Tom of Your Life (2020)

There Ain’t No Road Just Like It

“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve used that Neil Gaiman quote elsewhere (maybe even more than once), but it’s a personal favorite. In his Sandman comics, Death is personified as a loving but no-nonsense Goth chick who guides the deceased to whatever afterlife they deserve. And whether her rounds bring her to an infant experiencing crib death or a lawyer who has somehow survived for fifteen thousand years, her maxim holds true.

A Death movie has been in development Hell for decades, so for now Tom of Your Life will have to suffice as the most affecting look at this ethos as I’ve seen in film. We meet Tom as a toddler being smuggled out of a rural Illinois hospital by a nurse named Jess (Baize Buzan). What sets this particular kidnapping apart from others is the fact that Tom had been born only an hour earlier.

A little while later, Jess teaches the eight-year-old boy sitting across from her at breakfast that “people are nice in this world”—a hopeful declaration that will be constantly put to the test as Tom ages four years every hour of his life. Their destination is Chicago, where Jess hopes that her ex can use his scientific expertise to find a reason for Tom’s condition and, hopefully, a cure. And because this road movie is partly a comedy, you can bet that A) Jess and Tom get split up, and B) wackiness ensues.

I say “partly a comedy” because writer/director Jer Sklar’s feature debut is much more effective as an off-beat drama than when he draws his characters into broader comedic situations. There’s a running gag about how Jess’s narcissistic boss talks about himself way too much; Tom goes overboard when discovering masturbation as a teenager; Tom encounters a barful of colorful Chicago characters who feel slightly more authentic than the SNL “Superfans”.

That’s not to say that Sklar’s humor doesn’t work. It’s just not nearly as effective as the heart-tugging, life-affirming wisdom he imparts through many of his characters’ interactions. When Tom sees the giant Navy Pier Ferris wheel on the drive into Chicago, for example, Jess turns her nose up at the idea of going on it. “You just sit there and it goes around slowly. It sucks”.

Tom replies, sincerely, “Sounds fun to me.” Those two lines of dialogue serve more to tickle the brain than a dozen sex jokes do to tickle the ribs.

As odd as this sounds, the mixture of spot-on drama and awkward humor goes a long way in selling the film’s larger themes. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that life is random, sad, hilarious, absurd, and full of out-of-left-field profundities that force us to re-examine our inner selves on a dime (just try convincing the Late-2019 version of yourself that within six months you’d be homeschooling your kids, wearing masks in public, and laid off due to pandemic-related job cuts—or whatever permutation of the COVID curveball happened to derail your otherwise mundane and sensible plans).

All that said, yes, Tom of Your Life is much more effective when zooming out from the nonsense and focusing on the lives surrounding our rapidly aging protagonist. Indeed, so much is revealed about Jess and the rumpled private investigator hired by the hospital administrator to find her (Carl, played with a wonderful sadness by producer James Sharpe) that I was shaken to realize this entire movie is but a snapshot of lives already in progress.

As the end credits rolled, I wondered if the insights these characters gained from each other and from their encounters with Tom would shake them into action—or eventually fall to the back of the mental file cabinet as “that really weird day a long time ago that I couldn’t possibly be remembering correctly.”

I’d like to believe in the former, as firmly as I believe in much of this film. Despite my nitpicks, it’s impossible to overlook the three aces Sklar plays here:* The first is Baize Buzan, making her feature film debut. Yes, a lot of what makes Jess an interesting character is the way Sklar writes her; she’s warm and intuitive with Tom, but an emotionally unhinged freakazoid when it comes to her ex-boyfriend (Carl’s investigation turns up a restraining order). An instinct in a lot of modern movies is to portray female empowerment purely through strength and virtue, as if overcoming (or even having) flaws is somehow an invitation to “toxic” criticism. But Buzan delivers a performance that is so chameleonic in its ability to keep up with Sklar’s changing moods and narrative left turns that I’m sure I’ve just seen the debut of a future Oscar winner.

Sklar’s next key asset is cinematographer Christopher Rejano, who also shot one of my favorite films of 2019, Knives and Skin. I love a great-looking Chicago movie, and Tom of Your Life definitely qualifies. Sklar and Rejano take us all around the city, instead of just hanging out at the landmarks, and the result is a movie that feels like the ones that had to find more innovative ways to showcase the over-represented New York and Los Angeles by finding the unique corners that give it character.

Lastly, the Tom of Your Life soundtrack is just about perfect. Sklar and his band, The Blackstrap Molasses, provide many of the film’s songs (none of which are covers of the standard Chicago-movie fare, like the Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah tune from which this review’s subtitle is derived). Folksy, searching, and just plain cool, the music supports the mood instead of spelling out the themes (mostly). The next time I watch Tom of Your Life, I may be listening more than looking.

Which brings me back to death. Or, more precisely, Death.

We do get what anybody gets. Whether that’s a rough few hours in the obstetrical emergency room; a hundred years of relative comfort; or a science-defying, fast-and-furious twenty-four hours on the road, there are a finite number of breaths with which to realize the as-yet-quantified potential of this wild cosmic experiment.

In the middle of his life, Jer Sklar left Hollywood, went to film school, and made this movie. If you knew that your twilight years might be condensed to the distance between right now and next August (or tomorrow afternoon), what would you do with what you get?

* Did I butcher that card-playing metaphor? Is “three aces” cheating?

Watch Ian’s interview with Tom of Your Life writer/director Jer Sklar.