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Tully - A Case of Postpartum Depression?


Vallari Saxena

Movies rarely capture the stress and draining sadness that can haunt one after giving birth to a child. Postpartum depression can occur at varying levels - some feel a mild sadness and disinterest, while others can face Major Depressive Disorder which involve symptoms like a lack of energy, trouble concentrating and thoughts of harming themselves or their baby. Such feelings are incredibly difficult to feel for, in addition to the effects of the depressive disorder, they carry with them guilt of not feeling the natural and expected joy and warmth towards their new child. In rare cases, 2 women out of a 1000 births, postpartum psychosis can set in. The symptoms of this are far more blatant, including profound confusion, agitation and a clouded mind and hallucinations. Very few films navigate this space, but Tully (2018) makes an attempt and comes really close to accurately depicting issues surrounding postpartum mental health issues.  

Marlo, played by Charlize Theron, is expecting her third child and is clearly stressed and deprived of all motivation and energy. Her husband is hardworking and supportive, but not clued in to the immense stress motherhood is putting on his wife. Marlo takes her brother’s advice and hires a night nanny, called Tully, who is young and full of vigour. In her presence Marlo begins to feel better, the dark weight is lifted from her shoulders and she feels more like herself again. She becomes increasingly dependant on Tully for her well-being, for company that really understands what she’s going through and helps her out by doing the household chores and going the extra mile to set things up for her family the next morning. Near the end of the movie it is revealed that Tully never existed.  

When a drunk Marlo swerves and drives off the bridge and into a water body, she is visited by Tully in the form of a mermaid, who saves her. At the hospital it is revealed that Marlo shows signs of extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation, and that her maiden name is Tully. Tully was, thus, a hallucination; a younger version of someone inside herself that she embodied in an imaginary person; a way of dealing with the increasing pressure on and demands being made of her. She hallucinated that she had someone to help her through the long nights, to keep delivering and being a good mother; but it was her that stayed up all night in a dazed state, mechanically getting jobs done, so exhausted that she couldn’t keep track of all she was doing. In the day she seemed happy, better than ever before because she felt like she was rested, like someone else had made her life easy for her. “I was only here to get you through the danger zone,” Tully tells Marlo the last time she ‘visits’ her at the hospital, “thank you for keeping me alive”. Marlo doesn’t acknowledge that Tully is a hallucination, and doesn’t speak to anyone about her, but after her accident realises that it’s time for her to take charge on her own, and the movie ends on a happy note with her feeling better about her responsibilities and her husband playing his part in supporting the family.

Throughout the movie, in the day when Tully is not around, Marlo is doing better than ever before. She seems happy and well rested, nobody could tell that perhaps something was wrong. Although her husband does tell the doctor that Marlo went through a slight depression when her second child was born, she was doing much better this time. And here is where the controversy surrounding the film and true depiction of what is going on with Marlo arises; the movie doesn’t give the audience enough specific information to decide whether the night nurse was a wish fulfilling fantasy during postpartum depression, one Marlo knows is not real, or a psychotic phenomenon where Marlo still believes she was real. The film also doesn’t diagnose her with the term or end in her seeking any sort of help for the same; she just deals with her hallucinations or imagined reality internally, and in the end sails out of the psychotic episode. Although the movie indicates that the doctor knew that she was suffering from postpartum depression, this is clearly a case of postpartum psychosis. 

The film portrays the hardships of motherhood but has found itself also addressing a mental health disease, but simply brushing it aside, writing it off as a severe depressive episode and stemming from extreme tiredness. She even announces at the dinner table once that she wants to kill herself, but nobody speaks to her about this or about seeking help. Perhaps the point of the movie was to address that she needed someone to look out for her and when no-one did she looked out for herself, but it was done in a manner that does occur in a very real mental illness, albeit in very few women, and this point is not given the kind of importance it needs in the film.

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