The plot: Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is
a student at a Catholic high school in Sacremento, California. As she weighs up
her options for colleges, and deals with her parents Marion (Laurie Metcalf)
and Larry (Tracy Letts), she finds herself wanting for an identity of her own.
However, with the upcoming hurdles of school, romance and family drama to
contend with, she might not have the time to find that identity.
Ronan’s performance is basically everything I expected her
turn in Brooklyn to be, only at a far more consistent rate. The result of which
I have no hesitation in calling this her best performance to date, the kind
that holds its own alongside the myriad of coming-of-age protagonists I’ve seen
and will likely go down as one of the definitive portrayals of that subset.
This is a word I’m likely to abuse over the course of this review, but this is
the kind of natural performance that stories like this require, which only makes it all the more gratifying that it’s
being used for a character this authentic.
Metcalf as her mother handles a lot of quiet moments very admirably, with
her on-screen chemistry with Ronan making for one of the more realistic
mother-daughter relationships I’ve covered thus far. Letts as her father works
along the same lines, showing great chemistry with his co-stars, and the fact
that he is playing a character with clinical depression fills my heart with a
lot of gratitude. Seriously, this is a situation where it being downplayed ends
up winning the film many points, as it plays rather nicely into the film’s
approach with tone and sentiment.
Lucas Hedges as one of Lady Bird’s boyfriends rather
embarrassingly easily could have devolved into an objectionable liar who led
our protagonist along. However, with how well he channels the very real sense
of fear and dread around that decision, he manages to match his efforts in
Manchester By The Sea as far as making a rather complicated character work like
magic in the final product. Timothee Chalamet as the other boyfriend brings that same
sense of realism that he brought to Call Me By Your Name, only putting it
towards a character that is remarkably pretentious but in a way that feels like
the real attitudes of a rebellious teenager. I grew up an emo kid in high
school; I’ve not only met teens like this, I very well could have been one
myself.
Feldstein as Lady Bird’s best friend might fit into the DUFF category
as far as characterization, but her rapport with Ronan is so good that it still
feels right. Bonus points for some possible subtext with her and Lady Bird
going to prom together, where the theme of the prom is ‘Eternal Flames’. Given how willing this film is to poke at Bible Belt Americana, I highly approve. Stephen Henderson as one of her teachers gives some heavy emotion in his rare
moments and Jason Rodrigues as her brother fits into the family dynamic so well
that his ethnicity never even crosses the audience’s mind as needing to be
explained in context. Honestly, with Fant4stic still unfortunately fresh in my
memory, it’s kind of weird how effortlessly this film managed to pull that one
off.
Coming-of-age stories bank on three very distinct notions in
order to work: The awkward, the emotional, and the journey. The awkward is the
attempts at realism, usually playing off of the main characters being in a
state of learning to show them in potentially embarrassing situations. It’s
being able to get across that awkwardness without it feeling either forced or
too intense to even bear looking at that makes it succeed, something that this
film has in abundance. Whether it’s a substitute drama teacher blocking the
school play like a football game or Lady Bird turning her teacher’s car into a
“Just Married To Jesus” bit of prankery, the occasionally surreal moments only
end up feeling so because they reach the point where it’s a brand of everyday
surreality. The kind of thing that would feel weird at any point in a person’s
life; just that it feels more so because it’s taking place during a
particularly turbulent phase within that life.
The emotional is rather self-explanatory: It’s the way in
which the story is able to depict its given mood and feels. What makes that
particular aspect works so well here is that it never tries to reach for
anything bombastic to get its point across. Whatever emotions are brought
forward by the actions of the characters, it’s restrained to the point where
those emotions end up sneaking up on the audience. There aren’t any earth-shattering
revelations that end up completely changing how people interact with each
other, and the few moments that come close are treated with an astounding
amount of realism. They aren’t handled like the usual excuse for characters to
start yelling at each other for audience catharsis; they’re treated like they
would if they actually happened. This seems like a weird thing to point out,
but keep in mind that the usual method for these kind of stories is to treat
these moments like they are life-or-death situations; it’s a side effect of
embodying that mindset that everything feels important when you’re at that age
and trying to make sense of the world. Instead, they are simply presented as
things that actually happen in the real world, and treating them as such makes
every emotional turn creep into the hearts of the audience to make them all
feel warranted and natural.
And then there’s the journey, the element of the story that
shows our main character actually become of-age and find their place in the
world. Writer and now-director Greta Gerwig has spoken of this story as having
an element of autobiography to it, but not in any specific sense; just that it
appeals to what she believes to be truth. That notion definitely comes across
in how the specifics of the story present itself. We have the self-named Lady
Bird, living in lower-middle class America with all the Bible Belt theatrics
and want to impress the socioeconomic higher-ups that comes with it, trying to
come to terms with where she goes next and growing up at a time when American
society was at its most tense in the wake of 9/11. Imagine trying to weave
through that maze and you have an idea of just how confusing things can be,
especially since she’s at a point where she barely understands herself, let alone
her surroundings.
This speaks to probably the biggest defining trait when it
comes to coming-of-age stories: The struggle between figuring out one’s own
identity and figuring out how that identity factors into the lives of others. It’s a
similar path that The Edge Of Seventeen went down, only this has far less of a
sharp edge to it. The intent of this story isn’t to highlight how much the main
character has to change and realise
the awful person that they really are, as was the case with Seventeen. Instead,
we are shown a high-school teen trying to figure out their own identity,
combined with coming to terms with the identities of those around her. Because
of how much naturalism is afforded the story by the actors, the deeply
nostalgic visuals courtesy of cinematographer Sam Levy, and the consistently
down-to-earth tone of Gerwig’s direction, it makes that journey feel both
significant and realistic. It also
helps that the main way in which that search of identity manifests, that being
the titular nickname Christine gives herself, is something that shows that the
idea of pseudonyms and self-created personas that the Internet has taken and
run off with has been around for quite a while. It shouldn’t come as much of a
surprise that my own pen name came about when I was roughly the same age under
roughly the same circumstances.
All in all, this is frankly astounding in how it manages to
convey such big emotions in such a small frame. The acting is outstanding,
giving these very compelling characters all the air they need in their lungs,
the writing combines specificity with universal feelings connected to the
coming-of-age sub-genre to bring a refreshing amount of realism to the table,
and the overall tone stays consistently downplayed for the entire running time,
allowing the emotions and ideas within to flow out so smoothly that the feels
of the story tend to sneak up on you. Like, one moment, you’re laughing along
with the awkwardness, and then the next, you have a serious leak in the tear
ducts that started a good few minutes before you even noticed. Knowing how
coming-of-age stories tend to bank on big and identifiable emotions, having
something this natural-feeling makes for one of the better efforts I’ve seen in
this category, certainly one that warrants how much hype has been built up
around this film over the last few months.
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