You Think You Know But Have No Idea, Motherhood Gets a Rare Look in ‘Tully’

I’ve held a particular admiration for the late film critic Roger Ebert ever since reading his memoir, Life Itself. Since then, I’ve seen countless video clips of his commentary in addition to childhood memories of At the Movies with Siskel and Ebert, and as I watched the first act of Tully, the latest collaboration of director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody (you may remember them best from Juno), I recalled a quote from Roger Ebert as he spoke about watching movies: “And for me,” he said, “the movies are like a machine that generates empathy… It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.” It was clear for me from Tully’s first montage – wake up, change the baby, breast feed, hold it together, repeat – that Tully would be that type of film for me. I am a Black man with no kids watching the emotional experience of a white woman with three, so the success of Tully, for me, lives in how well that empathy machine works to connect me to a perspective I could hardly imagine with depth or sincerity. And to that end, Tully is deeply successful.

Marlo (Charlize Theron),in her early forties, is a mother of two with a third child on the way. Her life is complete with a husband, family sedan, and a suburban home just close enough to New York to know she once had dreams but far enough to have a closet big enough to bury them in. Audiences quickly learn that her daily experience as a mother is less than glamorous or befitting her temperament – Marlo is…