A Mother Who Swallowed 'Death' for Her Daughter... The World Became a Living Hell [Slate]

A24's 'Tuesday': Death Arrives as a Macaw
Farewell as the Final Piece That Completes Life
A Painful 'Inoculation' for an Age of Loss

Movie 'Tuesday' still cut

In the longstanding cultural imagination of the West, the guide to death has always been depicted as the Grim Reaper, draped in a black cloak and wielding a scythe-a terrifying yet majestic absolute being. However, the figure portrayed in director Daina O. Pusi?'s film 'Tuesday' is different. Here, the Grim Reaper is an old and sick macaw, with sparse feathers, dirt clinging to its body, and a hoarse voice that mimics the screams of people.

The main characters are Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), a teenage girl suffering from a terminal illness, and her mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). One day, the macaw appears before Tuesday and announces her impending death. Yet, this Grim Reaper evokes a sense of pity. It complains of chronic headaches and fatigue, overwhelmed by the screams and groans it hears from all over the world.

The film highlights the guide to death not as an object of fear, but as a weary laborer who takes on the unpleasant tasks necessary for the grand cycle of the universe. To the girl, the macaw is not an intruder come to steal her life, but a 'final friend' who has arrived to end her suffering.

The axis of conflict centers on Zora, the one who will be left behind. She sells off furniture and books to pay her daughter's hospital bills and wanders the streets in denial of reality. Upon returning home and encountering the macaw, she takes a drastic action: she subdues the bird in an instant and, in a shocking act, bites and swallows it alive.

Movie 'Tuesday' still cut

This is a narrative development that only A24, the production company renowned for pushing the frontiers of Hollywood aesthetics with films like 'Moonlight' and 'Minari,' could deliver. Through this shocking event, the film powerfully depicts the human desire to reject loss, and the inevitable acceptance that follows.

The bizarre act of 'consumption' is, from a humanities perspective, a visualization of denial and an extreme manifestation of possessiveness. In her desperation to save her child, Zora displays a madness that seeks to confine even the will of God within her own body and control it. Beneath this lies a sociological tragedy. For Zora, exhausted by financial ruin and the burden of sole caregiving, her daughter's death is not merely a farewell. It is a disaster akin to the collapse of the fragile world she has struggled to maintain. For an individual isolated without a social safety net, a dignified farewell is nothing but a luxury.

When Zora swallows death, the order of the world collapses. No one dies, but no one finds peace. This recalls the tragedy of Tithonus from Greek mythology: granted eternal life but not eternal youth, he is condemned to endless aging without the release of death. The world soon transforms into a living hell, with no exit through death. Suffering patients groan forever, and decaying life forms multiply endlessly, engulfing the world.

Director Pusi? uses this pandemonium to advocate for the value of 'finitude' that modern society has chosen to ignore. Just as a sentence without a period loses its meaning and becomes incoherent, she emphasizes that a life without the conclusion of death is not dignity, but punishment.

Movie 'Tuesday' still cut

The film's approach to unraveling this weighty theme is not always gentle. In particular, scenes where the macaw grows gigantic or the mother swallows the bird are crude and grotesque, and may divide audiences. However, if one peels away this unfamiliar exterior, the film's virtues emerge with striking clarity. It poses a profound question to a modern society that treats death as taboo: true love is not about holding on, but about having the courage to let go completely.

For everyone who must say goodbye to a loved one, or has already done so, this film is a painful but necessary inoculation. The macaw's hoarse voice paradoxically proclaims that death is not the severance of life, but its completion. Only when we let go of the stubbornness that tries to cling until the end do we finally gain the 'breathing room' to live again after loss.