Finally. Lady Bird. One of the best films of 2017, dare I say the best film of 2017. This film was one I was super excited to write a post on. I wanted to take some time to collect my thoughts on how much I love Lady Bird…but finally the time is here to go off in a tangent describing the complexities behind this film.
Lady Bird is a coming of age film based in the early 2000s chronicling the life of a suburban teenage girl preparing to graduate high school and coming to terms with growing up. Christine, who goes by Lady Bird, is aching for a bigger meaning to her life. She doesn’t know what she quite yet wants in her future. All she knows is that she wants to get out of her boring suburban city of Sacramento where life is constantly the same and nothing ever really changes. She wants to move to somewhere unfamiliar, new, and inspiring. She settles on the East Coast, which in her very own words, she considers full of culture.
This, of course, is no easy dream. Life isn’t so simple that you can throw a dart on a map and go at a moment’s notice. Hurdles will need to be jumped and hardships must be overcome. Lady Bird learns this the hard way. Her mother clashes with her for wanting to move far away. Throwing harsh critiques at her own daughter, supposedly out of love, to discourage her from leaving home. Lady Bird’s mother disproval aside, she also discovers she cannot afford the tuition to move away. Throughout the film, we get a deeper look into the unfortunate financial situation of Lady Bird’s household. The background Lady Bird comes from embarrasses her, so for her senior year she decides to pretend to come from a wealthy family.
The relationship Lady Bird has with her family is interesting to say the least. It’s a dysfunctional household and her attitudes towards her family is one of an angsty teenager. Her brother always teases her and her father has depression. The most defining relationship she has though, is with her mother. She has a strained relationship with her mother, who disapproves of everything her daughter does and constantly criticizes Lady Bird. Her mother comes from a place of love and happens to be overprotective to the point that it becomes toxic and unhealthy. There’s a particular discussion the mother and daughter duo have that still rings in my mind.
“I just wish … I wish that you liked me,”
“Of course I love you.”
“But do you like me?”
“I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.”
“What if this is the best version?”
Lady Bird’s thundering final question“What if this is the best version?” hits hard. She wishes her mother didn’t put so much pressure on her. She wishes her mother just accepted her as she is, because she’s worried this IS the best version of herself. Every criticism Lady Bird gets is starting to eat at her and this is the conclusion she comes to. Maybe this is all there is to her. She’s afraid of massively disappointing the people around her and she can’t come to terms with not being perfect, especially when there’s so much pressure and expectations on her shoulders. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes this entire exchange so powerful and painful. Because it resonates with the audience who, just like Lady Bird, are uncertain about what lies in store for them and have pessimistically accepted reality that maybe this is the best that they can be. I don’t know about you, but this hit me hard and I found myself in tears because time and time again I felt the exact same way. And still do.
Trying to find any sort of uniqueness, Lady Bird goes by her chosen nickname rather than her given birth name. This is just but one of the many quirks this character has. She doesn’t want to be ordinary. She doesn’t want to be invisible or average or blend into the background. She wants to stand out, and show off her bold personality. From her bold pinkish red hair to her style of clothing, she wants to stand out as a rebel you could say. This is an attempt to cover up the insecurity that she has over being average. She’s always reminded about how lackluster she is by her mother and by her supervisors at school. Lackluster average grades that aren’t good enough, lackluster home, and lackluster friendships. Over time she develops new friendships with the cool clique at her school, still pretending to be rich, and distances herself from her old ordinary best friend who couldn’t keep up with the new lifestyle she has curated for herself.
Lady Bird tries to navigate her senior year and tries to juggle her newfound but crumbling friendships and love life. She starts feeling lonely, despite being surrounded by her new friends, and realizes she didn’t value her best friend enough. On prom night she decides to return to her best friend and together they have one last blast before senior year ends. They muse over the fact that they’re going their separate ways but agree that they’ll miss each other. Eventually everything falls into place and Lady Bird gets accepted into the New York university of her choice and with the help of her father and financial aid, she can afford going. Much to the dismay of her mother, she’s actually finally going.
The ending of this film is incredibly cathartic. Lady Bird, after all this time of wanting to leave, found herself being nostalgic about her home city. She leaves for New York, accepts her birth name, and realizes how homesick she is. After reading her mother’s heartfelt letters to her and after having a drunk night out, she calls her mother and tearfully apologizes over the phone. Lady Bird has finally become an adult and instead of running away from her past like she used to; this time she embraces it.
The reason I adore this film so much is because it is just so relatable! It tug at my heartstrings when I connected my own life experiences to this character Lady Bird. She understood everything about me. The fact I was afraid of losing my youth, the fact I had so much weight carried on my shoulders, the fact I was uncertain about my future. Losing and gaining friendships all in the span of a short time. And having a strained relationship with my own parents just like she has with her mother. This was all so……relieving to see. To see that it was okay for me to view life that way and to not be normal. I didn’t feel so lonely in my experiences anymore because this film helped me project my own life’s experiences onto this fictional character. And in doing so, help me reach out to other people who also resonated with this film and helped me connect to them. There’s not enough words in the English language that could help me describe how much I love this film. My love for this film is too big for my heart. It makes me speechless every single time I rewatch it. I’ll never get tired of it.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read all this. I hope you guys all watch Lady Bird because trust me: it is worth the watch.
film raves 