In honor of Father’s Day, Lynn Lee pays tribute to one of her favorite on-screen fathers.
At first glance, it may seem counter-intuitive to celebrate Lady Bird on Father’s Day instead of Mother’s Day. The loving but fraught relationship between Saoirse Ronan’s Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson and her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf, who should have won the Oscar) is, after all, the emotional center of the film. Yet amid the sturm und drang of their clashes and reconciliations, the quiet, soothing presence of Lady Bird’s father, Larry, leaves an equally lasting imprint. It’s an especially remarkable feat when one considers how few movies devote significant attention to father-daughter relationships unless the mother is dead or there are abuse, neglect, or communication issues. Think about it.
Lady Bird is the exception that proves the rule...
In a beautifully understated performance that still cuts through a movie chock-full of memorable supporting characters, Tracy Letts embodies everything every girl wants her dad to be: affectionate, unobtrusive, trusting of your judgment, allied with mom most of the time but in your corner when it really matters. (On a personal note, one of the many reasons Lady Bird resonates so much with me is that its triangulation of Lady Bird, Marion and Larry reminds me so much of my own dynamic with my parents.) Larry doesn’t play direct mediator between his wife and daughter – to the contrary, when they spar in his presence, he stays resolutely out of it and tries to become as invisible as a 6’3” man in a small room can. Instead, he works behind the scenes to support Lady Bird and let her know she’s loved, whether by covertly helping with her financial aid applications for out-of-state colleges, bringing her a birthday cupcake, or, in the emotional apotheosis of the movie, slipping her the letters her mom drafted to give her but never finished.
In some ways, Larry is a spiritual cousin of Donald Sutherland’s Calvin in Ordinary People except that unlike poor Cal, Larry knows there’s fundamentally a deep love between mother and child that may run too hot at times but will never run cold or curdle. While some might criticize him for going behind Marion’s back instead of confronting her directly, the pervading sense one gets from his secrecy isn’t betrayal or weakness but simply that of a dad acting on his instincts that mom will come around eventually and that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. He also radiates a wryly humorous self-awareness about the risks he’s running with his approach; one of the funniest lines in the movie is his sotto voce “oh, fuck” when the cat is inadvertently let out of the bag about Lady Bird’s waitlisting at a college in New York.
Letts is extraordinarily good in the role, the more so for being cast somewhat against type; if you’ve seen him on stage or in other movies (most recently Ford v. Ferrari, in which he was also excellent as the imperious Henry Ford II), you know he doesn’t normally register as gentle or low-key. His impact is all the more impressive given how little dialogue and comparatively little screen time Larry gets and how little we really learn about him outside of his role as Lady Bird’s dad. That’s no doubt reflective of Lady Bird’s perspective, the prism through which we see him, even as we get hints via Marion that he suffers from depression, money worries, and fear that he’s a professional failure, especially after he’s laid off. Yet he doesn’t succumb to these darker feelings (that we or Lady Bird sees, anyway) or let them affect how he behaves as a father.
Indeed, one of Larry’s most telling and moving scenes suggests just the opposite. Having emerged from a job interview he knows is a bust, he endearingly proposes to Lady Bird that they “go buy a big bag of Doritos and eat them in the car” – only for them to run into her brother, Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues), who’s clearly on his way to an interview with the same company. There’s an awkward pause as the realization sinks in for all three of them, which Larry quickly cuts short with a pat on his son’s back and a quiet, encouraging “Go get ’em.” We later learn Miguel’s interview went well when Larry toasts his new job at Lady Bird’s graduation dinner. In both cases, we don’t have to wonder whether Larry means it. We know he does.
