Lady Bird
by Greta Gerwig
Scott Rudin Productions
Lady Bird is the coming of age story of Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, a high school student in Sacramento, living through her senior year of 2002-2003. It stars Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Tracy Letts, is directed by Greta Gerwig and is hands down one of the best movies of the year.
Lady Bird (in one of those fits of teenagers trying on new identities, she has given this name to herself) is a senior in high school, with a wickedly complex relationship with her mother. She and her family live in a small house in Sacramento, where her mother (Laurie Metcalf) is a psychiatric nurse, and her father is some kind of corporate drone, but it’s late 2002 – recession is coming. Her brother and his girlfriend also live with them. They don’t have a lot of money, and a lot of it goes to Lady Bird’s private school tuition.
Lady Bird is determined to get the hell out of Sacramento and to go to college in New York “or maybe Connecticut or New Hampshire, where culture is!” (that line got a laugh from the Boston audience.) But out of state tuition is expensive, and Lady Bird isn’t the best student. The movie follows her through her senior year, as she becomes a theater kid (in the chorus of Merrily We Roll Along) and dates a couple of boys.
And it explores this mother-daughter relationship with one of the most complicated depictions of that relationship that I’ve seen on screen. When we first meet Lady Bird and Marion, they’re on they’re way home from visiting California college, and listening to The Grapes of Wrath on audiobook. That scene devolves into a fight that ends with Marion telling Lady Bird that she’s not smart enough for East Coast schools and Lady Bird flinging herself out of a moving car. It goes on from there. They are two people who love each other, but don’t really understand each other. They can go from “Why don’t you like me?” to bonding over a cute dress in a thrift shop. They are at loggerheads because, as Lady Bird’s father says, they’re both such strong and identical personalities that of course they don’t live harmoniously.
While it’s Ronan and Metcalf who are going to get the award attention for this movie, both performances really hang on the support structure of Tracy Letts as Larry McPherson, who loves both of these women so much, and understands them in ways that they cannot understand each other or themselves. He is a rock while they both are ocean tides, and there are little scenes with each of his women that demonstrate this balance. Without him, it would be all high drama.
The two boys that Lady Bird dates are very, very different. One is a theater nerd that Lady Bird sets her sights on during auditions, and the other is the kid who reads Howard Zinn and says, “I don’t really believe in money…I try to use the barter system, you know?” (Money believes in you, kid.) Neither of these boys are the right boy for our heroine, but neither are they shamed for being who they are (no, not even the proto-anarchist). They’re kids; they’ll grow up and learn how be people, probably.
One of the things that is so great about Lady Bird is that even the bit characters, who exist in the movie to serve Lady Bird’s story, are so delicately drawn that you know there’s a inner life to all of them. Lady Bird’s brother, Miguel, is played by Jordan Rodrigues (you might know him from Australia’s Dance Academy, and if you don’t…well…that’s a show) and while his story isn’t told, there’s enough detail that I believe that Rodrigues, and Metcalf, and Gerwig all know exactly what his story is, and why his girlfriend lives with them. Even if the backstory doesn’t make it on the page, it’ll help inform everything that does make it on the page.
Setting the story in 2002-2003 is a very specific choice: it’s just post 9/11, so there’s a lingering PTSD hanging over the country, and the beginnings of the invasion of Iraq are on a lot of TVs. There’s a definite nostalgia for me, personally. I was not a contemporary of Lady Bird (I graduated high school in 1997) but I remember those times well, and my high school experience wasn’t that different. Miguel has a degree but is having difficulty finding a job (totally my 2003).
But also there’s the choice to make Lady Bird’s family poor. Yeah, she goes to a private school, but everyone sacrifices for that. She and her mom shop at thrift stores, they drive a mangy car, the house is small and old and shabby, lunch is in brown paper bags. Marion works a lot of double shifts. There’s a lot of concerns about how to pay for college (and even the application fees). Lady Bird has a lot of shame about living they way they do, and that hit really close to the feels.
(Other things that hit close to the feels: worrying that who you are at 17 is the best you’ll be, constantly fighting with a parent that you worry doesn’t like you, making bad choices when you’re still young enough to make them, and working out friendships.)
It’s rare that we get a coming of age story about a girl, and such a nuanced one. Gerwig has done herself so proud and expect to see this movie coming up in awards season discussions. Oscar watch 2017 is on, people!
Respectful comment which could easily turn into a rant: You write that Lady Bird “goes to a private school but everyone sacrifices for that.”
According to the Council for American Private Education only 10% of students in grades PK-12 attend private schools in the US. 90% go to public schools. In the UK, the overall number of children attending state schools “rises to 93%. I haven’t checked Canada and Australia but I’d be surprised if the numbers were very different.
So when you say “everyone” you’re talking about between five and ten percent of the population. This is a site which talks and worries a lot about inclusion and representation of all kinds, and about whose stories get told, especially within the context of Hollywood movies. Casually eliminating 90% of the population because a particular story chimes with your personal experience is an ugly form of elitism, which feels like a slap in the face to those of us (like me) who are proud graduates of public schools (state schools, for our friends across the pond), and also proud public school teachers, who are often either vilified or (the equally pernicious “positive stereotype” flip side of the same coin) assumed to being doing some kind of noble “missionary work” among a tiny and anonymous group too poor to “drive a mangy car” in the interests of going to private school. Movies like this, and public reactions to them which imply that “everyone” (or almost everyone) goes to private school are what make it politically possible to dismantle the state-sponsored education which provides a vital service to 90% of the population because they imply that really “not that many” people will be affected by its absence.
I’m sure this wasn’t intentional, and I in no way wish to disparage your evaluation of the movie as a whole, or your enjoyment of a story you recognized. But please acknowledge that your recognition of this specific aspect (as opposed to more common things like relationships with parents and boyfriends) puts you in a tiny group which the vast majority of both Americans and Brits will NOT recognize. (BTW, according to the same statistics 75% of American private schools are religious, so if Lady Bird’s school is not, that puts her in the same category as a whopping 3% of American students. Very relatable.)
Hope this wasn’t too much of a rant. It’s a subject about which I feel strongly.
When I say “everyone sacrifices for that” I mean “everyone in her family.
I could be wrong, but I thought that the “everyone” in “everyone sacrifices for that” was referring to everyone in Lady Bird’s family, not a generalization about how many people send their kids to private school.
@Redheadedgirl: I totally understood “everyone sacrifices” to mean her family ate a lot of ramen so she could attend private school. But I lived on ramen for 8 years to keep my kid out of one of the consistently worst-rated public school systems in the country, so… perception.
I totally understood it as “everyone sacrifices” as meaning her family.
I’ve heard such good things about this movie. Glad you liked it.
I loved this movie! I am not a contemporary of Lady Bird – I graduated from high school way back in 1994 – but the Catholic school experience and mother/daughter tension are certainly familiar. I was a kid who had always attended public school but then was sent to the Catholic high school my dad and extended family had attended. The scenes of Lady Bird attending mass in her uniform took me back. I loved her friendships, struggling to figure out who she was and who meant the most to her, and her relationships with each of her parents. I could recognize my own in each of hers. I also liked that we saw snippets of her mom’s life outside her view, like the scenes at the hospital or hearing Shelly’s view of Marion, so we knew more about her than just what Lady Bird saw. Also familiar – I can criticize my family but no one else can – “my mom is not scary.”
I graduated high school in 2002, so the post-9/11 national shift – shock and anger leading to what would become the longest war in American history – is something I vividly remember. I have heard lots of good about this movie.
All the feels. Being near Christmas, etc., and not in a particularly joyous frame of mind, I struggled with the mother-daughter dynamic. Specifically, seeing my younger self on a big screen in all her selfish, anxious, impossible glory was hard.
Don’t get me wrong, I think LADY BIRD was brilliant, and Ronan, Metcalf and Letts filled their roles with exquisite sensitivity and nuance. I was just not in the right frame of mind to be reminded of my teenage years, even after all this time.
Ooh, now I’m stoked to see this movie. I graduated high school in 2001, and although I know that was a long-ish time ago, it’s still a bit bonkers to have it be a specific setting for a movie!
OTOH, I thought the acting was great and also felt like the film got the post-9/11 emotional malaise right.
That said,I kept side-eyeing Lady Bird. It could be that, at twice her age, I found her to be too selfish to fully empathize with her. I cringed a few times as she tried to make a point only for Marion to shut it down masterfully. Also, this movie was painfully and suffocatingly white. Yes, even though Miguel was there.
It’s an OK movie that, for me, was something of an underwhelming experience. My final grade would’ve hovered between a B- and a C+.
I graduated high school in 1984 and private school was never any kind of option, so I don’t have a relatable personal experience. Also have a very high bar (or is that low tolerance?) for coming-of-age movies … so probably won’t see this one.
However, I love Laurie Metcalf, and am thrilled that she has such an important and potentially award-winning role. She has deserved an Oscar since her immortal line in “Desperately Seeking Susan:” THEN TAKE A VALIUM LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.
chacha1, I quote that all the time. And frequently think, “Why? You didn’t know she was a prostitute.”
When I was younger, Catholic schools were known in some areas–espcially the inner city–as the “poor man’s private school”. The cost differential has narrowed a lot, but Catholic high schools still run about ½ to ¾ the tuition of private high schools in general. (Predicably, no two sources give the same figures.) That can be the difference between “if we make major, major sacrifices” and … flat-out impossible.
Catholic school may also be the only viable option if, for whatever reason, you want your daughter to attend an all-girls school. But that’s a whole other article.
I’ve been meaning to see this, but wondered if it might be hard to watch. This might push me over the top, though. Definitely check out FRANCES HA too (which Gerwig co-wrote)…it really struck a chord with me with its themes about adjusting your expectations and navigating female friendships when your lives are becoming really different, plus Gerwig is absolutely charming as Frances!
Oh, Lordy. Thank you, Ariadna. I was sort of afraid to speak up and say sort of the same thing…while I identified really closely with the Catholic school experience and the mother-daughter relationship (Marge Simpson: “That’s what a mother-daughter relationship is, sweetie. A series of near-fatal emotional standoffs!”) and found a lot of it touching and funny, I also felt like the overall pace was kind of excruciating. I was simultaneously deeply moved and a little bit bored. I don’t know what that says about me. 😉
Also, no spoilers, but…let’s just say that my prom date made his own tux. Out of velveteen. I called that particular plot twist about ten minutes early. 😀
I’d also like to add: it’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that throwing myself out of a moving car while on teenage road trips with my mother was an option.
But seriously, despite my previous comment, I did cry like a baby at the end. My mom had open-heart surgery last month, so all my complicated feelings were floating around right at the top of my psyche.
I just saw it tonight and the mom-daughter relationship was so great and nuanced and hit very close to home. It felt a lot like my relationship with my mom even today. It’s interesting because you mention the dad being a rock and mine isn’t in my life so I think it also reflects as to why her and I can lean more “high drama” in our dynamic. I actually called my mom when I got home just to say hi. In short, this one is going to stick with me.
I’m a little younger than Lady Bird (graduated HS in ’08) but my sister was ’04 so very close to her age. The general feeling felt very right. Especially some lines/situations with her peers felt so achingly accurate in both an awkward and funny way.
@Rebecca
In Australia, private schools are major players in the system, and there was a dramatic expansion in private sector coverage (from under 20% to over 30% of students) exactly when this fictional ‘Lady Bird’ was in school – early nineties to early noughties.
Rhetoric about “little Aussie battlers” sacrificing to send their kids to private schools was forever on the lips of those in power, as they pulled a reverse Robin Hood. The crazy logic was: throw money at private schools and they’ll lower their fees. (They didn’t particularly. They built stuff.)
If you were against this, or still couldn’t afford private schooling, you’d be accused of indulging in “the politics of envy”. Talk about DARVO.
That said, I grew up hearing about private school. From my cousins, because I am literally the poor cousin. (But not information-poor, heh.) At any rate, that has heavily informed my reflexive response, which is to treat stories from that milieu as… self-critical, I suppose. No endorsement of the status quo, but telling a personal story of living under those conditions?
Probably not how a film is intended. Screenwriters probably mean to create a touchstone emblematic of a generation, or whatever. But less disturbing my way for me. And I guess it’s a factor that expands the relatability of the material to a wider audience, adding in the “people who know someone who did”.
@Molly
You’re welcome. FWIW, I liked the movie,
but fail at finding it worthy of all its accolades.#Everyonesmilagemayvary
The mother-daughter dynamic got to me too. I didn’t cry, but I did teared up a little.
Ditto for the Catholic school stuff.
Interesting fact, at least here in MA or in areas around Boston according to my Mother, Catholic school was free into the 1960’s. When my older brothers attended (at least grammar school) in the 1960’s my mother doesn’t remember paying anything for their tuition as they attended in our parish.
My mother as a child in the 1940s also attended Catholic school and her parents (not wealthy and with six kids) also did not pay. By the later 70’s when my sister and I were in school my parents did pay, although it could not begin to compare to the cost of other private (non Catholic) schools at the time and it was relatively inexpensive.By that time our parish didn’t have a school so we were at another parish but I don’t know if that affected the cost.
My mother’s theory is that years ago the nuns would teach for free essentially and they were about 100% of the teachers at that time. By the late 70’s I had a couple of former nuns as teachers but most of my teachers then were married women and a couple of young single women who soon married. There were no male teachers, and the women teachers were doing it as another (small) income for their family in addition to their husbands (presumably) more substantial pay. (I’m not sure someone could have lived or raised a family on a Catholic School teacher’s pay at the time.)
Catholic school tuition has risen steadily through the years and my Mom was shocked a few years ago when I told her that a friend’s daughter was attending one in a nearby town and it was about $6000.00 a year (at that time) just for tuition. In her mind, it probably cost in the hundreds and she still thought of it as very “affordable” to working people.
I honestly lost respect for this director after listening to her recent NPR interview with Terry Gross, where Gerwig was invited to speak about Lady Bird. During the interview, Terry asked Gerwig about how she felt re: #metoo, given her expressions of admiration in the past for Woody Allen and his work. Instead of taking the opportunity to support believing women and/or to denounce Allen’s abusive actions against his daughter, Gerwig’s response was evasive, shuffling, and vague, wherein she mostly worried that answering Terry’s question might lead to people misinterpreting her response. Gerwig’s hesitation to answer in any specific manner was not an Uma Thurman type of hesitation. Instead, it sounded like she did not feel comfortable acknowledging that Allen was abusive, did not want to openly say that she believes Dylan Farrow, and did not want to renounce her love for his work. When Terry did press for a more specific answer, Gerwig finally indicated that she felt unfairly put on the spot with these #metoo questions and that she only wanted to discuss her film. I was honestly disgusted by Gerwig’s response, and would personally prefer not to see her work promoted favorably on this platform.