Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
Lady Bird, follows a teen girl living in Sacramento during 2002-03 with her parents, brother and his partner. It is presented to the audience that ‘Lady Bird’ isn’t very academically smart and wants more than the life she has now (which she hasn’t learnt to appreciate). She describes how she feels she is meant to be someone and would like to venture off to experience new things. While occasionally diverting off into Lady Bird’s romantic relationships, the heart of the films focus is on the rocky relationship between Lady Bird and her mother. We see her mother too, is very strongly opinionated and does not support Lady Bird’s dreams, we can tell deep down this is out of love, but she struggles to express this to her daughter.
The main character (Christine) refers to herself throughout the film and asks people to call her ‘Lady Bird’. She does this in an attempt to rebel from life, and escape from her own identity. The character she created (Lady Bird) has no limits, she can do anything and be anything, however Christine cannot.
It’s obvious that the film belongs to the coming of age genre, as Lady Bird is a seventeen year old girl in catholic school, learning about life. However, unlike most coming of age teen films, (although these things are mentioned) the centre of the film is not about boys and nor is it her friendships, but the clashing relationship between mother and daughter.
The director (Greta Gerwig), at the time was just beginning to form her career as this was one of her early films, so this was her way to make a name for herself in the industry. Greta’s films typically focus on female stories as she uses her voice to create films that have a feminist message. This can be seen in another of her films, Little Women (2019) (also featuring Saoirse Ronan) which follows the March sisters who all have different dreams and aspirations. Additionally, her latest film Barbie (2023) follows the world known doll (Barbie) as she escapes from a dreamland to discover what its like to be a woman in the ‘real world’.
It is made evident throughout the film that Lady Bird expresses her feelings through words. This is made clear to the audience as we hear Sister Joan praising her for her descriptive writing piece about Sacramento. This is also reinforced through her dreams of being a writer. Opposing to this, Lady Bird’s mother (Marion) expresses her love through ‘acts of service’. This can be inferred through her job as a nurse, where she physically helps people everyday. Additionally, this is expressed multiple times as we hear Shelly (Lady Bird’s brother’s girlfriend) telling Lady Bird about how Marion took her in as her own after being forced out of her parents house. Again later in the film we see Marion staying up through the night to altering Lady Bird’s dress to fit for the school dance. Later in the film Marion becomes upset with Lady Bird after finding out she is moving away for collage, this is because she viewed Lady Bird staying in Sacramento as an act of love. Furthermore, this idea of Lady Bird’s expression through words is used against her as Marion gives her the ‘silent treatment’ which causes her to beg for her mother to speak.
Personally, I really enjoyed the film as I fount it enjoyable and interesting. The film was shot through two shots of Lady Bird and other characters. It was interesting to follow Lady bird as she moves from late high school to beginning collage. Overall I really liked watching Lady Bird and would rate it 5/5 stars.