Lady Bird Review
Director: Greta Gerwig
Running Time: 1h 34m
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Odeya Rush
Movie Score: 93%
*[0-50%-red (poor); 50-70%-yellow (average to good, better and promising); 70-90%-green (very good to great); 90-100%-blue (outstanding to perfect and a masterpiece)]
I just saw the most admired movie by critics and also by the ‘Gold Standard’ checking portal for all flicks, Rotten Tomatoes-Lady Bird. It was great, with everything being outstanding and nearly amazing as far as the performances, direction and storyline is considered. It was a standout movie in its ‘own’.
Debutant director Greta Gerwig has got a full control in this usually seen plot in endless movies in the past years. Still, the way she’s used the elements and trivial points in the story to raise subtle impacts in several scenes, really makes you feel about your own teenage days in a different manner.
It’s a tale of an introspective journey of a high school ‘Lady Bird’ aka Christine McPherson (played by Saoirse Ronan).
Basically flawless (but not as basically), this movie reminded many things which I too witnessed and observed around me in my high school years, some six-seven years back. And improvising from that phase is really something big-the movie also depicted those things.
Saoirse Ronan is great in her role while Laurie Metcalf (playing Mrs. McPherson) is outstanding as a helpless mother, trying to raise her children with a lot of hardships in the family going on-regularly, almost.
But Ronan, in general, has done undoubtable justice to her role of a troubled girl, who is no way sure about herself in the beginning but as she gets experiences through her various encounters in her teenage life, it all becomes a thought provoking drama.
All in all, everything is good and simply refreshing about Lady Bird. But…
Opinion
It’s not an ‘Oscar deserving’ film, in anyway possible, in the two most important categories for which it got nominated-Best Picture and Best Director.
Now, I know many of you who’re in love with this ‘great’ teen-drama, and a coming of age movie, will be screaming like a raging bull with all guns blazing on me. But I will be just clarifying the truth here which everyone, perhaps the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences also, refused to accept!
I don’t know what goes around and comes around in the minds of the jury when they lock up the list of the final contenders for the Academy awards each year. But 2017 as a whole was one hell of a year which saw a number of mindboggling and trendsetting movies in the entire cinema history.
And without doing the rounds, I would like to mention that one movie which is not only my favourite-and utterly deserving, in general, for any prestigeous award-but of those too, who understand the essence of a movie and what a movie does. And that movie is Dennis Villenueve’s sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner 2049, starring actors Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford.
As per my ‘conclusion’, the over-admiration of Lady Bird by most of the critics and it’s completely ‘flaw-proof’ nature overshadowed Blade Runner 2049’s opportunity to be in the ‘final 9’ and ‘final 5’ for the top two honours.
I mean, I found nothing special in Lady Bird on the basis of which I could say, “Oh man! It must win the Best Picture and I won’t be surprised if it wins the Best Director trophy too!”
You know what, now I would be really shocked if, by any means, it wins those two big ones. No hard feelings for Great Gerwig and the movie itself but-it’s just not ‘that’ movie!
On the other hand, I don’t have to say anything about Villeneuve’s hand-crafted epic, and a phenomenal take on the aspects of artificial intelligence, life, humanness and reality!
Blade Runner 2049 is that kind of a visual and dramatic presentation, of which every scene and each shot gives the chills of something you can’t imagine-the sheer scale of a pure storytelling-in comparison to which, Lady Bird stands nowhere, according to me.
I was blindly hopeful at the time of Blade Runner 2049’s release that this film, though failed at earning much (I don’t know yet), would be a clear winning shot at the 90th Academy awards, come 2018.
But, no one noticed anything-and now its March, 2018!
