Why did “Lady Bird” feel so autobiographical to all of us?

The titular role of “Lady Bird” living in suburban Sacramento tells us a little something about all of us.

As she navigates through the graves of life, she provides us an insight into a very normal teenager’s life. It is devoid of any unnecessary spectacle. And most importantly she isn’t a brat. We aren’t just that.

She hates her given name and so she decides to name herself. So, ‘Lady Bird’ is a name given to her by her (In her own words). There have been instances when I, too thought that my name didn’t resonate with who I was or so I felt. When I would say my name out loud, it would feel quite idiosyncratic. When I would repeat it on a loop, then it would feel like a bunch of words put together arbitrarily. This just goes without saying that the thought of changing my name never occurred to me. If it did, I would call myself, princess consuela banana hammock.

Getting back from a little friends reference.

Lady Bird is raised in an all girls catholic school, although she never shows clear signs of hate towards their practices in the beginning, we are eventually given a little something to laugh at when she decorated the sister’s car with a ‘married to jesus’ sign.

What I truly found comforting was her strong desire to leave her hometown as it got too stuffy. I don’t know about the rest of you but living in the same place, as back as my memory can stretch has been a little less harsh than barbarous. She voices my emotions when she says she wants to go to a place where writers live in the woods.

Although I can’t be held accountable for what I’m about to say next I’ll do it anyway. Towards the end of the movie when she writes her college essay, her love for Sacramento is apparent. And she says so herself that she felt emotional while driving through the same bends and stores and the whole thing.

This part is rather difficult to relate to. Maybe when you know that the place that you hated the most and felt stuffy being in is no longer going to be yours, there’s some sort of relief. Or maybe it will always be home no matter how bad it gets.

Her relationship with her mother too was found relatable to most. It teaches us the substantial difference between love and like. You can love someone truly with everything you’ve got but it’s a whole different thing to like them.

Her mother showers her with excessive attention to the point where it becomes overbearing. But at the same time she recognises that love and attention are the same thing.

She wishes to have lived through something. Don’t we all? To validate ourselves in words unspoken. Lady Bird’s story is worth telling just like all of ours is.

She is seen standing up for what she likes rather than getting suppressed in peer pressure even if it means liking Dave Matthews band’s ‘crash into me’. She doesn’t let people put her in boxes, to put it simply she is rebellious and she owns up to it. I.e., when she jumps out of a moving car.*Whew* what was that?

She truly realizes how much Julie, her best friend whom she initially ditched means to her. She ends up going to prom with her rather than Kyle.

Julie too is an essential part of not just Lady Bird’s life but all our lives. She is not someone who should be put in the corner or as a prop to the lead. She says something along the lines that not everyone is built happy and it stayed with me after the movie.

Let us all applaud and appreciate the amount of courage Lady Bird was endowed with to do something unconventional, what she truly wanted to. It isn’t a common trait although it should be.

For closing statements, Greta Gerwig did justice to the story despite this movie being her debut as a director.

Saoirse Ronan was impeccable as usual and Timothée Chalamet the ultimate bad boy who we aren’t very fond of as Kyle.

Eye candy!