearing.

We know Julia Louis-Dreyfus from early SNL and as Elaine on Seinfeld. In her later years, she is choosing roles that show her depth as a dramatic actress. I quite enjoyed her in A24’s You Hurt My Feelings last year, and she’s even better here. She plays Tuesday’s mother. She knows what must happen, sooner rather than later, and is in denial about it. She takes some drastic measures to prolong or even stop it, which leads to some large plot developments that other critics have talked about, but I won’t. I wondered why she is American and her daughter sounds very British, and I was curious as to why the father isn’t in the picture. Maybe there never was one, and Tuesday is adopted? Did I miss a backstory? Whatever. With everything else going on, it’s so beside the point, and the mystery adds a little fun.

As fantastical and out there as it is, when it comes time for the inevitable heaviness, it plays it for real. There’s a late scene where the parrot pays someone a visit, not to take them, but to check in and “see how you are.” Isn’t that oddly sweet? You have to have an open mind and be in the right mood for Tuesday, but it’s a delightful movie full of insight and discovery. It has an extremely unusual way of getting there, but it ends with a beautiful message that life is worth living, and you should live it to the fullest until it really is your time.

Grade: B+