by Jason Adams
Have you ever gone back to visit the school you went to as a little kid and realized how small it all looks now? I think we've all had that moment - you walk down the hallway feeling like Godzilla; you'd have to get on your hands and knees to use the drinking fountain. And yet as goofy as it seems - and depending on your experience filled with conflicting emotions as it may be - it pulls at you anyway, yanks at your heart. It is part of you. The pictures might've gotten small but they have crawled inside and curled up and they're not going anywhere.
Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird - that is her given name; she gave it to herself - thrums with that strange and bittersweet nostalgia...
It has the feeling of warm close recollection - the light is diffuse, honeyed, and the scenes pile up like a flood of sudden memories all around us. Too many to sort all at once - they are the parts of you, limbs and ears and the back of your knee now, as you manage them. These were your growing pains - it seems only right that Lady Bird wears a cast for the majority of the film, because she is busting through the walls of this place. Even her bones can't take it.
Everybody's just trying to hold it together. That's a feeling that echoes throughout the film and all its characters - Gerwig's infinite empathy sweeps across all of Sacramento, into every house, big and small, on either side of the tracks. In the week and a half since seeing this movie there are side-characters that have sidled up to me seemingly out of nowhere - Lady Bird's deeply depressed drama teacher; the dude that she meets a college that makes fun of her "Greatest Hits" collection - and sat down and said hello; I don't fore-see them leaving me be any time soon, nor would I want them to. Give Greta Gerwig ninety minutes and she will give you an entire world.
Or a galaxy, even. Bigger than anything. The sun is Saorsie Ronan, bright and sharp and life-giving. The moon is Laurie Metcalf - as sure as the tides she'll tug your guts right up into your throat. And we sit swaying between them, glad for both, happy to've just been invited to this damn magic of a celestial show.