Lady Bird and Coming of Age

"You clearly love Sacramento."

"I do?"

"You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care."

"I was just describing it."

"Well, it comes across as love."

"Sure, I guess I pay attention."

"Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?"

In this exchange set in a sun-drenched teacher's office, right at the cinematic midpoint, the film Lady Bird states its thesis boldly: love and attention are the same. And fittingly, the film has been made with great attention to detail, each component finely polished and assembled. 

And it is again only fitting that I, who loved the film, in this essay, aim pay tribute to its immaculate mastery of detail.

Because what is a film but the sum of its details? What is a thing but the sum of its parts? What is a person?

Do the shards of a thing, for example, the equations and patterns of mathematics, form a final mosaic? Is there a golden thread through the fragments of a person- their sense of humour, their smile, their nervous tics- that forms a final whole?

And even if there is, can we see the mosaic, or find the thread?  As we have seen time and time again- it is impossible to fully know a subject or a person,  or even comprehend their magnitude- we have no abstract concept of a subject or a person- all we have is tiny concrete details. 

Furthermore, to love something is to want to know about it. To love a subject is to want to learn more about it. To love someone is to want to learn about them. And thus, as all we may have and know is detail- love is attention to detail. 

Lady Bird, though it is also much more, is nominally a coming of age story centring a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. And this central relationship is very much in line with the theme. 

Lady Bird’s mother pays her relentless, even suffocating attention- her future, her grades, her hair, her posture- and Lady Bird both chafes against this attention and scrutinises her mother in return- her mother writes-and-rewrites her letters to Lady Bird, afraid her daughter may mock her mistakes. 

And Lady Bird’s realisation that her mother’s scrutiny is the expression-if imperfect- of her mother’s love is the core of the film. 

But Lady Bird is a film made of short, perfect, montages, more than just an over-arching theme.

The essence of the mother-daughter relationship is just as aptly expressed in any one of their many  scenes together.

The ebb and flow of their relationship- from tenderness erupting into antagonism fading into solidarity- is effortlessly captured by Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf.

Furthermore, Lady Bird’s relationship Sacramento, her hometown, is also beautifully portrayed, as exemplified by the excerpt above. Lady Bird can’t wait to leave Sacramento- the capital of California which, according to some, “really should have been San Diego”. Lady Bird’s view of Sacramento is also a stand-in for Lady Bird’s relationship with her mother, but really, isn’t one’s relationship with one’s home central to anyone’s coming of age? I empathised with Lady Bird’s view of sleepy Sacramento Sacramento- I like my hometown Chennai, the endless drowsy sun, its tranquil quiet a rarity for a city, it’s placid early morning rituals- but I also wish to know of cities that beat with different rhythms.

Another piece of symbolism is the name: Lady Bird- Lady Bird is the protagonists given name- as in she gave the name to herself, while the name her mother gave her is Christine. This is, again, a symbol of the mother—daughter tension, but also another coming of age trope. Leaving home is leaving the identity your parents gave you, choosing not to default to the templates offered to you by your parents by virtue of their social position. It is a rebirth of sorts, as exemplified by the name Christine chooses for herself.

Rejecting the blueprint offered by one’s parents means choosing one’s own. Lady Bird has very different ideals than her mother. She wants to study on the east coast where, she believes “culture is”. “How on earth did I raise such a snob?”- is her mother’s response. Lady Bird chooses to follow her dreams- in defiance of her mother’s wishes, and though it’s not as black-and-white she wishes it were, she chooses to live life on her own terms. What do we want? Why do we want it? Growing up means choosing one’s ideals, and choosing whether to stick with them after other people’s value judgement of them. Personally, I haven’t quite defined them-for now, I simply choose to have a rudder, a direction, and not choose a path that doesn’t captivate me just because it is well trodden.

And finally, the film is a coming of age story. It doesn’t quite have a single true climax, just a series of moments- and is that not what maturity is? Not a switch hit when you turn eighteen, not a something that automatically accumulates like snow with time, just a never-ending series of choices to work harder, stand taller, be better.