This review contains spoilers for the film.
One of the earliest scenes in “Lady Bird” shows the titular character in the car with her mother. The two listen to the last moments of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” on tape and begin to cry simultaneously. It’s wry, a little pretentious and a good attempt at setting the movie’s tone. It succeeds but only for a brief moment.
“I wish I lived through something,” Lady Bird laments — which is perhaps why she’s desperate to move to New York City only a year after 9/11 – and then the moment is gone. Now “Birdie” (played perfectly by Saoirse Ronan) is fighting with Marion (Laurie Metcalf), her mother, and the actual tone of the movie comes through.
The aggressive, back-and-forth style is intentional to an extent, apparent in the editing, dialogue and camera work, but it quickly gets out of hand. “Lady Bird” intends to be endearing and cyclical, but it succeeds in only one of those things. It’s a love letter to a place. Not Sacramento, or New York, but to the physical time-space of being 17. It’s coming of age in the best, most uncomfortable way, but once writer/director Greta Gerwig tries to weave in additional themes, the plot falls apart.
Intense topics, such as depression, sexuality and loyalty, work their way into Lady Bird’s life about halfway through the film, too late for them to ever find an effective conclusion. Some miraculously receive closure (such as Lady Bird’s discovery of her father’s depression, wrapped up in a beautiful moment of her realizing, “you can be sad about different things; it isn’t all war” and crying on her mother’s shoulder) but so many more are left hanging or addressed too explicitly in order to hurry us along to the next.
For example, when it comes to Lady Bird’s tortured relationship with her mother, represented through her equal hatred of Sacramento, there’s many overlooked opportunities to add weight to their conflict. “I can tell you really love Sacramento,” a sister at her Catholic girls’ school tells Lady Bird, responding to how she writes about the city in her college essays. “I guess I pay attention,” Lady Bird replies, and in that moment we know she’s thinking of her mother, and we wonder if love and attention are the same thing. But instead of a cut to her mother or a pause to ponder, the sister continues, “Well, don’t you think they’re the same thing? Love and attention?”
Then Lady Bird leaves home for college without ever saying goodbye to her mother. The resonance of that dialogue, of much of the film’s dialogue, is lost because neither of the characters develop as a result. Even when Lady Bird attends church and accepts her given name, “Christine,” in the last ten minutes of the film, the audience doesn’t feel a change in her. It’s too late for that sort of cyclical conclusion.
Once Lady Bird is gone, we don’t get 18-year-old Christine finally turning inward and facing herself, but instead 23-year-old Soairse Ronan, with chunky heels and mascara running down her face. The facade the film worked so hard to create is torn away, but instead of showing us any underlying depth or rawness, there is simply nothing. In its confusion, “Lady Bird” hasn’t earned any of the emotions it expects from us.
“Were you emotional, Mom, the first time you drove in Sacramento?” Christine asks, finally calling her mother, as the film weaves together short shots of both women driving, trying to call the audience back to the opening scene we loved so much.
In that moment, we’re supposed to wonder if Christine went back, if she’s driving the streets of Sacramento right then, but we know she isn’t. Because Christine has always been Christine and, like Tom Joad, she can only run from the problems she creates.
Written by Shelby Loebker.
