Day 17 - 01/17/2019

  Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Greta Gerwing makes her directorial debut and takes the task of telling a convincing story of a teenager coming to age. Nominated to various Oscars, Lady Bird is Hollywood's light-hearted movie of 2017 and notable with its own concise story.

​

  Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), better known by her self-given name "Lady Bird", lives in Sacramento, California, with her parents. Lady Bird's parents make ends meet and love her unconditionally, though it's hard for her to see due to them not allowing her to pursue colleges, a big financial investment and quite apparently unrealistic for their socioeconomic status. Her mother (Laurie Metcalf), takes as many shifts as she can as a nurse is quite attached to her daughter, making Lady Bird's decisions as a teenager somewhat difficult.

 

  The usage of a simple plot is what most benefits this film, making it quite a low investment of both time and effort but with a high satisfaction of a complete story coming to an end. The back and forth interactions between Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf are the backbone of almost all memorable scenes and clearly shows the struggles every teenager goes through on their mother-and-daughter relation one way or another.

 

  Due to its simplicity, Lady Bird's tale is pleasurable at the surface, but when analyzing her actions, it may be quite difficult to find her deserving of a good college. She steals her teacher's gradebook and lies about her scores, which shows flaws on her character like it should on any person. However, her words don't follow her actions, as she seems to aspire to get into a college with financial aid but is never seen studying or doing activities that might help her with that. Overall, her ambitions are quite weak and not many of her goals or long-term views are passed down to the viewer. 

 

  Lastly, Lady Bird should be taken as an easy-to-watch movie, with its overall comfortable experience, as it's actually meant to be. Being quite limited to that, I believe it is a solid 7.0 out of 10 stones, especially when taking into consideration the relative low budget and simplicity of the cast.