Lady Bird

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, the writer and director of Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig, talked about the detailed journal she kept as a high school student in the early 2000s.  She talked about how she looked back as an adult to read what she wrote back then recently, and was amazed at the intensity and honesty of her journal entries. 

Lady Bird is a coming of age story that perfectly captures that intensity and honesty of teenage years.  It remembers the time when everything is just so important and all-consuming.  Every crush, every heartbreak, every betrayal - It all just feels so massive when you are at a certain age.  Gerwig is an actress who has worked behind the camera before, but this is her solo directing debut, and it shows her as a filmmaker who is able to not just be able to capture a voice from a certain period of life, but also a specific time and place. (The film is set around 2002 and 2003.) This is not a plot heavy film.  The heroine at the center of the film does not go on an amazing adventure, and there's really no manufactured elements or contrived crises to drive the story.  It's simply about a young girl experiencing high school and family.

The girl in question is Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a high school senior who gave herself her nick name of Lady Bird, not so much out of rebellion, but more out of her free spirited nature.  She has dyed red hair, a passion for school theater, a weakness for boys that she finds smart, and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Alanis Morissette.  All she wants out of life is to leave her hometown of Sacramento, California, which she views as a dead end.  She sees herself going to New York for college.  There are a couple problems standing in her way.  One is her grades, which may not be good enough to get into some of the big name East Coast schools she dreams of.  The other is her family's financial situation.  Her father (Tracy Letts) is unemployed, and finds himself competing with much younger people at job interviews. 

But the main obstacle in Lady Bird's way is her well-meaning but frequently short-tempered mom (Laurie Metcalf).  Much of the film's emotional weight hangs solely on the relationship that they share, and her mother's struggle to understand her daughter.  Both obviously have love for one another, but they have a hard time expressing it.  In the film's opening scene, they are driving home from a college campus visit, listening to an audiobook of The Grapes of Wrath together.  It's one of the few times we seem them sharing happiness in the film.  Not long after this brief, happy moment, they are arguing with one another.  Lady Bird becomes so desperate to escape from the conversation that she literally throws herself out the open car door, and spends a majority of the film wearing a cast on her arm because of it.

The movie is careful not to make the mother out to be a villain.  She has her reasons to be frustrated with her daughter.  Lady Bird plays pranks on teachers, and is kicked out of school after she mouths off to a Pro Life speaker at a school assembly.  She can be exasperating and difficult, as all teenagers can be.  But even when she is trying to do good, the mother cannot connect with her.  The moments between the two characters, as well as Lady Bird's personal thoughts and actions, are genuine.  So genuine, in fact, that I figured they had to be somewhat autobiographical for Greta Gerwig.  I was surprised to learn that although she did grow up in Sacramento, she did not base much of the film on her own life.  But still, there are moments here that ring too true not to be based on some kind of personal reflection.  The way that the main character reacts to teenage heartbreak and angst are just too natural not to be.

Lady Bird really is a movie made up out of small moments.  Yes, we do get some scenes that are typical in the teenage film genre, such as when Lady Bird ditches her geeky best friend for some much cooler kids.  But that's really not what the film is about.  It is about her individual discoveries, her desires (she plots out exactly how and when she will lose her virginity), and how those can change at a drop of a hat.  She lives in a time when she writes the name of a boy she likes in magic marker on the wall, only to cross it off, and replace it with a different one.  She is trying out different identities in order to find herself, and is really just trying to escape from her current life.  Saoirse Ronan is excellent at portraying all of these angles of her character, and making her seem not so much like a written character, but rather a fleshed out girl that you have probably known or met before at some point.

Lady Bird is a small, independent film, but I think it has all the makings of a huge crowd pleaser.  Girls the same age as the main character will see someone they can relate to, and adults will find a lot of honesty and reflection in the film of their own past.  Gerwig proves herself here of not just being a great filmmaker, but also one who knows how to speak to audiences.  This is the kind of movie where everyone who watches it will walk away recognizing something in themselves.

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