LADY BIRD: Coming of Age

Director: Greta Gerwig
Writer: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Tracy Letts, Jordan Rodrigues, Odeya Rush
Runtime: 94 mins.
2017

Of all its best qualities, I am most taken by Lady Bird's fantastically subtle exploration of empathy. It's a coming of age story, after all. Not only do these types of narratives pit young people against the growing urgency of external pressures like economic struggles and repressive gender roles, but they also force these young people to come to terms with the monsters inside themselves. Kids are sociopaths in a most general sense: it is impossible for them to see or feel outside of their own experience. The function of the coming of age story is to represent a character slowly emerging from solipsism into a cold social reality, as well as a warm interpersonal one.

Lady Bird does all this in a way that feels true rather than forced, which is probably the highest compliment one can give a story like this. Writer/director Greta Gerwig makes a point of eschewing cliches, or at least setting them up in order to subvert them. People's lives don't change in clean moments of catharsis. Rather, their experience shifts gradually, around the edges of their life, until one day some event throws into stark relief the long-developing tectonic shifts that have been happening all along.

A film like Lady Bird is uniquely structured to accomplish this effect; the plot is piecemeal, choosing to offer up small moments that give impressions of eras rather than land in any one single governing Plot. The crucial thread stitching this series of impressions together is of course Lady Bird herself, aka Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan). Lady Bird is a being of pure vibrancy, and the film is besotted with her, rarely leaving her side throughout the runtime. Ronan's performance is daring, as she insists on representing the full range of teenagerhood. That includes sweetness, innocence, vulgarity, curiosity, wide-eyed excitement, and even the remnants of that childhood sociopathy mentioned above. Gerwig in general rejects classifying her characters into faces and heels; everyone is much too complicated for that. Lady Bird is the manifestation of that impulse: complicated, complicated, complicated. Then suddenly, when you're not expecting it, so blessedly simple.

Just like the way change happens around the edges, so too does the characterization of the important people in Lady Bird's life. Each character is presented matter-of-factly, but they are all harboring some private tragedy that never gets melodramatically dragged into the limelight. We catch it in snippets of dialogue, or private glances, or the perpetually accumulating clutter of context. There are countless examples, but one that comes to mind is a moment towards the end of the film when we learn about a foundational truth of the family via a briefly shown and unfinished letter. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail that a typical oscarbait film would have prominently featured in a showstopping monologue.

Lady Bird's father, Larry (Tracy Letts), is another excellent example. He is a relatively minor character, usually existing quietly at the edge of the frame when he is present. He tends towards stoicism, offering up a carefully considered dad joke now and then. Over the course of the film, however, we learn that he is depressed and jobless, likely feeling worthless for being unable to support his family financially. Yet this is never paraded out for us to see, nor do we even witness him "being sad" except in small flickering moments. This portrayal of the banality of depression is so resonant in our modern era of alienation and obsolescence.

If the film's best aspect is subtlety, then it makes sense that the worst moments are those that eschew the subtlety for obvious jokes. Gerwig has a sharp sense of humor, but occasionally she lets out the reins too much. One scene in particular, a catholic high school anti-abortion assembly, feels tonally out of place, as if it was a forgotten Mean Girls scene that wandered in from the cold. Now, Mean Girls is an excellent movie, but that is because it commits to its delightfully cartoonish exaggeration. That same over the top cheekiness feels overly constructed and out of place here. See also: a sore thumb gag in which a sports coach directs a school play as if it were a sports ball game.

These tonal issues are few and far between though. For the most part, the film sweeps you along with its breathless pacing. I credit a great deal of the success of Lady Bird to editor Nick Houy, perhaps third in importance to the film's identity behind Gerwig and the principle cast. The gauntlet is thrown in the very first scene, a slow-paced car conversation between Lady Bird and her mother Marion (the brilliant Laurie Metcalf) that slowly rises in intensity until Lady Bird impulsively leaps from the moving vehicle. Houy's edit here, from the peak of Metcalf's horrified scream to a brightly scored montage of a cast-wearing Lady Bird at school, does a perfect job of setting the tone for the film. Nor does Houy's work ever lag, keeping us on our toes until the beautifully-timed final shot.

The visual aesthetic of the film, however, is not particularly beautiful. Nor is it ugly! It seems strange to complain that an otherwise excellent movie is not gorgeous as well, but when a film is being hailed as one of the best of the year, this may be the difference between a longtime favorite and an enduring masterpiece. Gerwig's blocking is crisp and no shot feels out of place, but there is a certain lack of inspiration in Sam Levy's cinematography.

Luckily, thanks to the universally wonderful performances, it's often enough to just keep the camera trained on the characters. Lady Bird touched something deep and often forgotten in me, which I can say about so few movies. The film makes the struggles of this lower class family feel so familiar, and so real. It's packed with personality; I walked away from the theater filled with affection for these deeply flawed but always redeemable characters. It's not perfect, but Gerwig's anti-artifice attitude towards her art is so refreshing.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS