It is still slightly mind-blowing that Lady Bird is nominated at all at this year’s Academy Awards, because there is nothing about this movie that screams “Oscar fodder!” But the fact that it is nominated is a testament to just how bloody good this movie is, and why it really should win best picture.
Its most obviously un-Oscar quality is that it was written and directed by a woman, Greta Gerwig, who is still only 34. Gerwig is, shamefully, only the fifth woman to be nominated for best director in the Oscars’ 90-year history. The relevance of her gender is all too apparent in the second factor that makes it seemingly so anti-Oscars: it is about the inner lives of girls and women. The last time a movie about female lives was awarded the best picture Oscar was way back in 1983, when it went to the classic weepie Terms of Endearment, starring Debra Winger and Shirley MacLaine. And one of the women in that had to die for it to be considered worthy.
No one dies in Lady Bird. In many ways it’s a traditional American teen coming-of-age film. The misunderstood teenager, the mother who just doesn’t understand, the seemingly perfect boyfriend, the bad boyfriend, the mean rich kids, the prom: all of the classic stereotypes of a John Hughes movie are here. But unlike many other film-makers inspired by Hughes’s films, Gerwig looks past the surface to the depths of what made them so soulful. She has said she was inspired by Hughes’s 1986 movie, Pretty in Pink, and you can see that in not just the plot, but in her interesting treatment of her lead character and of social class – a rarely covered subject in American films these days. Hughes respected teenagers, and this came across in his characters, particularly those played by Molly Ringwald. Gerwig treats her lead character, the titular Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan), with a similar admiration, gently teasing her but also respecting her dreams, yearnings and mistakes. In this sense, the movie reminded me of the work of the novelist Judy Blume. Blume’s books for children and teenagers work so well because she had an uncanny ability to tap into what it felt like to be a young person, even in her 40s, and Gerwig can do that, too. In Lady Bird, she evokes precisely what it feels like to ditch your loyal best friend to hang out with the cool kids, and why you would do that.
What really elevates the film is its depiction of the relationship between Lady Bird and her mother, Marion, played by Laurie Metcalf. Parents rarely get much of a look-in when it comes to teen movies: they are merely obstacles or clowns. But Marion’s inner life is carefully etched out through the plot (she has to work two jobs, she nags her daughter incessantly) and little hints (we learn she had Lady Bird late in life, she dreams of a better existence and goes to open houses to look at fancy homes). The movie has genuine sympathy for her without sacrificing its support for Lady Bird. This is far harder to pull off than Gerwig makes it look.
There is so much else I could cite here: the movie’s sophisticated take on Catholicism, the way it fondly mocks the characters without ever sneering at them, the clever jokes that never condescend to the viewer. But I think what thrills me so much about this film is the way it reminded me of yet another artist’s work, who is not a film-maker but is frequently cited in this movie: Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim’s musicals stretch the definitions of the genre by going deeper into a seemingly simple subject than anyone thought possible, and they resonate because they never underestimate the audience. As in Sondheim musicals, there is no happy or sad ending with Lady Bird, no easy answers, only the stuff of life. And Gerwig has turned that into great art.
