It’s that time of year again — by which I mean, the time when high school seniors are putting the finishing touches on the last of their college applications.
Which makes this a perfect time to see a film called “Lady Bird.”
Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, the film follows the title character through her high school senior year, with all its ups and downs.
Her parents named her Christine McPherson, but as she explains to a drama teacher, “Lady Bird” is her “given” name: “I gave it to myself. Given to me, by me.” In other words, she’s quirky.
In many ways, this film seems almost too perfect a companion piece to Ben Stiller’s film, “Brad’s Status,” which came out earlier this year.
Oddly, both films feature families living in Sacramento. Both center on a parent and child going through the college quest — father and son in “Brad’s Status,” mother and daughter for “Lady Bird.” In both films, the kids want to get out of California.
And in both films, there is a shadow of financial insecurity hovering over all. If even directors and movie stars are feeling the pinch of college tuition, these days, what chance do the rest of us have?
In other ways, however, the films are quite different; and the biggest difference, I think, constitutes the best reason to see “Lady Bird.”
“Lady Bird” actually achieves what the writing courses are always preaching: it shows, not tells, what it’s like to be a high school senior trying to grow up and get to her future. It also shows some of the struggle of being a parent.
We see Lady Bird’s successes and her trials; and we are with her for the scene that struck me, and my friends, the most strongly: the moment when, in mid-tantrum, the daughter knocks over some pills in the bathroom and sees her father’s name on some anti-depressants.
“Is this right? Is Dad taking this?” she asks her mom.
Mom, played brilliantly by Laurie Metcalfe, answers on several levels.
On the one level, “Yes. Your dad has been struggling with depression for years.”
On another level, this is where mom gets to point out, “In fact, there is a lot more going on, here, than just you.” What’s more, there always has been.
Not so much an “Aha!” moment, for a typically self-absorbed teenager, as “Oh. Wow.” Maybe even a “Yikes.”
I took a lot longer than Lady Bird did, to reach that point. In fact, it didn’t happen for me till I’d been a mother for two weeks.
A few days after my first child was safely delivered, I ended up back in the hospital with a high fever. I’m fine now, and so is that baby, now grown; but at the time, it was scary.
I spent several days in intensive care before graduating to a regular hospital room.
One night, unable to sleep, I noticed some commotion down the hall. And ringing through the noise and the chatter, I recognized the voice of my doctor — the one who’d seen me through a difficult week.
With nothing better to do, I put on a bathrobe and slippers, and shuffled out of my room to find him.
My first great awakening came as soon as I poked my head out the hospital room door. So much light! So much hallway! And so many rooms, filled with other people!
When you are a hospital patient, your room becomes your entire universe (which is why it is so inconceivable that anyone could have anything else to do but answer your call button).
But, blinking a bit, I had a mission, so I persevered, and shuffled on down the hall to where my doctor was speaking, rather intently, to someone else.
“Hello, Judy,” he said. “It’s great to see you. But you’re not the emergency right now.” And he resumed with the other doctor or nurse.
I was taken aback. I am not the emergency. Oh! And then: That’s good news. Right?
And so I finished emerging from the cocoon of thinking the world was All About Me.
Which was just as well, because now I had a baby of my own, to go home and weave a cocoon for.
It is so hard to be a parent.
I highly recommend “Lady Bird” for anybody who is one — or who ever had one. Then, go home and talk to each other. It might even help.
