Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird: Like Being In Love
Greta Gerwig is in love with being in love.
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For the entirety of Hollywood’s history-and perhaps storytelling in general-we’ve been inundated with stories of sweeping romances. Two people meet-cute, have an epic, tumultuous romance, and are pulled away from each other only to be reunited in a grand fashion. The components of romance have been the same for generations, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I binge on Hallmark romance movies like the rest of us. To see these stories as trite would do a disservice to the universality of human love. But writer/director Greta Gerwig wants to tell a different kind of love story and one that deserves to be told.
Greta Gerwig arose from the indie film world of “mumblecore,” with films like Hannah Takes the Stairs, a genre built on lo-fi production design and improvised, naturalistic performances. These movies largely revolve around everyday life occurrences rather than bombastic plot orchestrations. This desire for realism often led to the dismissal of these movies as meandering and pointless; to wit, this meandering nature is often built into the protagonists themselves. As Gerwig slowly transitioned out of this mumblecore world and began to work with writer/director Noah Baumbach, it’s important to remember this history. Gerwig’s appreciation for beauty amongst mundanity would become vital for her success.
“I hate California. I wanna go to the East Coast. I wanna go where culture is, like New York,
or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire, where writers live in the woods.”
— Lady Bird, Lady Bird
Gerwig’s last three writing ventures are about being in love-an unofficial trilogy of finding your soulmate. This year’s breakout success, Lady Bird, tells a coming-of-age story of a high school senior in Sacramento as she navigates relationships, friendships and her family life. To call Lady Bird herself or her family “eccentric” would be a disservice-both to the fullness of those characters as well as the fullness of the people in our own lives. The kaleidoscope of personalities shown in Lady Bird mirror the same ones shown in our own lives. Complicated, peculiar people litter the small community surrounding Lady Bird’s tiny Catholic school. Lady Bird is constantly chided for being confused by the peculiarities of people, calling attention to them and indulging in her own. One of the most important parts of growing up is slowly learning the world is weird, complex, and often very dumb, but that there is beauty in all of it. Lady Bird has trouble seeing that beauty around her. She longs for a life on the East Coast, a life of the big city romanticism she sees in the movies. Escape from the mundanity of her hometown. Escape from her mother.
Being in love is often incredible, infuriating, and miraculous. The emotional volatility of love can be a challenging thing to endure.Lady Bird is about this love. In a recent interview, Gerwig laid this out as clearly as possible: “Usually movies about teenage girls, even if it’s not the primary story, it tends to center around one guy. That’s the love story. In my story there’s not one guy, there’s two guys and they’re both wrong, because that’s not the love story. The love story is between her and her mother.” Gerwig’s mission seems to be to bring these stories to the screen: stories about deep, platonic love between women. As a young man, I would not begin to understand the depths or complexities of mother-daughter relationships outside of observations. But that’s why these stories are wonderful. They are stories that many women understand intrinsically and universally. There’s a reason why the works of Jane Austen still resonate with millions of women. Mothers are daughters, and daughters become mothers in a cycle of big, complex love that women often understand so much better.
“I’m so embarrassed. I’m not a real person yet.”
- Frances, Frances Ha
In the amazing 2012 film Frances Ha, Gerwig herself plays Frances, a struggling dancer in New York City. Her roommate and best friend, Sophie, decides to move out and settle down with her fiance. This presumed betrayal causes Frances to go into free-fall and begin couch-hopping with various millennials around town. The movie often has a biting humor toward a certain type of New York Yuppie living an extravagant, irresponsible lifestyle and contrasts it with Frances’s struggle to find her place. The Yuppies have the funds from their parents to live a carefree lifestyle but do so all as posturing. Frances herself is a true free spirit and that authenticity contributes to her difficulty to keep pace in a city so fast. Her free-fall continues throughout the movie as she slowly adjusts to life without her best friend, her emotional center.
Mistress America, her 2015 follow-up, follows Tracy, a college freshman desperate to find her voice as a budding author. As her mother begins dating a new guy, Tracy meets her soon to be step-sister Brooke, played by Gerwig. Gerwig now plays the eccentric New York Yuppie she prodded years before. Tracy idolizes Brooke’s lavish lifestyle and her commanding, infectious personality. Gerwig now illustrates how intoxicating this lifestyle can be to people. If we are honest with ourselves, we see this in our own envious glances at each other’s Instagram posts. As Frances explained to Sophie after hearing her recent sadness, “But your blog looks so happy!”
Tracy falls quickly in love with her new step-sister, but as this relationship develops, the faults of Brooke quickly show and Tracy is even quicker to point them out. Often in love, we put each other on a pedestal and find ourselves the most hurt when the other person steps off of it. We demand perfection of others for fear of confronting the imperfections of ourselves. Tracy’s journey of self-discovery is very similar to Lady Bird’s-that people are weird, complex and often very dumb, and that’s okay. In a way, Lady Bird’s ending deftly flows into Mistress America which flows into Frances Ha. Young women seeking more ahead of them but finding even more behind.
“Her beauty was that rare kind that made you want to look more like yourself and not like her.”
- Tracy, Mistress America
Lady Bird, Frances Ha and Mistress America are all wonderful films. The latter two employ a satirical style to their subjects, with stylized characters speaking rapid fire monologues at each other, matching the speed of the city around them. Lady Bird, however, slows things down to match its small town vibe. Its naturalism is more befitting Gerwig’s mumblecore roots and adds to the autobiographical feeling of the film. It feels alive and specific in a way that few movies this year have felt. Specificity has a funny way of leading to greater universality.
Now, I love stories like Romeo & Juliet. Shakespeare has such interesting things to say about the inflammatory and operatic nature of young love, its flaws and strengths. It has defined stories of love and romance for centuries. But I’ll confess to say that before Greta Gerwig’s movies, I hadn’t truly appreciated stories of deep platonic love. Truly being in love with someone who is as much your soulmate as your life partner may be. Human connection can take many forms and we can fall in and out of love with anyone. Love so big. It’s weird, complex, and often very dumb, but that’s what makes it love.
I love Greta Gerwig’s movies because their experiences aren’t specifically mine, but they are universal. I love Greta Gerwig’s desire to show the world and people around her in the most flattering, but genuine of lights. And I love that Greta Gerwig’s mission seems to be to show just how great all the different kinds of love can be.
“It’s that thing when you’re with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you
and you know it…but it’s a party…and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing
and shining…and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes…but-but not because
you’re possessive, or it’s precisely sexual…but because…that is your person in this life. And it’s
funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right
there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about.”
- Frances, Frances Ha
Originally published at http://swishpan.com on November 7, 2018.
