Lady Bird (2018) - A Beautiful Letdown!

★★☆☆☆

‘Lady Bird’ is a coming of age story that well, gives me no tears or pleasure or anything that I expected from it in the first place. There’s a moment or two with songs playing in the back that seemed to be stirring up my emotions but it didn’t last long enough to allow me to feel it so. Again, I guess it’s not the film itself. It’s just me that my senses have been dulled by trying to stay in the comfort zone for too long, and keep up a decent life like I’m expected to!

The film, though it seems totally irrelevant, reminds me of one of the quotes from ‘Fortress Besieged’, the one and only marvelous novel by the highly respected Qian Zhongshu, ‘Marriage (not just marriage as you might’ve already figured) is like a fortress besieged. Those who are outside want to get in. Those who are inside want to get out’. It’s a hopeless truth that we all kind of live in contradictions to and fro. We want attentions but at the same time we don’t like to be disturbed. We all want to be free but we keep doing things that would bind us down here. We’re trying to get to the other side hoping for a better life but we all end up disappointed more or less when we reach it, and even wish to go back to where we once were.

Nothing is like we think it is but we always feel like it is. That’s why we’re never happy! Just like Lady Bird from Sacramento who wishes to continue her studies in the east. But when she finally reaches the east, she misses home back in the west. She seems rather let down and pathetic in the end. I’m not sure whether she’d eventually go back home to stay but I guess even if she does, she’d think of leaving again pretty soon!