Lady Bird's rose-tinted glasses

Comfort is often said to be found in nostalgia, but during the year 2002 in which Lady Bird takes place, I was only a year old. Many of the key aspects of Lady Bird are not something I can relate to; I’ve never been to Sacramento, I have a healthy relationship with my mother, and I was far from the rebellious character that Lady Bird wants to be. Yet, Lady Bird is by far the most personal film I’ve ever watched.

Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut tells the story of a strong tempered girl, Christine “Lady Bird” McPhearson, during her last year of school, dealing with college applications, friends, boyfriends, and her tumultuous relationship with her mother. Although I can’t find comfort in the nostalgia of the period, I find comfort in the experiences I have shared with Lady Bird. The first time I watched this I was 17, the same age as Lady Bird. Many features of her school life were ones present in mine: a religious girls school, a play with the boys' school, the subject of our infatuation, and even the skirt checks. These details definitely helped me initially connect with the film, but what truly strikes me about Lady Bird every time I rewatch it is Gerwig’s portrayal of idealism that shines through. Like any other 17 year old, Lady Bird is trying to find herself, and we see two very different versions of this. One, the somewhat innocent theatre kid, a wholesome relationship, a fun themed school dance. The other, a ‘cool girl’, a radical leftist boyfriend, a prom night that never happens. What remains consistent about her identity is her rose tinted idealism. Her love of the big blue house in the Fab 40s, the dream to escape to New York for college, the want of that perfect moment of losing your virginity. The innocent, youthful idealism glimmers through in everything that Lady Bird does, and I think anyone who has ever been that age can see themselves in this, longing for an ideal that doesn’t exist. Conflict with her mother arises as a consequence, and here we see Gerwig’s perfect portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship; the deep love and bond contrasting with the conflict of the mother’s hardship and practicality, and the daughter’s deep-rooted romanticised version of life, a youthful idealism unique to teenagers.

Gerwig manages to encapsulate this aspect of the coming-of-age story perfectly as Lady Bird goes through what any teenager becoming an adult does, realising that there is no idealist reality, no rose-tinted world. I didn’t think I ‘loved’ my later school years, longing to be somewhere else, but as Sister Sarah Joan asks ‘Don’t you think they’re the same thing? Love and attention?’, I realise that I look back at it with genuine affection, much like the way Lady Bird finds comfort in stumbling across a Church, a hymn reminding her of home. After longing to get out of Sacramento, it’s only when she’s left that she realises that she loved it. When she reconciles with her mother, she asks ‘Did you feel emotional the first time you drove in Sacramento?’ Gerwig captures this feeling of emotion and comfort beautifully in these final moments, making us longingly reflect on our upbringings, our hometowns, and bringing a sense of comforting emotion, reminding us that although there is no idealised other world, we’ll always have home.