Movie Review: ‘Lady Bird’
What could have been a clichéd coming-of-age story is a warm, well-crafted, and unexpected film.
Lady Bird, the name that our heroine Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) has given to herself, is a charming, self-centered, emotional wrecking ball of a high-school senior. But let’s be honest, that’s probably an apt description of most of us at that age. She’s seeking to escape the bounds of the so-called “Midwest of California,” her hometown of Sacramento, to some place more cultured, like the east coast. The only thing standing in her way is her own protective, opinionated mother and maybe perhaps her grades too.
Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, she turns what could have been a clichéd coming-of-age story into warm, well-crafted, unexpected film. If the devil is indeed in the details, then this movie is as much about the minutiae of life in Sacramento, as it is the titular main character. Street names, neighborhoods, local haunts, the types of intimate details that only a native would know of which Gerwig is one. It’s very much a love letter to all of the hometowns we grew up in then eventually shun. It’s also a little bit about the time period as well, 2002–2003. It seems like it’s a little early to be reminiscing on the early aughts but maybe it’s just me. Small but noticeable marker of the time period present themselves in this just barely post-9/11 world — details like a news broadcast from the earliest days of the Iraq War. As a side note, the clip featured a prominent broadcaster who’s been in the news a lot recently. It elicited laughs and a few groans in the theater I saw it in. Hint: it’s Matt Lauer. You inhabit the world of “Lady Bird,” not in that simplistic, overly nostalgic way that so much of television, film revel in these days. It grounds you solely in the reality of the story that is being told.
Lady Bird lives on “the wrong side of the tracks,” not figuratively but literally. She lives in a working class neighborhood surrounded by the larger homes of her more affluent Catholic high-school classmates. Lady Bird and her friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein) walk past these houses every day, both dreaming of the idealized lives that lie within. Lady Bird’s parents, Marion (Laurie Metcalf) and Larry (Tracy Letts), a well meaning, cash-strapped couple are willing to do anything for their kids unless it means them going to an out-of-state school. Marian, a nurse by trade, is the enforcer of the family who is described by another character as “warm but also kind of scary.” Larry, has been out of a job for a stretch. Between looking for work, he mostly sits at the family computer and plays solitaire. He lets Marian handle the tricky business of trying to reign in Lady Bird lofty ambitions. They’ve taken back in their Berkeley graduate son, Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues), and his equally-pierced girlfriend, Shelley (Marielle Scott). Both are without jobs after graduation, working at the local grocery store and resigned to having sex on the pullout couch; the latter’s a small joke shared between Larry and Marian. For most of the McPherson clan money equals success and opportunity, an outlook that is usually shared by most people who don’t have either. Lady Bird scoffs at such a prosaic notion with the zealousness that only misguided teenage self-belief brings. But she’s not wrong.
Emotional are always more deeply held and misunderstood when you’re in that confusing time between high-school and college. You lie to yourself and you lie to other people, a lot. Maybe because you’re still figuring it out, or embarrassed of your family or where your from, hiding your own shame, or all of the above. “Lady Bird’s” social circle illustrates this with the wealth of well-drawn characters that inhabit it, all whose lives are as complicated as her’s, despite outward perceptions. Like Danny O’Neill (Lucas Hedges), the Catholic kid from the right side of the tracks, whom Lady Bird meets while auditioning for a play. He’s her first boyfriend; they name a star together after all. This sweet story of first love ends abruptly because of Danny’s secret. Or take Lady Bird’s potential prom date, Kyle Scheible (Timothée Chalamet), who, when he’s not rolling his own cigarettes is in a band, is pretentiously bookish. He’s hiding his own personal pain over his sick father under a thick facade of aloof coolness. To best friend Julie, whose mom has a tenuous boyfriend situation, then is ditched by Lady Bird for a brief time for more upscale friends.
Enough can’t be said about the incredible performances across the board in this film but principally from the two leads, Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, whom both from the first frames of the movie share a believable, loving, and somewhat painful mother-daughter bond. They are so alike in so many ways but too strong willed to notice the amount of themselves in one another. Even if we think we don’t want it, especially when we’re teens, we all spend a good part of our lives striving to win our parents’ approval and while doing so wondering if they even “like” us. Honestly, maybe sometimes they don’t and just want us “to be our best selves,” whatever they might perceive that to be. The struggle between these two characters lies therein: Marion just wanting the best but not wanting to let go, and Lady Bird needing to be understood and to be herself.
This is a film that more than distinguishes itself from what otherwise should have been something run-of-the-mill because of the nuance that director Gerwig imbues it with. Oh and of course, those Dave Matthews Band needle drops too.
