New release ‘Lady Bird’ is a smart coming-of-age movie.
Director Gerwig masters material that mirrors her Sacramento youth
Greta Gerwig has previously collaborated with other filmmakers, both in writing and direction, but “Lady Bird” is the first movie in which she’s been completely in charge — and she is better off on her own. This is warm and intuitive work, striking that elusive balance between inspiration and control. Most recently, Gerwig co-wrote two screenplays with director Noah Baumbach (“Frances Ha” and “Mistress America”), and the sense that came from those films was of visions in collision: Baumbach’s pinched, insulated vision versus Gerwig’s generous, expansive vision. “Lady Bird” shows that
that diagnosis may have been correct. Gerwig has made a good-hearted film, a kind film, and not kind in an emptyheaded, generalized sort of way, but in a way that’s alert and intelligent about people’s feelings.
Gerwig’s warmth as an artist becomes important, because in “Lady Bird” she is dealing in what is often the most self-centered of forms, the coming-of-age story; particularly, the coming-of-age story based on the filmmaker’s own life. True, Gerwig has gone out of her way to say that “Lady Bird” is not factually autobiographical, but she admits that to some extent it’s emotionally autobiographical. And like the central character, Geriwg grew up in Sacramento and graduated high school early in the millennium.
In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, “Lady Bird” would be a movie all about the trials and tribulations leading up to the magnificent creation of “Me,” as in “Moi,” as in the glorious, wonderful person who made the movie. But Gerwig is not so self-centered. She is interested in Sacramento and how much she loves it. She is interested in Lady Bird’s mother and father (Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts, respectively). She also has the courage and discipline to follow her interests and her intuitions down some blind alleys that lead her toward making something that’s not like other people’s movies. It’s better.
Saoirse Ronan plays the title character at a fever pitch, earnest and aggressive, as if every moment were a matter of life and death. This means she often gets to be funny, but funny in passing. Ronan never plays for the laugh.
As the movie begins, Lady Bird — real name, Christine — is a high school senior who dreams of going to school on the East Coast, preferably New York, though her family is broke and would prefer she go to UC Davis.
The movie traces all the familiar rites of teenage passage, without ever once feeling programmatic. Gerwig cares about all her characters, so that even the most minor isn’t a means to an end. Incidents are arranged with artistry, so that we are always engaged and always care about what will happen next. But the movie cultivates an illusion of randomness, a sense of life unfolding at a regular pace, a pace too regular for its aggressive protagonist.
This is turning into quite a month, with the emergence of two young female writer/directors — Margaret Betts (“Novitiate”) is the other — who might very well do great work for decades. In the case of Gerwig, what’s particularly striking is her ability to find the unexpected, illuminating detail and her simultaneous sense of taste of proportion. So she can make her point, but then she also knows when to
stop making it. One example will have to suffice, but it captures the spirit of film and the nature of Gerwig’s talent: After having sex for the first time, Lady Bird comes down the stairs in her boyfriend’s house and sees the boyfriend’s father, asleep in a chair. The man is dying, and he’s not that old. He’s thin and looks awful. The shot is five seconds, maybe less. Gerwig doesn’t cut to some big, feeling-filled close-up of Lady Bird, because Gerwig has the human decency to know that this moment is not about Lady Bird but about this poor guy. It’s just a sight, a vision, and it’s gone.
But what does that scene do? It colors everything that we’ve just witnessed in the scene before. It explains much of what we already know about the boyfriend. It also reminds us of the kinds of brief moments we sometimes witness in our own lives, particularly when we’re very young, that we never forget. This is a poetic use of cinema, all the better in that it doesn’t announce itself as poetry.
Such is Gerwig’s compassion as a filmmaker, and it allows her to open up “Lady Bird” as she goes along. A movie about the splendidness of a rebellious teenager becomes a movie about what it’s like for her mother, and what she’s going through, too, and what she’s worried about, and what her marriage has been like. This is simply beautiful work.
And to think, all this — a world, a life — in just 93 minutes.