Lady Bird takes you on a trip through a girl’s last year of adolescence and as you go with her you will start to see traits of yourself along the way.
Lady Bird is a coming of age film that will forever be known as a classic. Directed by Greta Gerwig, Catholic high school teenager Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) navigates a loving but difficult relationship with her strong-willed mother (Laurie Metcalf) over the course of her senior year of high school. What makes Lady Bird so great is that it feels so authentic. The entire time I watched this movie, I felt that I could relate to what Lady Bird was going through even though I have never experienced it before. The plot is incredible. It is so simple, but yet it feels that every little thing Lady Bird goes through seems more monumental than the event preceding it. Lady Bird establishes what it is like to be young, different, and in high school so well: the sense of belonging, the wishing for more, how everything seems like the biggest deal at the time.
Lady Bird’s story is extremely well written. It is paced well and is filled with very witty and sometimes hard hitting dialogue. For a coming of age film, dialogue is the most important aspect because the character has to go through some type of resolution in order for it to be categorized in that genre. Lady Bird goes through so much trial and tribulations that you can see as she starts progressing as a person. It is structured so concisely that the transition is almost seamless.
The acting in this movie is phenomenal. The conversations between Lady Bird and her mother seemed so true that I felt myself cringing due to being reminded of a memory I had with my mother in high school. Saoirse Ronan exhibits the perfect example of teen angst throughout the film. Laurie Metcalf is great as well playing a mother who is doing whatever she can to make ends meet. The chemistry between these two was so alive that they could actually be mother and daughter.
I went to Catholic school all the way up until college. Lady Bird portrays what it is like to go to Catholic school so accurately. I found myself loving this movie more because of this aspect. It was refreshing to see a part of my past done so well on screen. It also made the movie plot seem more legitimate to me.
The cinematography in this movie really sets the scene for the plot. There is one scene where Lady Bird is talking about riding through the streets of Sacramento. She begins to talk about the sense of closure she felt as she rode through the streets. While she is saying this, pans of cozy streets fill the screen and work perfectly with the tone of the dialogue. This is a common trait with Lady Bird, where the shots compliment the dialogue into making it more than just a scene between two characters.
Overall, I loved Lady Bird. I thought it was funny, sad, and very life like. I felt as if I knew kids like Lady Bird when I attended Catholic school myself. That is neat to me because the Catholic school scene is not a movie setting that is regularly well done. Lady Bird takes you on a trip through a girl’s last year of adolescence and as you go with her you will start to see traits of yourself along the way. That is why this movie is so amazing, it triggers certain nostalgic emotions that by the end of the movie you are feeling the same type of opportunity and freedom that Lady Bird does.
