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In honor of Barbie, we wanted to look back at Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, and why it was so impactful. Within Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial projects, there lies common threads within her themes and how her characters are written. Both feature themes of class, identity, familial relationships, and overall, the trials and tribulations of being a teenager and growing up. Her films unapologetically celebrate female characters, allowing them to be messy and make mistakes. 

Gerwig’s first solo project as a director, Lady Bird, released back in 2017, showcased the way in which Gerwig expertly wrote female characters, complicated family dynamics and the messiness of growing up a teenager at all. Following teenager Christine “Lady Bird” (her ‘given name’, the one given to her by her) in her senior year of high school. She goes to an all-girls catholic school, she joins the theatre program with her best friend, Julie, she has crushes on boys and argues with her parents and siblings like any other teenager. However, what could have been another cliche coming-of-age story where a teenager longs to leave home is crafted into a look into complicated mother-daughter relationships and the overall difficulties of growing up.

Even though Gerwig is an excellent director, Lady Bird stands out because of its writing. Not only does she turn what could have been a mundane, run of the mill coming-of-age storyline about a teenager who has an identity crisis, but the way in which she writes dialogue feels real and natural. Take the way in which Lady Bird and her mother bicker with each other, one of Gerwig’s staples in her writing in the way she includes overlapping dialogue, Lady Bird is constantly talking over her mom and her mom is constantly interrupting her. The manner in which the dialogue is written and then the way it is repeated by Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf feels like an authentic argument between a mother and daughter, the overlapping dialogue, the interjecting comments about whatever they’re doing at the time (such as shopping for a prom dress), and the heartfelt conversation that comes along with it. 

The strongest aspect of Lady Bird is how Gerwig writes the tumultuous relationship between Lady Bird and her mother. Lady Bird is a headstrong teenager who longs for bigger and better dreams outside hometown who struggles between fitting in and standing out at her high school. Her mother, Marion, who’s a nurse, often clashes with how headstrong her daughter is, disagreeing with her on her post-high school choices, but clearly has her daughter’s best interests in mind, even if she doesn’t know how to say it in perhaps the best way. The way the mother-daughter relationship is written, so authentic that it reminded me of one of my relationships with one of my parents and it’s the reason the movie sits so close to my heart. Even though me and my parent didn’t argue over the same issues (I stayed at home and did not move when I went to university), watching the way in which Lady Bird and her mother argued reminded me of situations I had been in, arguing like a stupid teenager who thinks they know better. Making stupid mistakes and saying stupid things that you should know better than to say. Maybe you make a decision that you later realize is the entirely wrong one, one you made when you forgot to think of someone else in your life. 

For Lady Bird and her mother (and me and my parent), even in between the arguments and the disagreements, there is always going to be that underlying love that sits between the two of you. No matter how terrible your argument is or how bad the disagreement ends up being, the parent will always be there for you, through the thick and thin. Throughout the film, the pair share multiple arguments, but ultimately, Marion is there for Lady Bird when she needs her. I saw so much of my relationship with my parent emulated in these two, the bickering and arguing turning into offhand comments on something else completely unrelated, the way in which sometimes you’re a teenager (or older…) and you make mistakes, because you’re human, and how you always end up crawling back to each other, unrelenting love, no matter what. 

Even outside of the themes of the mother-daughter relationship, the friendship between Julie and Lady Bird ties into Lady Bird’s push and pull between fitting in and standing out. Throughout the first half of the film, Lady Bird stands out, she’s in musical theatre, she’s best friends with fellow unpopular kid Julie, but in the second half of the film she is dying to try and fit in. She cuts off ties with Julie, decides she’s perhaps ‘too cool’ for theatre, and attempts to make her way into the popular clique. Towards the end of the film, she realizes that her heart lies with Julie and the friendship they have, despite how torn it may be and their reunion at the end of the film is one of the sweetest of the whole movie. 

Lady Bird spends the entire movie trying to fit in. Her lies around where she lives to one of her friends stems from a desire to be someone else, to live a different life sometimes perhaps. Her mother takes this personally, seeing it as Lady Bird being ungrateful for everything she has provided her. Lady Bird’s desire to go to the east coast for college is seen by her mother as Lady Bird declaring she is too good for Sacramento and thus, better off elsewhere. Lady Bird is a teenager, and there’s no way she can fully comprehend the financial situation her parents are in, but with the work her mother puts in to put food on the table and send Lady Bird to a good school makes Lady Bird come off as selfish to the people around her. And perhaps she is a little bit, but that’s okay. She is a fully realized character who makes mistakes throughout the film. She messes up with Julie, and maybe she says the wrong thing to her mother sometimes, but she’s never treated any less in the script for it. Rather, Gerwig makes the audience emphasize with her, she is a teenager who makes mistakes and that is okay. She is no less of a good person for it. 

Lady Bird manages to be more than just a cliche coming-of-age movie, rather, it dissolves into something deeper than that. It’s about the messiness of being a teenager and falling in love, the humanistic flaws that don’t make any person any less likable and its portrayal of a complicated parental relationship will surely hit home for a lot of people watching it. It remains funny and empathetic to its characters, with the romance never being the sole focus, but rather Lady Bird’s overall relationship with the people (and places) around her.

Grade: A+

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Greta Gerwig), Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Laurie Metcalf), Best Original Screenplay