The movie's great strength is that Lady Bird's nemesis is every bit as eccentric as Lady Bird herself. Lady Bird's mother has the gall to say: "Are you tired? Because we could sit down. Oh, I just thought you're tired because you're dragging your feet." (So true to life! It's as if Gerwig has excavated all of this stuff from her own soul. Within seconds of the mutual bitching, mother and daughter are gaga over a thrift-store dress, and it's as if the tension had never reared its head.) "Maybe the dress is too pink? Oh, you want me to lie? OK! I'll lie, I guess." "At that public high school, your brother saw a child KNIFED IN FRONT OF HIS CLASS." (A story repeated so often we begin to wonder if it's true, if it fills some deep, weird psychological need for the mother.) Amidst all this, Gerwig has the brains to show the mother's greatness--the way she cares for her colleagues, the way she takes in her son's girlfriend, the warmth directed at the Lucas Hedges character. So complex--and inspiring.
"It's clear that you love Sacramento," says the Lois Smith nun, to Lady Bird. "You write about it with such exquisite detail." "I guess I just pay attention," says Lady Bird, and the nun redirects her thinking: "Isn't careful attention just the same thing as love?" It's clear--here--that we really are getting Greta Gerwig's memoir. She has written about Sacramento with longing and passion, the way, years earlier, Laura Ingalls Wilder recalled her prairie girlhood from "a remove."
People say that the main function of art is to make you feel less alone, and that's very much the case, for me, when I see "Lady Bird." I remember so much of my adolescence--awkwardness, pain, and unintended humor. Racing around in a friend's car, listening loudly to ABBA. Feeling obsessively infatuated with various teachers, who were, in reality, flawed, disappointed, and goofy (and who were, in my eyes, simply megastars). Noticing slight differences in money and class status, though no one was supposed to talk about these things--the way a more cosmopolitan family, in Buffalo proper, would make jaded, shrugging references to the sixteen-year-old-youngest-son'
***
I'm a few hours away from seeing "The Godfather"! (Film Forum.) A confession. I don't fully understand the plot. I've seen this movie a few times, and I get bogged down in all the shadowy images of brooding men. The gang wars. Who can keep that stuff straight? (Millions of viewers, I know.) Here's what I love in "The Godfather." First: Marlon Brando, stuffing an orange in his mouth to entertain his tiny grandson. (Am I remembering this correctly?) Brando--a gargoyle, an embodiment of evil--chases the tiny boy through an Edenic garden. And then he collapses; he's dead, and the little boy does not understand. He stands over his grandfather--without emotion. (Talk about a defamiliarizing impact! To a small child, the Godfather is not terribly intimidating. Death itself is not very intimidating. Just puzzling and wondrous.)
I love hot-tempered, womanizing Sonny, and the amour fou between Talia Shire and her bad, bad husband. (You get the sense that Sonny particularly loathes the bad husband because he sees aspects of himself in that wretched personality.) I love the faint traces of WWII, the intersections of mob life and Hollywood, the horse head on top of the satin sheets. I love that the setting itself is bizarre: We're shown grown men pitifully groveling before this human waste product that is the Godfather--at an event that is meant to be focused on a new marriage. (In this way, the movie resembles "Weeds," where the setting is as eccentric as the star. In "Weeds," even if we didn't have Mary-Louise Parker, we'd have the outspoken pre-teen lesbian, the California racial divide, the parents who feel animosity toward their tiny children, the son who impregnates his deaf girlfriend to keep her from going off to Princeton. Mary-Louise is simply the icing on the cake.)
A stranger comes to town. Al Pacino--our star--must decide whether to abandon his wartime habits. He assures his wife he is "getting out"; he is "going legitimate." Then, within minutes, he is murdering that man in the restaurant. He is contemplating the assassination of his own brother, who has gone to the "dark" side. He is beating his wife. Michael tries--and cannot escape his past. For all his strength, he is a failure; his story is a tragedy. That's all I've absorbed so far; I'll try to get a better grasp on the gang details this afternoon. Regardless, I could watch young Mr. Pacino all day, everyday, for months on end.
***
I'm a few hours away from seeing "The Godfather"! (Film Forum.) A confession. I don't fully understand the plot. I've seen this movie a few times, and I get bogged down in all the shadowy images of brooding men. The gang wars. Who can keep that stuff straight? (Millions of viewers, I know.) Here's what I love in "The Godfather." First: Marlon Brando, stuffing an orange in his mouth to entertain his tiny grandson. (Am I remembering this correctly?) Brando--a gargoyle, an embodiment of evil--chases the tiny boy through an Edenic garden. And then he collapses; he's dead, and the little boy does not understand. He stands over his grandfather--without emotion. (Talk about a defamiliarizing impact! To a small child, the Godfather is not terribly intimidating. Death itself is not very intimidating. Just puzzling and wondrous.)
I love hot-tempered, womanizing Sonny, and the amour fou between Talia Shire and her bad, bad husband. (You get the sense that Sonny particularly loathes the bad husband because he sees aspects of himself in that wretched personality.) I love the faint traces of WWII, the intersections of mob life and Hollywood, the horse head on top of the satin sheets. I love that the setting itself is bizarre: We're shown grown men pitifully groveling before this human waste product that is the Godfather--at an event that is meant to be focused on a new marriage. (In this way, the movie resembles "Weeds," where the setting is as eccentric as the star. In "Weeds," even if we didn't have Mary-Louise Parker, we'd have the outspoken pre-teen lesbian, the California racial divide, the parents who feel animosity toward their tiny children, the son who impregnates his deaf girlfriend to keep her from going off to Princeton. Mary-Louise is simply the icing on the cake.)
A stranger comes to town. Al Pacino--our star--must decide whether to abandon his wartime habits. He assures his wife he is "getting out"; he is "going legitimate." Then, within minutes, he is murdering that man in the restaurant. He is contemplating the assassination of his own brother, who has gone to the "dark" side. He is beating his wife. Michael tries--and cannot escape his past. For all his strength, he is a failure; his story is a tragedy. That's all I've absorbed so far; I'll try to get a better grasp on the gang details this afternoon. Regardless, I could watch young Mr. Pacino all day, everyday, for months on end.
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