Lady Bird
“Hey Mom, did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento?”
It’s incredibly difficult to capture life.
There is no sensationalized drama in Lady Bird, but the searing pain of disconnection hits so dangerously close to home I feel like I’m watching a stream of memory. Gerwig who both wrote and directed the film is so observant and eloquent about the nuances in mother-daughter relationships. It’s personal without being self-absorbed, honest without being judgemental, sentimental without being contrived.
Lady Bird captures perfectly the many heartbreaking contradictions, whimsy melancholy, and awkwardness, in the life of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. We want a better future but we are not skillful enough to achieve it. We reject our identities even though we don’t know who else to be. We feel connected to home but we also long for a future elsewhere. We get excited about new beginnings, yet all we want to do is look back. We want to be anywhere but here, be anything but this. And we know we are supposed to feel grateful for our parents but it’s impossible to not feel frustrated with their antics. We treat one another with unnecessary cruelty even when what we feel is the complete opposite. Our affection are expressed in the form of stubbornness, impatience, gruelling demands and brutal silence.
The prospects of seeing your life mimicked on screen, hearing arguments you’ve rehearsed in your brain, or words that have scarred you, can be both exhilarating and daunting. For anyone who feels like they are always on the run, Lady Bird will feel like a memory and a mirror at the same time. I’ve never had pink hair. I’ve never been to Sacramento. I’ve never even driven. But, when I see Christine drives through Sacramento, I think about my life, my regrets, those chances I didn’t take, those times I said words I didn’t mean, those mistakes I made that were easily avoidable. It makes me think of all the bends and corners in my neighbourhood that I know by heart. For that, I feel alive.
(Originally posted on 26 Feb 2018 @projectunwrapped)
