Lady Bird

When I used to do stand up I had a routine about my hometown. The opening joke was, “Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home”... Well, Dorothy wasn’t from Watford.” I then proceeded to mock my birthplace with the kind of devastating wit that regularly saw me knocked out of amateur comedy competitions.

I was twenty-three at the time, puffed up on the arrogance of having seen different places. For five years I’d live in Bristol and Leeds, mixed with people from different towns and backgrounds; drank, danced and sang to songs outside the Top 40. I was now back home and didn’t want to be. Returning to Kansas wasn’t a relief, but a nuisance. From the shake, rattle and roll of the city to the dull drone of the town. Life was black and white. Colours had melted into the ground, leaving only a puddle, a memory of what was.

What university looked like.

The hangover didn’t last long. Soon the headache had receded and clarity was restored. Yes, on the face of it the town wasn’t a looker, but the constituent parts that made it – friends, family, football club and reminiscence – gave it shape and soul. Most of my friends had left the university cities, seeking fortune in the capital or maintenance at home. Other than nicer buildings, there was therefore nothing for me in these places. If I hadn’t migrated, I would never have heard the new birdsong of independence, accents and music; but coming home felt pretty great; the nest quite snug.

The self-indulgent naval gazing from above was brought to you by Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s comedy-drama, available while stocks lasts. Her film was this year's Moonlight: made on an independent budget, it found mainstream success following the patronage of film critics and Twitter attendees. At the Oscars it was recognised in picture, acting and director categories (Gerwig is only the 5^th female director to ever be nominated). And although it went home empty handed, it’s still packing out art-house cinemas.

Great Gerwig

The film begins with a mother and daughter driving back from a college open day. They’ve been in the car for over twenty hours together, listening to an audio cassette of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. As the story ends, their eyes water. Like an umbilical chord, this spool of tape has bound them, tying them in collective consciousness. The mother wants them just to sit awhile so they can digest what they’ve heard. The daughter, on the other hand, is ravenous for something new and reaches for the radio. An argument ensues between them. The chord has been cut and now the cries we hear are primal, not cultural. This switch from blissful harmonising to strangulated vocals is a motif that runs throughout the whole film. How a parent-child relationship can turn on a dime is something I’m sure everyone can relate to: Gerwig’s rendering of it is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Marion and Christine, mother and daughter, are at loggerheads over what parents and children are always at conflict over: children don’t think parents appreciate the pressure of playground hierarchy and grade stress, and parents don’t feel children have a fucking clue about the number of they've sacrifices made to keep the fuckers alive. Marion is also upset as Christine seems to reject everything she's given: she’s embarrassed by the house she lives in, the clothes she can ill-afford, the town she resides in and even her name – early on she announces to her teacher that she’s ‘Lady Bird,’ a name given by herself.

Christine "Lady Bird" (Saoirse Ronan) and Marion (Laurie Metcalf)  

The nomenclature of Christine is symbolic of the central conflict of the movie: Lady Bird wants to be everything her mother isn’t. She wants a bohemian life, free from paycheque strife, in a city that heralds individualism over collective grind. The audio tape of Grapes of Wrath is somewhat ironical then: in that story the Joad family moved to California because their situation was hopeless during the ‘Dust Bowl.’ Lady Bird, on the other hand, wants to migrate west out of California to find aesthetic fulfilment. In many ways this is the argument of the age: the older generation recognise the economy behind decisions, consequently they’re more pragmatic; the younger generation don’t see the dollar signs, as a result they’re more idealistic. Remember the film is set in 2002 as well, long before the credit crunch and the fall in standards of living. Mother and daughter then are tied by history, but disconnected by the futures they see.

There are other thematic concerns in the film; love and friendship being the primary two. The narrative takes place over Lady Bird’s final year in school, a time when sex possesses every fibre of your being, where you don’t think about intercourse every five seconds, but every single second. (It’s a wonder that exam answers aren’t just graphic illustrations of sex organs.) Over the course of the movie Lady Bird experiences love’s travails with Danny, a sensitive Catholic boy, and Kyle, a monosyllabic existentialist. These romances are necessary when you’re young, as although they’re not right and never work, it allows you to understand what one day will.

Kyle (Timothee Chalamet) affecting cool.

The relationship that does endure – despite its setbacks – is the one with Julie. Their friendship is tender and mischievous. Together, they pig out on communion wafers and feast on gossip and crushes. Even though she kicks against childhood, the scenes with Julie prove Lady Bird is still just a kid. She’s running into adulthood with child sneakers: she’ll get there, but they’ll be pain along the way.

When the film ended last night, a lady in front of us- who had been on her phone for most of the evening- turned to her partner and said, “That was so boring. Nothing happened. It was like a TV movie.” I’m loathe to invoke the adult put-down, “Only boring people get bored,” but for this film, in this case, it’s true. Lady Bird is a story where everything happens, it just isn’t spelt out by manipulative music. 

Gerwig has created a film that will make you want to ring home straight after and thank your parent for whatever it's they've done – the only reason to pick up your phone in the cinema.

Lady Bird is still available in some cinemas.   

Smile

When it comes to art and culture I’m not a completist. The Smiths are the only band whose back catalogue I’ve completed. With everything else I tend to dip in and out, wanting to hear new voices, experience different styles. I do have favourite writers- Orwell, Dickens, Townsend, Salinger and Heller – but I haven’t read everything they’ve ever written. The author I’ve come closest to covering is Roddy Doyle.

Aged sixteen I picked up a copy of The Commitments from the library and thought, ‘this is the author for me.’ It had what all great literature needs: ordinary characters, inventive swearing, comedy and soul. Prize-winning literature often negates this holy square, instead it has university professors endure personal crisis over whether their paper will be read by one or two people. Essentially, it’s ivory tower autobiography as opposed to real world reportage. I recognise all authors work from their study, but the difference between 'important' writers and great writers is the former live there, whereas the latter leave them to find their stories.

Roddy Doyle was born to a middle-class family in Dublin. After studying at University College Dublin, he became a secondary school teacher in a community school. Here, he met Paul Mercier, a talented teacher and moonlighting playwright; seeing his gritty plays inspired Doyle to capture the spit and sawdust of city life. His first book The Commitments was about a group of unemployed Dubliners seeking fame and fortune in a Soul band. Its protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte is aptly named: he has been a rabbit’s foot for Doyle’s career, being the leading vehicle in three other novels, The Snapper, The Van and The Guts. Just as we followed Adrian Mole from pimpled adolescence to middle-aged health scares, so to do we with Jimmy Rabbitte. To create an enduring character is something few authors achieve; to have a satellite of other great novels points to a master.

The last Doyle book I read was Roy Keane’s autobiography. It’s not often a Booker-Prize author (one of few winners to feature working-class characters) is tasked with ghosting a footballer’s life, but like I say Doyle isn’t like most writers. I love the fact Doyle has one foot in popular culture and the other in unpopular culture (the average literary author earns a £11,000 a year). Like Mike Leigh, he recognises that narrative shouldn’t be co-opted by the middle-class, the working people should have their lives, their heroes recognised.

Roy Keane promoting his fisherman lost at sea look.

Smile is Doyle’s latest work, I first heard about it on Jarlath Regan’s fantastic podcast An Irishman Abroad. Doyle talked about the story’s origins: whilst in a Catholic Brotherhood school he led a cheeky campaign against homework; his teacher’s response, ‘Roddy Doyle, I can never resist your smile.’ Fortunately, nothing happened to Doyle in school; however, since leaving he’s aware that others weren’t so fortunate. The comment got him thinking of how openly the Brothers abused their power. As totems in the community, they were impervious to attack. If a child went home and complained about their teacher’s behaviour, the family would side with the Church. These men were representatives of God: they had Divine Rule; to speak out against them would damn you and your family to Hell. Better to put the Brothers behaviour down to eccentricities and idiosyncrasies than face the cold, hard truth: these men were animals, wolves in God’s clothing, tearing children from innocence.

The book begins with Victor Forde in the pub, nursing his pint, licking his wounds after love's gone wrong. He’s broken, but not beaten. It’s a solitary life: the bartender now replacing his lady for confidences - it’s a life nonetheless. However, this lonely cocoon is broken when in one day slinks Fitzpatrick: a gut wearing shorts. Immediately, Fitzpatrick is upon him, recalling their school days and a sister Victor had a boner for. Victor’s memory stumbles across the girl, but it can’t unearth the man. Fitzpatrick goads him, invoking the story of them in class together, when the Brother made the remark: “Victor Forde, I can never resist your smile.” The premise is Pinter’s The Birthday Party, an unexpected visitor precipitating a character’s crisis – yet Doyle does it with such sleight of hand you’ll be open-mouthed when the rabbit’s revealed at the end.

Pinter's The Birthday Party must have been an inspiration. Pic. courtesy of FT.

I appreciate at the beginning of this piece I praised Doyle for his humour, and now reading this you might be questioning how a story with abuse at its centre could have any comedy. Well, for much of the book childhood trauma is down in the cellar, lost amongst the barrels. Out front, facing the customers, is Victor’s adult life: how he met, married and lost his wife Rachel. The pub conversations from recent work Two Pints is there, so too the family dynamic of his Barrytown Trilogy, meaning humour still holds a place in this eerie tale.

One of my favourite scenes involves Victor meeting Rachel’s father, the notorious Mister Carey. Here’s a sample for you to enjoy:

- Hello, Mister Carey.
- Jim
It was a threat, a verb. He was going to Jim me and it was going to hurt.
….
- What sort of a name is Victor?
- Dad - !
- I mean, where does it come from? What’s the history?
- It’s just a name, I said.
It was the best I could do. My notoriety, my adult credentials, were hiding behind the drum kit, shivering.
- Leave him alone, said Rachel.
She patted my arm and patted her father’s arm. We headed for one of the rooms at the front of the house. She patted my arse. She didn’t pat his. I was ahead.

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Look at the comic brio at play here. He captures  how a noun sounds like a verb in the wrong mouth. That personification of his front man 'notoriety' running for cover at the back of the stage is sublime. And the repetitious back-and-forth of ‘she patted’ allowing for the knockout blow of ‘she didn’t pat his’ proves the man knows funny. In possessing the blarney of the pub and the brain of the library, Doyle is the perfect writer.

If you like Smile, then I recommend John McDonagh’s Calvary on Netflix, which broaches a similar topic with black humour and grey pathos. Although the title might be ironic, having Doyle on your bookshelf really is something worth smiling about.

Smile is out now.