CW: Discussions of death, dying and illness

“If I don’t stay, I’m going to miss the last of her.”

For Sarah (Abbi Jacobson), home has seemingly been rendered into two worlds: her past and future located respectively in Maine and San Francisco. 

Maine is memory, where she is daughter of Midge (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Rob (Bob Odenkirk) and sister of Hannah (Beanie Feldstein). It is foundational, the time and place where she learnt how to deal with the monsters of the world, both the bigots and the imaginary. And it was possible in part to her mother. Outspoken Midge is, and outspoken is what Sarah became. 

San Francisco is the beautiful inverse of the memory of Maine, enabling Sarah to look towards her future aspirations. A place of exploring what it means to feel comfortable in your own body, a place in which the immersion of yourself into your future is so tangible. One day she could be publicly recognised as an artist, and another day she could meet a beautiful stranger who makes days feel countless. So comforting is the notion that Sarah will eventually become the person she always dreamed of being. 

However, when Sarah finds out that her mother has developed Alzheimer’s, Tangles establishes a heartbreaking tale of what it means to simultaneously be waiting to love and possibly losing a world of it. 

Based on Sarah Leavitt’s memoir graphic novel, Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me, the film’s beautiful use of 2D hand-drawn animation materialises Sarah’s internal dilemma for the audience, augmenting the fragmentation of her identity. More specifically, the narrative puts Sarah on a plane back to Maine, where she returns to care for her mother. However, as Midge continues to worsen from her condition, Sarah finds herself emotionally fragmented as she moves back and forth between both cities she calls home. In trying to hold on tightly to both places, cracks start to form within her relationships with her family and girlfriend, and within her work. Was she ever a present enough daughter? Will she ever be a present enough girlfriend? Will she ever be a good enough artist? 

What Tangles makes Sarah realise, is that she is and always has been, all of these things in one. 

Inherent in the film’s medium is the ability of its animation to hold both permanence and fragility, capturing the dual nature of love in a way no other art form could. Here, its fluid nature allows for lines and boundaries to be contorted, realities to be brought into the imaginary and for ability of a smile to become a cry with only a single mark of a pencil. However, Tangles also interweaves the vulnerability of its animation and subject matter together in the most sensitive of ways. It is terrifying to think of the possibility of erasure in the art form of hand drawing, of loving memory as a result of Alzheimer’s disease and of our possible futures. 

Montages of Sarah’s ambivalent emotion are interwoven throughout the film saturated with her grief-filled desire to hold onto her mother, but also a curious desire to consolidate her identity within San Francisco. Constructed thoughtfully through the active use of 2D animation, audiences are provided with multiple pathways in which we can interpret how to respond to a loved one receiving a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. We can interpret in the context of death, in the context of preservation of memory, but also in the context of letting our loved ones rest. The film validates all of these responses— but it is on the condition that we let any pain, we are holding on to, go. That is true healing, for both others and ourselves.

Thus, the 2D animation of Tangles also realises a solution within itself, with its tracing over lines and beautiful reconstruction of memory. Perhaps trying to reaffirm all the love we have within our lives is the healthiest thing we can do—it may not be logical, but like Midge says, “It’s just nature”. One may not be able to compete with death, but Tangles is a perfect example of how it can be re-constructed into a beautiful portrait with as much life infused into it as possible. 

Further holding this loving portrait of ourselves and our loved ones together is the ability for it to be self-aware even within its humour. The stark embrace of joy in what it means to be queer, what it means to be a daughter and a sister and what it means to pursue what you love only made me love this film more (and cry more, too). 

It is therefore commendable how many issues Tangles is able to directly respond to within its filmmaking. In not making 2D animation subject to industries that are currently favouring AI and rendering the art form obsolete, to bravely and sincerely addressing the emotional weight of seeing a loved one irrevocably changed because of a disease, it too, like Sarah, is multifaceted.

Thus, as much as Tangles is a story of loss, it is only one part of the film’s novel manifestation of life itself. A feat in the art of animated storytelling, it is almost like a multi-storeyed home; on this foundation of family is the building of one’s future self, whether that be in Maine or in San Francisco. And on top of this, we build the ways in which we love, whether that be through art or simply remembering. I will forever remember this film, and I can only hope that audiences will also have the same opportunity to remember too.