Maybe it was because nostalgia soothes an anxious adult, maybe it’s because characters in purgatory are getting more and more relateable. Toothless was one of the first films I felt like rewatching when quarantine hit. If you haven’t seen it before, fair warning that the following contains spoilers.
The film follows a down-to-earth dentist named Katherine, who gets into an accident and suddenly finds herself in Limbo, between earth and the afterlife, sentenced to supernatural community service as The Tooth Fairy to make up for what she was missing in life.
It’s a simple film that at some point growing up, I used to find problematic because it depicted a boring middle-of-nowhere afterlife centered on doing work and strictly keeping to rules from a rather cold authority. It depicted a simple (low-budget) view of going to heaven–just up the stairs, gaining wings, and peacefully fading away to somewhere else. It depicted also a terrifying view of going to hell–a private band is assigned to play your dirge as you get sent down a Hellevator into the ground. I felt like it didn’t do hope of heaven justice.
But now I get it. In some ways, the film sets a negative space that helps us appreciate a view of life/afterlife based on more than just doing your work/good work.
During her sentence, Katherine is warned not to let herself be seen by the living and not to get involved. Apparently, her fate is decided by whether she can keep to the rules and behave, and unfortunately her uptight supervisor Rogers wants to send her to hell just because she personally hates dentists, so the record’s already off to a rough start. Katherine accidentally allows a child to see her at work as the Tooth Fairy, and she could get in trouble for just that.
Something feels lacking in this view of the afterlife, and perhaps that’s the point. Eventually, you can’t help but question it.
In an especially poignant dialogue after watching an old friend go to heaven, Katherine questions her friendly purgatory mentor Raul why she was sent here.
KATHERINE: Look, I know I was a good person. I never lied, cheated, stole, I was never malicious–
RAUL: That’s all true. But you never allowed yourself to love anyone.
KATHERINE: …I loved my dad!
RAUL: Dads don’t count! Look, to get into heaven, you gotta go with that old song: ‘I once was blind, but now I see.’ You see all the people who love you? Maybe all you gotta do is love ’em back. You ever thought of that?
Now, if she were being punished for not reciprocating feelings for someone who asked her out, and caring about her career more than some creepy guy, that would have turned me off then and there. Too often we act like being interested in anything other than a nuclear family is a disobedient path to hell. But turns out that’s not what he was talking about.
Over time, Katherine finds herself bending the rules and getting involved after all. She starts bonding with the kids who lose their teeth and call on her, and word gets around that the Tooth Fairy actually helps kids with their problems. She changes the kids’ lives in secret, listening to their problems, helping them where grownups seem to be too busy to care. Limbo has gotten her to slow down and care.
As Katherine learns to open up to empathy, she starts to question not only why she’s here serving a sentence but why her mentor Raul is here. In another vulnerable moment, Raul reveals that in life he was “real sick” and didn’t realize until later how many people loved him. “People who deserve better,” he says. It’s insinuated that he died by suicide and wishes he could have been more receptive of love when he was alive. For that reason, he urges Katherine to appreciate a chance to learn from Limbo and move on. Katherine questions how she can even do that if her job is to keep her mouth shut and lay low for who-knows-how-long. “Is that all this place is?”
Then, her routine of helping children spirals out of control when some adults intend on punishing the kids for believing in the Tooth Fairy. Some angry moms and the principal intend on expelling Bobby, the kid who started it all, and Katherine, watching over them, finds herself too empathetic and invested in the children’s world to let them be punished.
Knowing full well that she could be severely punished, Katherine breaks the rules completely and, in “letting [her] guard down,” appears to the school, allowing grownups to see her for the first time and prove the children weren’t lying. Once visible to them, she even tells off the grownups for their lack of empathy in their job: “I don’t like the way you’re treating these kids. You don’t listen to them, you don’t understand them, and you’re always judging them. Now, they live in a different world than you do. A world you left behind a long time ago. But you know what? They’re not gonna be there much longer. So why don’t you just let them have it now?”
Katherine emphasizes how childhood is that small time of life humans are allowed to be imaginative, expressive, and enjoy life for what it is before the world downsizes them into working machines. In a way, she emphasizes that children naturally know how to love and the grownups, by not listening, are missing it, and forgetting it.
Humans, once vulnerable as children before God, once fearless and open and loving without end, start to lose that when they fixate on the systems of fear, power, and success we’ve built.
Soon after, the purgatory authorities come for Katherine, arresting her for “getting involved,” and dragging her to Limbo to be locked in the Hellevator and sent to hell. It’s a terrifying scene to see as a child, despite its low-budget depiction. In one last, victorious moment before being damned, Katherine smiles to Raul, and tells the legalist, purist, biased Rogers to go to hell.
Then she’s damned.
But wait, what kind of message is that? Why should “getting involved” with others be a sin? Why shouldn’t she prioritize loving others more than a heavenly reward? Why is judgment of heaven and hell based on keeping certain rules anyway, instead of whatever she’s done for the least of these? So are we just supposed to behave and never question the status quo from those who finally figured out a spiritual system?
I don’t know. Jesus sure didn’t accept the status quo, and look what happened to him.
As Katherine descends down the Hellevator, a montage plays of her memories from life and purgatory, overlaid with a countdown. Almost as if to say all the good, bad, and complicated from her life doesn’t matter, it’s all going down to hell with her. Almost as if to say it doesn’t matter how good of a person you were in life, judgment doesn’t care about your stories and relationships. So the Tooth Fairy who helped all those kids, and tried and failed and grew, is going to hell.
Almost. But not quite. That’s how it’d be it if were about being “right,” and following rules no matter what, without Love and grace, anyway. Thankfully, this is not the end.
Katherine turns out to be transported back to Earth as if she never died, given a second chance to live life differently. It seems as if it were all a dream, except she catches glimpses of her supervisor Rogers watching her from afar, unable to punish her further. Her friend Raul comes by and envies her for being given a second chance, and urges her to make the most of it.
It’s the best sentence she could have ever gotten: a second chance at life. In risking hell and breaking rules for others, she proved she had finally learned to love. Everything she went through in life and purgatory wasn’t for nothing–her stories and her relationship, if she allowed herself to feel them, meant something.
As a dentist, Katherine reunites with the child she bonded with, and starts taking steps to befriend people instead of merely seeing them clients and employees. She starts expressing joy, gratitude, and a willingness to form community. There is hope of a date as well as quality time for a game outside of work. She’s much happier, to the point she’s dancing in the street and doesn’t care who sees her.
Joy is also a fruit of the spirit. I think we forget that, too.
All in all, Toothless is a film that forces us to wrestle with what we consider “living a good life,” and what in life we would extend to eternity if given the chance. It pushes us to consider that if your faith is only about the purity of keeping in line to get a reward of heaven, we’d make a pretty dull heaven anyway. And sometimes, good trouble is necessary in order to love our neighbor well.
Heaven is other people. At least, that’s where it starts.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13.