There are movies (as well as all art) that make life feel more real. Do you ever feel life slip into a dream-like state, a trance you must jab a hole into in order to make sense of the reality you’re living— that yes, you are alive? It seems that your life is strange, that you are the stranger, that something is off but you cannot place what.
We watch movies as an escape, comedic, dramatic, romantic relief. We watch movies to feel. Although many are fictional creations and complete constructions of a reality that doesn’t necessarily exist, there are some movies that make life make a little more sense. They throw a whole bunch of chaos at you, and somehow, you walk out feeling more at peace, and more human.
Lady Bird did that for me. My God, what a human film. It’s so simple, so humanly relatable: the relationship between a high-school girl and her mother, the college application process, the cause and effects of not feeling good enough; love, heartbreak, toil, mistakes, darkness, light, anguish, laughter, reconciliation, war, sadness, comparison, journey.
Maybe we all have pieces of Lady Bird inside of us, pieces that scream after being kissed, that yell when life seems to be slipping out of our own fingers, that rage against the confines of the world and that just want to be a part of something exciting.
I think my favorite line of the entire film was Christine’s astonishment at a college party, where she responds to a classmate’s unbelief by saying, "people go by the names their parents give them, but they don't believe in God."
Humans accept things, blindly, failing to question the status quo, letting themselves and the rest of mankind be boxed and sealed away with little rebellion. It’s incredibly easy to “go by the name your parents give you,” and further, to simply accept the personhood you are handed and told to embody without question.
Lady Bird is shocked by this— that people would accept being told who to be, but dare not believe in a Creator of the Universe. When it comes down to standing in awe at the sheer miracle of creation and life itself and the dimensions and beings and spiritual truths that go much deeper than the structured lives we have created for ourselves, humans often tend to remain restlessly placated in a world without God.
“How ridiculous,” Lady Bird’s classmate responds to the idea of an existing God. But she thinks it’s ridiculous that people choose to simply exist without questioning anything, without challenging the lines that have been drawn. She thinks it’s ridiculous that people think the world, and life, just are, that there’s nothing else to it, that we just roll along and must accept it all as we perceive it. But I think Lady Bird would agree with me when I say that if you go looking for God, you will find Him.
People just don’t want to look. It seems many of us have settled for the world we are told exists.
Lady Bird looks, she explores, she thirsts, she craves, she fights. She is a force against that which holds her back from herself. She falls along the way, lying for the sake of status, hurting others because she is hurting, allowing things to define her that could never truly touch the truth. She falls, as we all do. As humans have since the very beginning.
But she sees the light in a circle of hallelujahs at the end. She was looking for something, and she learned a lot along the way. She tried to make herself, yet figured out in the end that she was everything that she’d been through, and more.
And then she thanked her mother.
Lady Bird is us. We’re all struggling. We struggle with our identity, with inadequacy, with restlessness, with wanting more, with chasing dreams we aren’t sure we’ll reach, with making decisions that wreak havoc on our own peace and the peace of others as well.
I dare you to watch this movie without feeling at least a smidge more human afterwards. Just a bit more real.
