ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Lois Smith

Freeing Lady Bird – 1on1 with Lois Smith

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Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird is a coming-of-age drama that tells the story of Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a young woman growing up in Sacramento in 2002. Living with her parents and adopted brother, she has an increasingly strained relationship with her mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), as she prepares to graduate high school and move on with her life.

In Lady Bird, Smith plays Sister Sarah Joan, a nun in the Catholic school where Lady Bird attends. When asked what attracted her to the role, Smith says she sensed a deep love for others in her character.

“Well, I think she is such a lovely grown up,” she begins. “She’s compassionate, a wonderful teacher and she has humour. The scenes are beautifully written so the clarity of them is present. It was just a pleasure.”

With the film garnering increasing awards consideration, Smith believes that people are responding so positively because of the authenticity of the script.

“It’s the real thing,” she states. “That’s what I think. It’s the writing, the people, the characters and relationships, the story – they’re all genuine and exciting and real and I think people respond to that.”

According to Smith, one of the most appealing aspects of working on Lady Bird was working with director, Greta Gerwig. Although it was Gerwig’s first time in the director’s chair, Smith feels that she brings a clarity and confidence to her storytelling that help bring the film to life.

“I already knew that she was a fascinating and wonderful actress and had some exposure to her writing,” she acknowledges. “I think that what she brings is an amazing wisdom and a great skill. Her skill as an actress, I’m dazzled by. As a director? I felt she make clear, honest moves all the time… What I see in her is a capable and a true mind. It’s really quite a beautiful palette.”

In addition, Smith also had the opportunity to work closely with an incredible cast of young stars such as Saoirse Ronan, Lucas Hedges and Timothee Chalamet. When asked what she believes today’s youth need to help them feel loved and supported, Smith confesses that because the world is changing so rapidly, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to know how to help them.

“When you speak about the character I play, that seems like such a wonderful model of the kind of care and ability to reach… young people,” she reflects. “It was a wonderful cast of young people and it was a pleasure to be with them. It’s hard to say… I guess I feel like young people have a lot to contend with, beyond what I did growing up. So, it’s hard to feel wise about what do they need.”

Given the strained relationship between Lady Bird and her mother, one of Sister Sarah’s more poignant observations within the film draws a line connecting love and simple attention together. Says Smith, the line between the two concepts creates some fascinating dialogue about how we can offer genuine support to one another.

“It’s so provocative. I imagine that it’s a quote from somewhere or at least an allusion…,” she muses. “What I find is that, once that connection is drawn, it’s almost like a knot has been tied between love and attention. What’s love without attention? What’s attention without love? Do they create each other or support each other? It’s so wonderful to think about once it’s been spoken.”

An acting veteran, Smith’s career has provided her with opportunities in a wide variety of artistic mediums, ranging from television to film to live theatre. When asked if she has a personal preference, she recognizes that, although every medium offers unique challenges and experiences, some of her favourite experiences have come through live theatre.

“If I did have to declare a favourite, I’d probably have to say the theatre because that’s where I started and that’s where I continue to work regularly,” she affirms. “I’ve been very fortunate in having wonderful plays and roles to do, even though the common place wisdom is that, as you get older, your parts will become fewer and less good but that has not been my experience in recent years. It’s a different way of putting it together. In the theatre, you come together in rehearsal and build something together. That’s a different use of time and it fits different techniques, though basically the bottom seeds of acting are the same.”

“Time is such an ingredient in everything and I’m so aware of it in theatre. It’s a very different way of putting something together. Both are fascinating and both offer different and interesting challenges. Intimacy with which the audience sees the actors in a movie is something very special. On the other hand, the immediacy of presence together in the theatre, that’s very special too. They’re not the same.”

 

Lady Bird is in theatres now.

Lady Bird – Discovering a Best Self

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“I wish I could live through something.”

The senior year of high school, the cusp of adulthood, is the setting for Lady Bird, the coming-of-age comic drama from writer/director Greta Gerwig. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Rowan) is at that point where she is not satisfied with her life. Her hometown of Sacramento seems to be the epitome of nowhere. Her family, which is struggling financially, is somewhat embarrassing to her. Even her image of herself isn’t what she wants it to be, and so she has chosen her own name.

Lady Bird’s senior year (2002-3) is almost a holding pattern for her desire to leave and live the kind of life she believes exists in other places. She wants to go to New York for college, even though her grades are mediocre and her family can’t afford much. Along the way there is experimentation with acting, boyfriends. There is typical teenage heartbreak. But mostly there is conflict with her mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).

Marion is very pragmatic. She hunts for bargains. She works two shifts. She tries to push Lady Bird out of her own self-absorption. There are times she and Lady Bird bond as mothers and daughters often do, but they also irritate and repel each other as mothers and daughters often do. Marion often seems hard or angry, but she is always loving. Lady Bird only senses the animosity, leading her at one point to say “I wish that you liked me.” But she fails to see just how much Marion and Lady Bird’s father (Tracy Letts) do for her. Lady Bird is often cruel in her relationship with her mother. Never in big ways, but she tends to wound with a thousand small cuts.

There is a great sense of reality to this relationship, in not small part because of the reality of the characters. Ronan’s portrayal of Lady Bird is not about a great teenage angst, just the day-to-day struggle to understand who she is and wants to be. Metcalf’s Marion is not a saccharine best friend or a dominating harridan. She is struggling with her own understandings of Lady Bird and her desires for Lady Bird’s future.

There is also a spiritual dimension to Lady Bird’s story. Because she attends a Catholic high school (although apparently not Catholic herself), there are scenes that take place in religious services, and priests and nuns play roles in her life and growth. The religious aspect is always treated with respect. The religious characters are just as human as everyone else in the story. The most prominent is Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith), the school’s principal who provides a touch of grace in nearly every scene she is in.  And although Lady Bird may not seem to be outwardly religious, the environment that the church has provided through her time at school, provides her with a place to re-center herself when she discovers life away from home is not as different as she had hoped.

This is one of those films that has me wanting to go back to Ecclesiastes. Certainly Lady Bird thinks “There is nothing new under the Sun” (at least in Sacramento). She is busy looking for meaning and happiness in wealth, or sex, or fame, as did Qoheleth. And like Ecclesiastes the discoveries of meaning are found within.

I saw this film on Thanksgiving weekend, and it was amazingly appropriate. So much of our time is spent being oblivious to the many things we have because we so often focus on the things we do not have. That is very much Lady Bird’s experience with the world. Sacrament seems to her to be a place to escape from, even though when she wrote an essay about it, Sister Sarah Joan says it shows she loves this place. She sees her family as an embarrassment, but also a place of love. She thinks she has never really experienced any thing of import, but each little thing adds up to a life time. Which brings us to the quote I use to open this review. It is one of the first lines in the film. By the end, we know (and Lady Bird is discovering) that she has been living through a great deal. That is an important first step in appreciating the world and the people around us.

Photos courtesy of A24.

Marjorie Prime – Do You Remember?

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Think of an important event in your life. Do you remember it the same as someone else who was there? Do you remember it the same as you did a few years ago? Marjorie Prime is about the relationship between reality and memory. Based on a Pulitzer-nominated play, the film is a cerebrally challenging encounter between the past and what it means to us.

Marjorie (Lois Smith) is a woman in her 80s whose memories are quickly fading. We see her talking to a much younger man, Walter (Jon Hamm). But this is set in the near future and Walter is an artificial intelligence hologram of her late husband. He has been programmed to tell her the story of her life. Of course, his understanding is only as accurate as the memories that have been fed into his program. In the interaction between Marjorie and Walter, he is able to adjust his memory to accommodate new facts or perspectives. Perhaps he can even change the story to make it better. Marjorie’s daughter Tess (Geena Davis) finds it a bit creepy that the hologram represents her father as a young man. Her husband Jon (Tim Robbins) believes this is a chance to help Marjorie remember and to continue to have a bit of joy in her final years. In time, both Tess and Jon find new ways of using the technology in their own lives.

The stage play character of the film make this really about the conversations between the various characters. Some of those are about past memories, but some are also about the nature of memory itself. At one point it is mentioned that when we remember something, we are really remembering our last remembrance of it. Each time we may remember it slightly differently, so the cumulative effect of repeated remembrances could actually be much different from the reality. But if that is so, which is more important, the actual event or the evolved memory that we hold? This is especially relevant when our memories are sometimes unpleasant. Do we really want to remember them? Do we never want to forget them?

As I said, this is an intellectually challenging film. (To me, that is a good thing.) When my wife and I saw this with a friend, it led to quite a bit of discussion after the film. This kind of slightly esoteric questioning may not appeal to some. But for those who want to be jarred into thinking about the things you remember (or think you remember), Marjorie Prime will be well worth the time. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year.