Here’s Ilich on Lady Bird (2017)...
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Pride Month and its celebrations are so outrageously fun to participate in because they feel so earned. The titular pride almost never comes immediately after queer people identify, at least to themselves, as such. It’s often preceded by confusion and a paralyzing fear that interrupts as many opportunities of rational thought as it can. Queer people take their time navigating through awkward stages of a sort of grief that will hopefully lead to that realization that they are free to be themselves without fear, and definitely without shame. Hints of these stages are warmly depicted in Greta Gerwig’s endlessly satisfying directorial debut Lady Bird. Through Danny (Lucas Hedges) and his friendship with the film’s protagonist, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), Gerwig’s script fleshes out the performances that many rehearse in the process of accepting their nature...
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Lady Bird is framed within ChristineLady Bird's experiences, so Danny is introduced as a charming love interest of hers. They first interact as Lady Bird approaches Danny trying to control his countless brothers at a grocery store. Even though they both flirt (Danny points out his Irish-Catholic background makes it hard to find girls to date that he's not related to, Lady Bird has heart emojis for pupils), Danny's detailed ambitions for the musical they're about to co-star in suggest what's about to come. After a kiss at a school dance, they start to date, adorably, until Lady Bird finds Danny making out with another boy the night their musical opens. She gets a chance to confront him after he, defeated, visits the coffee shop where she works.
DANNY: Your mom is crazy. I'm scared of her.
LADY BIRD: She's not crazy. She's just, you know, she has a big heart. She's very warm.
D: I don't find your mother warm.
LB: You don't?
D: No, well, no. She's warm yeah, but she's also kind of scary.
LB: Well, you can't be warm and scary.
D: I think you can. Your mom is.
LB: You're gay!
D: Fuck me. Can you not tell anyone, please? I'm so sorry about everything. I'm so ashamed of all of it. It's just, it's going to be bad and I just need a little bit of time to figure out how I'm going to tell my mom and dad.
LB: Don't worry. I won't tell.
Gerwig suggests so much of these characters' past and future intentions in an exchange under a minute long. Lady Bird is initially so angry at Danny, she can't even think of a personal defense of her mother Marion, resorting to parroting a compliment her brother's girlfriend allowed Marion days before. But spewing this defense does help her accidentally realize how complicated and well-meaning her mother is, proving a skill in empathy she'll have to rely on when she attempts to understand and forgive Danny for allowing them to become more than friends.
Her script subverts tropey coming out storylines by having Lady Bird come out for Danny. This moves suspense away from something the audience is already familiar with and transfers it to a larger—now what?—question. The fate of their friendship seems hopeful as she consoles his sobbing fright at the end of their exchange. What's more uncertain is how he'll use his love of musical theater to embrace his fascinations and talents.
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Through its characters, the film explores how a hometown can shape its children and prepare them for what's to come. Danny's been suffocated by too-many siblings and the assumptions of a traditional background, but he's also been equiped with passions and open-minded friends like Lady Bird that can, and will, help him be proud of himself. And celebrate.
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