The movie Lady Bird that is directed by Greta Gerwig in 2017, has a familiar and trivial plot. Although Kanopy put it in the category of comedy, I believe it is more a “coming of age” type of movie. The whole movie depicts the encounters of a high school girl, Christine McPherson, who wants to leave her hometown, Sacramento, and attend college in New York. In the process of achieving her dream, she experiences the ups and downs of her life which pushes her to become more mature. The club, boyfriends, loss of virginity, broken relationships, applying for college that is far away from home, and the oldest drama of breaking up with the best friend and eventually reconciled, I have seen all these plots too many times in many inspirational movies. But unlike these inspirational movies, the focus of Lady Bird is not on dreams, but on experience, life, and growth, which are closer to reality. A teenager may not have a consistent dream, but she must have a struggle period while she is growing up. The relationship between teenagers and their families is always the most important issue of teenagers’ growth.
The conflicts between Christine, and her mother, Marion, are one of the main focuses of the movie which has contributed to Christine’s growth. In terms of personality, Christine and Marion are similar. First, they both are sentimental. At the beginning of the movie, when Christine and Marion are listening to the recording in their car, they both get touched by the story recorded. Secondly, they don’t think before they speak, and they both are grumpy. On the one hand, they do not leave too much room for compromise during a quarrel. On the other hand, Christine often being mean towards her friends, nun in school, and even some unrelated teachers. I believe it’s her mother, Marion, who influenced Christine to have this bad temper. The man who is gentlest, the wisest, and always acting in good faith is Christine’s father, Larry, who has been fighting depression for more than ten years. He obviously can’t be the one who affected Christine in a bad manner. Since Christine and Marion are so similar, why are they almost confront from the beginning to the end of the movie? The movie already gives away the answer. The main issue is Christine’s choice of college.
Marion who supports the whole family by herself after Larry lost his job, hopes Christine can study at the University of California, Davis. But Christine doesn’t want to attend California’s public universities like ordinary people. She wants to travel across the U.S and go to a private college in New York. Her idea was naturally opposed by her mother, one of the reasons is that the tuition fees in New York is very expensive and she only has a meager salary that just satisfied the need of the family. New York is too far away from Sacramento is another reason that Christine’s parents are not willing to help Christine to achieve her goal. All these coupled with the strong personalities of Christine and Marion, a quarrel between the two is the only result. Moreover, Christine and Marion are always contradictory when they are together, sometimes intimate, and sometimes quarreling as enemies. For example, when Marion said: “do you have any idea what it costs to raise you? And how much you’re just throwing away every day” in an argument which anger Christine that she immediately takes out a pen and say: “give me a number for how much it costs to raise me. And I’m going to get older and make a lot of money. And write you a check for what I owe you. So that I never have to speak to you again”.
From the perspective of Marion, she never wants to go against Christine, nor she wants to oppose Christine on doing things she liked. She just wants Christine to grows up like other people and have a predictable but wonderful future. From the perspective of Christine, she has to obey her parents when she was young and has to do what they told her to do. She feels uncomfortable and desires freedom. She wants to choose her life starting now. Study distantly from home is the first step she needs to get rid of her parents’ control. Facing the future, she hopes to make her own choice even the choice might be wrong. There are positive and negative ideas, but there is no right or wrong view. Marion and Christine, both can’t say to be wrong, they just have their considerations in a different direction. Christine at the end of the movie is finally able to realize the love from her mother. She used to prevent others from calling herself Christine, but now she wants to be Christine, not “Lady Bird” anymore. She once claims that she would never talk to her mother again, but now she wants to leave a message for Marion and reconcile with her.
My favorite scene is when Christine painted the walls of her room in white before she leaves her hometown as if it was a ceremony that bid farewell to her childhood. Overall, people only know how to cherish the things they have lost. Only walking under the buildings of New York, Christine can recall the sunshine of Sacramento. Only when she hears the choirs of unfamiliar churches, Christine can miss her school life. Only when she leaves home, Christine can fully understand the love of her parents.
Works Cited
- Lady Bird. Dir. Greta Gerwig. A24, 2017. Kanopy. Web. 19 Apr. 2020.
