“Lady
Bird” and stuff I thought about
Blog by the Panhandling Philosopher
I loved this movie “Lady Bird”
written and directed by Greta Gerwig. The primary character in the film is
Saoirse Ronan who played the character “Lady Bird” a name which she gave
herself instead of her given name. Laurie Metcalf plays Lady Bird’s mother.
There is tension in the relationship, which for the most part is simply to be
understood as the tension that often comes when a daughter is ready to push out
on her own and she imagines her mother to be against her, and her mother is not
quite ready to be pushed aside for the daughter to move forward in her life.
In this blog I am not writing a
movie review, as much as I am writing how in watching “Lady Bird” I was
reminded of a portion of a David Brooks commentary in the New York Times. I
mention this reluctantly because I don’t want to get this embroiled in
Conservatism or Liberalism or political theories. Brooks’ piece was political
commentary but more apropos to this blog was his description of “attachment
theory” presented by John Bowlby. Brooks quotes Bowlby who described how “All
of us, from cradle to grave, are happiest when life is organized as a series of
excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment
figures.”
Brooks goes on to describe how the
attachment figures in our lives are givens. He says based on Bowlby’s
attachment theory, “The relationships that form you are mostly things you didn’t
choose: your family, hometown, ethnic group, religion, nation, and genes.” Then
there are the things we choose; job, spouse, hobbies, etc. I am trying to
extract what Brooks writes directly about Bowlby’s attachment theory without
getting into his political viewpoint but if you wish to read Brooks’ original
description in its original setting here
is that link.
As I watched “Lady Bird” I could not
help but notice that if someone were to make a movie focusing on someone taking
an excursion from their attachment figures, then the role of “Lady Bird” as
expressed by Saoirse Ronan would be a wonderful expression of that.
I am not sure if this idea is
helpful or a hindrance in seeing the beauty of “Lady Bird” but it was something
which helped me see this film as a wonderful expression of an aspect of life
which occurs in so many of our experiences. “Lady Bird” wonders if her parents,
especially her mother understands or even likes her. She looks at her hometown
of Sacramento and imagines it has no culture, something like California’s Midwest.
She attends a Catholic School and sees the Catholic faith as something foreign
from where she wishes to take her life.
I don’t want to give away the plot
but it does seem to me that for many of us the experience through which Lady
Bird (Ronan) will go through is one perhaps almost universal at some point in
our human lives. In a culture where self-actualization seems essential, we
often wonder at some point in life how much of the stuff that was given to us
and which shaped us, are the things we would actually choose if we had been
born to a different life. The reality is, we will likely never be completely
sure what we would freely choose if we had been born into a different life. So
there comes a time when your given family values, your home of Sacramento or
Streator, and your home religion or non-religion can all become question marks.
There comes a time when excursions from the givens play an important role in
either going a different direction or in bringing us home once more, or forging
a different pathway from the givens in life which shaped us. In the end we don’t
become carbon copies of the influences which shaped us and yet usually there is
something we discover of necessity is given to us in the lives we knew in our
family, home town culture, or faith upbringing that becomes a resource for us
in our later independent lives.
I found myself reflecting on how I
dealt with my parents sometimes at a distance especially in high school. Do you
remember how many of us were called by nicknames at school rather than our
given names? I had nicknames that I hated because they were imposed on
something about me I wanted to escape, and nicknames I appreciated because they
were different from my own given name and seemed more personal for that reason.
How much do we view a hometown as something holding us back when perhaps it is
still home where we learned about life before we went out independently to
live?
After I have said all this I almost
want you to forget everything I have just said about attachment theory. In the
end the beauty of “Lady Bird” is that Greta Gerwig has written and directed a
very beautiful and very human story to which you will relate, and yet also it
will be a unique story about this girl who called herself “Lady Bird” who
discovered that in life as you become one who moves on into independence that
might not mean you simply move away from those given things and relationships
in life. Some have said this might be the best film of the year. I think it
might well be one of the best films of this year. I don’t know how to give
stars but I give this a highly recommended film especially if you watch it all
the way through.
I found myself momentarily thinking
of the movie Brooklyn in one shot towards the end of “Lady Bird”. It is this
shot of Ronan in a somewhat reflective state. This shot worked as well in “Lady
Bird” as a similar shot of Ronan worked in “Brooklyn.”
