Tully. Wow. Way to toy with me, Jason Reitman (Up In the Air, Juno). I will definitely have a spoilers section for this movie, but I will let you know when it happens. I can start by saying that this definitely hit me with an emotional punch. And I say that sort of tongue and cheek because I did not find this movie all that emotional. Reitman has a way of writing and directing his stories in a way where you are completely invested, but also in a way where you don’t need to keep your tissues nearby. Instead, he tells his stories in a way that gets you interested from the get-go creating characters who you wrote for and then hitting you with a gut punch when you least expect it. Ultimately, this results in his movies staying with you long after most movies you’ve seen have been forgotten. In Tully, he reunites with Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road, A Little Trip to Heaven) when the two teamed up for the fantastic Young Adult. I wouldn’t say that the Academy has shut out Theron (certainly not in the way that Jake Gyllenhaal has), but to have just two Academy Award nominations (Monster, North Country) is, if nothing else, a little surprising. I don’t know if her performance in this film will be enough to land the coveted acting prize, especially with an April release. But I will say that she carried this movie, and it goes in a couple of different directions along the way that is held together by her evenness and Reitman’s adherence to the story when it sort of felt like things were untangling a bit.
So the premise of the movie is simple. Marlo (Theron) is 40 years old and is expected to deliver her third baby at any given moment. We learn fairly early that it was an unplanned pregnancy between her and her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston – Office Space, The Conjuring). They already have two children, Sarah and Jonah. Sarah is a fairly typical eight-year-old. She’s sweet. She’s smart. She’s caring. But she is wildly insecure. Jonah is not the typical kindergartener that you’d expect. He’s a handful at home and a handful at school. He probably falls somewhere on the Autism spectrum, though that part isn’t touched on wholly. We know that he is on the verge of getting kicked out of his private school because he is impeding the growth and education of the other 24 students in the classroom. The only reason he hasn’t been kicked out yet is that Marlo’s brother Craig (Mark Duplass – television’s The League, Fox’s The Mindy Project) is a generous donor of the school. Drew does his best as Marlo’s husband, but he’s often away, traveling for work. And even when he is home, he’s not always in the present. Sure he makes the school lunches for the kids and is reliable for being there to help keep the kids on track with their homework. But, on the other hand, be he seems to have a certain “check-in, check out mentality.” He does his fatherly duties before retreating to the master bedroom each night to play video games. It’s clear that the relationship between Drew and Marlo is one that is silently understood. It probably is not the relationship either of them wants, but it’s the relationship that they’ve grown into. There is love, but are they in love? It’s hard to say. And the unplanned arrival of baby Mia isn’t one of those things that bring the couple back together.
Having already known what it is like to bring two children into the world, Marlo is having difficulty fathoming how she will continue doing what she is doing while also birthing a newborn at age 40. You can see it in everything Theron does. The expressions on her face, the tone in her face, the unsettling reality that this is her life and it will be so for a long, long time. What is most interesting is how she reacts when Mia is born. There is not a sense of joy or pride that you’d expect to see in the faces of most mothers. More, it is a feeling of relief that her baby is healthy and at least her body will begin to recover to somewhere close to where it was before she got pregnant with child number three. But she is a detached mother, not just from Mia, but from all of her children. And she knows it too. There is the part of her that wants to do more, but knowing it isn’t in her skill set or her mind frame to do so now. She’s a 24/7 365 day a year mother, and that’s what she knows. And while it might have been the life that she desired at one point, it is currently a life that she cannot really handle.
Craig and his wife Elyse (Elaine Tan – Inherent Vice) recommend trying a night nanny. A night nanny is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a nanny that comes at night and takes care of the baby while the mother gets eight hours asleep, only being interrupted by the nanny when it is time to breastfeed. Reluctant at first, Marlo finally relents. Tully (Mackenzie Davis – Blade Runner 2049, The Martian) arrives one night and is the perfect foil to Marlo. She’s everything Marlo currently isn’t. She’s optimistic, carefree, young, energetic, and spirited. Marlo quickly takes a liking to her. Each night she arrives (probably at around 10:00) and leaves sometime the next morning. We can assume that Marlo and Drew have a baby monitor in their room, and Tully sneaks out sometime before the family wakes up. Over the course of the upcoming days and weeks, Marlo and Tully form a friendship. Tully starts doing more than just watching the baby at night. She cleans. She bakes. She listens to Marlo. She tries her best to help Marlo get her life back on track through positive reinforcement, not being so hard on herself, and looking at all of the wonderful things she has in life. She is a great counter to Marlo, and Davis really nails the part of Tully. About three-quarters into the movie, the plot takes an unexpected turn. And it did not feel natural in the slightest when it happened but was unbelievably successful by the final credits rolled across the screen. If you’ve seen the movie, please read the spoilers.
***Spoilers***
The twist in this story was absolutely unreal. As I was sitting there watching this movie as an analyst and not a moviegoing fan, I kept thinking of how this movie was going to separate itself from its cookie-cutter formula. And boy did it. And it did it in a way that had me thinking that Reitman screwed this movie up at first. I truly believed that he took this touching story about a depressed woman who slowly gets out of her funk with the help of a young spirited caregiver. And that was perfectly fine. Tully was perfect for Marlo. But the night that Tully came in and told Marlo about all of her problems and that the two should go out to New York City and get plastered, I wondered what was going on. A director can’t just change the trajectory of a person because he feels like it. I was upset with the complete change of character in Tully. And then the whole trip to New York City without even telling Drew was just perplexing. But then it made SOOOOO much sense, and it was completely brilliant. And while I picked it up before the complete twist was revealed (I knew when Marlo was driving the car home that something wasn’t right), I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on the clues beforehand that Tully was just a product of Marlo’s sleep-deprived and exhausted imagination…that she was Marlo back in her 20’s and was created by present-day Marlo to help her get through the overwhelming circumstances that she was currently dealing with. It wasn’t the “I see dead people” twist like The Sixth Sense, but my goodness, it was darn close. Drew never met Tully except for on the night where she dressed up as the waitress of Drew’s fantasies and gave him what he always craved. And even that was strange. This wasn’t a world where Marlo would allow her husband to live a fantasy with another woman. So when he mentioned the next day if she wanted to talk about the previous night’s events, it wasn’t about Marlo allowing Tully to have sex with him in the waitress outfit. It was Marlo realizing that she wanted to give her supportive husband what she knew he needed. But it wasn’t something that he wasn’t expecting, so the way he approached the conversation the next day was just absolutely brilliant. We were as confused as Drew was. But in a completely different way. And when Marlo goes to New York to release some pent-up energy that she brought on through Tully’s out-of-character entrance to her home that night that was very reminiscent of how she used to live, it was even more brilliant. And when Tully tells Marlo near the end of that night of drinking that it was time for her to leave, we were as confused as Marlo. But it was Marlo’s mind telling her that Tully had come into her life to do what she was supposed to do and that she had gotten through this hard time in her life and that she would be okay. And the constant use of mermaids and water that Reitman kept teasing us with? Brilliance is being displayed before us. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a movie where I was content where the plot was going, and then getting completely turned around by a plot turn to the point where I almost instantly changed my pleasure with the movie, to then have it come back together in a way that made me feel like I was being played like a yo-yo but in a way that felt rewarding…I don’t know if that’s ever happened to me at a movie before. The only part of this that I didn’t like was the psychiatric part of the hospital. I thoroughly enjoy movies that center around mental illness. But we were not aware that Marlo experienced real mental illness in her life before the nurse asked Drew about it. And then his explanation was weak at best. Reitman needed to at least allude to this with flashbacks, with conversations between Marlo and whoever, between Drew and whoever, between Craig and whoever. Just something. Sure we heard Craig say to Drew that he wants the old Marlo back. But who was the old Marlo? How bad was it? And for how long? When did it start? These questions were not adequately addressed for us, and that’s really the only place that this movie didn’t work for me.
***End of Spoilers***
Theron went to all ends to create Marlo. She gained 50 pounds in three months to get ready for this film, doing so by eating processed foods and drinking sugar, setting alarms in the middle of the night so that she could wake up and eat. And it sent her into her own depression. Processed foods and sugar have long been linked to depression, so this could have been expected…maybe. She had actually gained a ton of weight before for her Oscar-winning performance in Monster. Poor diet, we know, can be a factor of depression, as can weight gain. So just because she was doing this for a role doesn’t take away from the fact that she is a human first. And maybe it made her performance even stronger. This actress might not have been highly regarded as a top-tier actress for the first ten years of her career. Maybe she relied on her good looks and charm more than her acting prowess in the beginning. Maybe that wasn’t even her fault…but rather the roles she was cast in. She certainly changed all of that with back-to-back Academy Award Lead Actress nominations for 2004’s Monster and 2005’s North Country. And while she hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar since, she’s an early contender for this head-turning role in Tully. It actually looks like she is an early frontrunner. My fear for her and this movie is that it was released too early in the year and the Academy will have forgotten about it come December. I hope that is not the case, and just last year, we had Get Out as a February release. That movie earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Performance by a Lead Actor, Best Director, and Best Orignal Screenplay (it won the award for this category). And this wasn’t the only example of a released early in the year receiving end of the year recognition. If we get five better Lead Actress performances this year, 2018 will rank right up there with the best years (namely 2017) for this award. I want to say that it is safe to say Theron gets a nomination. But nothing is ever safe and secure in Hollywood. All I know is that Reitman and Theron won me over with this award, and both of them deserve proper due for what they were able to pull off. And they would not have been able to do this without Davis, who likely won’t be recognized with any formal recognition but should be recognized for playing the perfect counter for Marlo.
Tully was the surprise of 2018 so far for me. Four months in, and there is no better movie. If you are a fan of Juno, Up In the Air, and/or Young Adult, absolutely see this movie. For everyone else, it’s a cautious recommendation, only because I don’t know if every moviegoer would love it. It’s subtle. It’s subdued. It’s exactly what I didn’t know I was looking for when I walked into the theatre. The detail displayed was almost perfect. The story was ambitious, and it completely worked. However, if you allow yourself to get caught up in the film and all of its intricacies, I think you’ll find that by its conclusion, you’ll find yourself more emotionally attached to it than Marlo was to Mia in the delivery room.
Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 8.5/10
Hook and Reel 10/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
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