Lady Bird (2017)
Directed by: Greta Gerwig
Premise: Set in the early 2000s, a student (Saoirse Ronan) who answers to the nickname “Lady Bird” passes through her last year of high school. Lady Bird’s family is in financial straits which causes social awkwardness and limits her college application options.
What Works: Lady Bird is a coming of age story comparable to titles like Breaking Away and Lucas.
These movies work best when they are understated and embed the
character mechanics within the subtext. That’s generally true of Lady Bird
and the movie manages to be quietly profound. The story follows the
title character in her last year of high school as she passes through
many of the typical rites of adolescence like her first love and
testing the boundaries of authority. But these familiar scenarios are
presented with a rawness and complexity that distinguishes this film
from other high school pictures. Lady Bird is so titled because
it is about the main character and her struggle to figure out who she
is. “Lady Bird” is a nickname she has adopted for herself and
throughout the movie she deliberately disconnects and reconnects with
different groups of friends and different types of romantic
relationships in an effort to define herself. The movie does this in a
very natural way and the tone is managed exceptionally well. Lady Bird
is very funny but the humor is restrained by an atmosphere of
melancholy that runs throughout the picture. That duality of humor and
sadness is apparent in the film’s exceptional performances. Lady Bird
is led by Saoirse Ronan in the title role. Ronan is a very good actress
but this role is a bit different from some of the other characters she
has played. To the movie’s credit, Lady Bird is a difficult and
sometimes disagreeable person. But Ronan keeps her interesting and
likable enough so that the film never alienates the audience. The
result is a complex and nuanced portrayal of adolescence. Laurie
Metcalf is cast as Lady Bird’s mother. Like her daughter, the mother is
also difficult but she remains accessible and the film captures the
complex relationship between middle-aged parents and adolescent
daughters in a way that has a lot of authenticity. Beanie Feldstein is
also notable in a supporting role as Lady Bird’s best friend; there is a
lot going on underneath the surface of her performance. Lucas Hedges
is cast as one of Lady Bird’s boyfriends and he’s revealed to struggle
with personal issues that the movie deals with very well.
What Doesn’t: Every character in Lady Bird
copes with sadness or dissatisfaction with their lives. However, most
of the supporting characters are sad but we never find out why. This is
especially notable with a priest played by Stephen Henderson. He
conspicuously vanishes from the teaching staff and is later seen in a
nursing office without sufficient explanation. The weakest part of Lady Bird
is its ending. The film is about this young woman’s desire to escape
her day-to-day life in Sacramento, California and she idolizes the East
Coast and specifically New York City. There are a million stories
about young people going to the Big Apple to find themselves and Lady Bird
doesn’t add much to that conceit. The movie wraps up a little too
neatly in a way that is inconsistent with the raw and complex tone of
the rest of the picture.
Bottom Line: Lady Bird is an impressive coming of age story full of great performances. It remains within the box of this kind of film—Lady Bird is no Boyhood—but the tone is managed perfectly in a movie that is funny and sad in equal measure and it renders visible some ineffable truths about the transition to adulthood.
Episode: #676 (December 3, 2017)