'Moonlight' and 'Lady Bird': Stories of Home

ABSTRACT

The following is a paper I wrote for my introduction to film course as my midterm. The goal was to write a paper comparing and contrasting two of our favourite films. For me, there wasn't a more obvious pairing than Moonlight (2016) and Lady Bird (2017), two of my favourite films of the decade and a couple of my all time favourites. Both are powerful stories of home and personal history that have each left a profound impact upon me. I couldn't just throw away on opportunity to study them further in detail. Without further ado, the essay . . .

Seth Schouten
FILM 100-1
Professor Kenton Macdonald-Lin
Originally written: 1 November 2019

Now published: 26 November 2019

'Moonlight' and 'Lady Bird': Stories of Home

INTRODUCTION

What does it mean for a film to be personal? Does that mean it is autobiographical, or that it is some sort of story about a filmmaker’s own family. Maybe it needs to be a commentary on something they have felt or a stage of life they have been in. Or maybe still it has to be about their own thoughts and ideas about the world. Personal stories have existed in cinema for a very long time. They are many fantastic films that meet each of the criteria perfectly. Works like Roma (2018), The Farewell (2019), and American Graffiti (1973) all come to mind as being deeply personal films. However, there are two films that serve as the best examples of this type of cinema.

For the best examples of a ‘personal’ film, I present two of my favourite films: Moonlight (2016) and Lady Bird (2017). Both movies not only serve as incredible examples of cinema at its finest, but a very personal style of filmmaking that has come to define a lot of contemporary independent work. Lady Bird and Moonlight, both distributed by indie studio A24 films, are two incredibly moving, personal, brilliantly written, expertly made, and deeply powerful works of cinema and will go down as cinematic legends of this era.

Moonlight, written and directed by Barry Jenkins and based on the unpublished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney, is about three pivotal stages in the life of Chiron Harris, a young gay man growing up in Liberty City, a neighbourhood of Miami, Florida. “Moonlight is such a Miami story” said Jenkins while in an interview with Gerwig. Jenkins grew up in Liberty City and wanted to make the film feel authentic to that place. He had a strong sense of where everything needed to be set, what the light needed to be, and how the camera needed to move in order to capture Miami (Gerwig and Jenkins, “All the Way Home”).

Set over the course of two decades, the film is divided up into three segments, each detailing a pivotal time in Chrion’s life. In the first segment, entitled “Little”, six-year-old Chiron befriends a man named Juan and his wife Teresa who become great positive influence and mentors on Chiron. They teach him about valuing himself and learning to accept himself. In the second segment, “Chiron”, teenage Chiron deals with extreme bullying and abuse from people within his school, his straining relationship with his drug addicted mother Paula, and his growing feelings for his classmate Kevin. In the third segment, “Black”, adult Chiron returns to Miami, reconnects with his mother, now in rehab, and with Kevin, who runs a restaurant, and confronts his long repressed feelings.

Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, tells the story of Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson’s senior year of high school and her tense relationship with her mother. The film explores the idea of transitioning to adulthood, the relationship between mother and daughters, and the emotions of such a pivotal time of life.

Gerwig had an obsession with making the film feel realistic. “When I was writing [Lady Bird],” said Gerwig, “I had certainty of what I wanted it to look like: down to little things [. . .] the way that the interiors of the house had this very specific light” (Gerwig and Jenkins, “All the Way Home”). In an interview with IndieWire, Gerwig said that she “wanted the film to look like a memory” (O’Falt, “How Greta Gerwig’s Brilliant Use of Colors Turned ‘Lady Bird’ Into an Emotional Nostalgia Trip”). She worked hard with cinematographer Sam Levy and colourist Alex Bickel to feel the “paper” of the film by altering the digital image to create an artificial grain in order to make the film feel as authentic and real as possible (Gerwig, “All the Way Home”).

Both Lady Bird and Moonlight come from the emotions, feelings, and imaginations of Gerwig and Jenkins. They are equally mesmerizing works of cinematic art and come from similar places emotionally and contextually, but differ completely in execution. These two films give an excellent example of just how diverse and powerful cinema can be when used to its full potential.


'LADY BIRD' AND THE RECREATION OF MEMORY

Although they stem from similar places emotional and contextually, Lady Bird and Moonlight are two thoroughly different films. They bear no similarity to each other tone, score, soundtrack, cinematography, production, and narrative. Lady Bird maintains a strong, realistic, and visual gritty look. With its preference for medium and wide shots, a saturated yet earthy colour pallet - a look which makes the look very much like a California fall, the human performances, and snappy dialogue, the film feels like a slice out of a real life. Gerwig delivers a sharp and direct representation of a specific time of life. Gerwig wants to simply tell the story of Lady Bird, her friends, her loves, and her mother. These elements reflect larger ideas, which I will discuss further in a later section of this essay, but the focus is ultimately on Lady Bird and her life.

This works to great effect. Lady Bird is honest - it holds nothing back and is willing to be transparent about all of the best parts and worst parts of its protagonist. Gerwig, when speaking of the inspiration behind Lady Bird, said that she was “everything I wished I was in high school” (Gerwig and Jenkins, “All the Way Home”). Lady Bird is passionate, and stubborn, and strong willed, but she is far from perfect. The film ends with Lady Bird, now away during her first semester at college, realising that she treated her mother badly and she misses the place where she grew up. It ends with a heartbreaking message Lady Bird leaves on her mother’s phone showing just how far she has come.

Gerwig’s writing is a standout of the film. She has a fantastic ability to not only compelling characters, but fantastic dialogue as well. Her scenes are filled with funny, quick dialogue. Although not as extreme as an Aaron Sorkin script, Gerwig pacts every line with so much character, care, and humour. The film ends up being quotable and powerful at the same time, which is not an easy task. It is one thing to write a funny movie with memorable one liners and it is another to write a powerful, emotional story - but it is an even greater achievement to not just do both in one movie, a la Taika Waititi, but be able to flawlessly do both simultaneously. Gerwig takes clear inspiration and influence in her writing from her frequent collaborator and romantic partner Noah Baumbach. The two have worked together closely numerous projects, including Greenberg (2010), Frances Ha (2012), and Mistress America (2015). Gerwig commented on the inspiration she took from Baumbach saying that she learned his practice of vetting each and every line of a script in order to ensure that every single one works. This practice was pivotal in taking her original draft of Lady Bird, at the time called Mothers and Daughters, down from 360 pages to the shoot script size of 120 pages (Gerwig and Jenkins, “All the Way Home”).

The script would be nothing if it were not for the performances from the talented cast. Lady Bird stars Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird and Laurie Metcalf as her mother Marion, the film’s other central character. Ronan and Metcalf share an electric onscreen chemistry and portray the dynamic between the two character perfectly - a scene between them will jump between being hilarious to heartbreak without missing a beat. Filling out the immensely talented cast is Tony award winner Tracy Letts, Academy award nominated Lucas Hedges, Beanie Feldstein, and two-time Academy nominee Timothee Chalamet - who together glide effortlessly through Gerwig’s screenplay and deliver a consistently amazing mix of performances.

As mentioned earlier, Gerwig worked with colourist Alex Bickel and cinematographer Sam Levy to ensure that Lady Bird had a grainy, tactile visual feeling, a choice which, like everything else in the film, worked wonderfully. The film feels like an old, film photograph. Although shot on digital, more specifically on the Alexa Mini, the artificial old-school, late 90s aesthetic keeps the feeling of memory alive.

Gerwig creates a passionate, brilliantly funny, and simple-yet-powerful story of childhood and maturity. She ensures through her writing and direction, and boosted through incredible performances, that the story feels tactile and personable. It is committed to its charm and style through its light, comedic tone, and biting, personal story. Moonlight takes a completely different approach to filmmaking.


MOONLIGHT AND THE RECREATION OF DREAM

If Lady Bird is the recreation of a memory, then Moonlight is the recreation of a dream. Instead of spending a single year in the life of his protagonist, like in the case of Lady Bird, Jenkins choses three moments over the course of twenty years to spend with Chiron. While Moonlight is broad in overarching scope, the moments we do spend with our protagonist are far more specific with the each segment taking place over a few days. So much happens in the years between the segments, Juan dies, Chiron goes to prison, Kevin’s marriage, Chrion’s mother’s rehab, but Jenkins chooses to skip over them and just focus on the bare essentials of the narrative. Gerwig recreates the memory of Lady Bird, but Jenkins recreates the dreams of Chiron.

These dreamy atmosphere is primarily created through the cinematography of the film. Jenkins worked with cinematographer James Laxton, who has served as cinematographer on all three of Jenkins’ feature films, to create a visual style that looks vivid, yet not so real. “The camera feels like a dancer,” Gerwig noted to Jenkins, to which he agreed (Gerwig and Jenkins, “All the Way Home”). I have to thoroughly agree with that sentiment. The camera moves fluidly through each scene, constantly moving and never stopping. Two scenes from first section of the film, “Little”, are the most emblematic of the strategy: the first being the opening scene with Juan and the second being Juan teaching Chiron how to swim. The first of those scenes is done in a single take and moves in and around the characters in the scene, and in the second the camera bounces in and out of the water.

The film is filled with cinematography that is designed to capture emotions of events, rather that what is literally happening. Moonlight uses intense closeups, low angles, shaky cam, and direct shots of characters looking directly into the camera in order to bring out the emotion of whatever is being felt: desperation, anger, love, serenity, or sincerity. Not only is the film shot well and with so much meaning and intention behind it, it also looks vibrant and lively thanks to the excellent colouring of Alex Bickel, the same Alex Bickel who coloured Lady Bird. Moonlight is soaked in rich blue and purple tones, a visual concept which stems from the Juan’s title-inspiring line: “in the moonlight, black boys look blue.”

The film further creates this dreamy feeling through its editing and score, two elements which greatly intertwine here. The editing in “Little” is far more sporadic and the soundtrack is more airy elusive by heavily using violins, this being most notable in the aforementioned swimming scene. The editing in the second segment, “Chiron”, is more aggressive and cuts harder than in “Little”, which emphasises the anger and frustration Chiron feels towards those around him. The editing then returns abruptly in one scene to its calming former self in one scene in “Chiron” when Chiron and Kevin share an intimate moment on the beach, but then snaps back to its visceral style in the next scene. By the time we arrive at the final section, “Black”, the editing has become nothing more than standard and the score has disappeared, now replaced by a hip-hop soundtrack. Chiron has evolved. He has moved past the emotions in Miami. He’s a new man. Then he meets with Kevin again, and the music becomes soft and the editing returns to the feeling of dream.


THEMES, COMMENTARY, MEANING, AND MOTHERS

Both Lady Bird and Moonlight are filled with symbolism, complex themes, social commentary, as well as a very notable emphasis on mothers. Lady Bird serves as a reflection on the relationship between a mother and her daughter and the sometimes difficult period of life that is senior year of high school in which a person is not fully an adult. Moonlight does a similar thing, but decides to explore a more challenge life than the one that Lady Bird faces. Moonlight explores drug usage, morality, and growing up in a broken neighbourhood. Both films emphasize these themes through the inclusion of the mother-child relationship with Marion and Lady Bird in Lady Bird and Paula and Chiron in Moonlight.

Both Jenkins and Gerwig have spoken at length about how their mothers impacted the project and their respective process of developing the various stories. “In Moonlight,” said Jenkins, “Naomie Harris is playing this sort of an amalgamation of my mom and Tarell McCraney’s [the author of the original play] mom” (Gerwig and Jenkins, “All the Way Home”). Jenkins and Gerwig found that having characters that were inspired by people in their lives was deeply emotional, especially for Jenkins who shot all of Harris’ parts in Moonlight over the course of three days. Gerwig went on to say that she didn’t just want to make actress Laurie Metcalf feel like she was playing Gerwig’s mother and made sure that Metcalf understood that she could play around with the character. Each films finds so much of its emotional core within the character of the mother and uses her as a lynch pin on which the development of the protagonist, the film’s impact on the audience, and the overarching emotional ideas and themes is secured.

Moonlight takes the idea of themes to an even further extreme. Because of the dedication to recreating reality Gerwig commits to, her film reads more surface level than Moonlight does. This is not any sort of grievance against Lady Bird. Lady Bird uses this real and relatable story to elicit an emotional connect with the audience. The film wants to make you laugh and to make you cry. And it does this perfectly. Lady Bird is perfectly humourous and heartbreaking all at once. Moonlight aims for a different approach. It is not nearly as ‘relatable’ as Lady Bird is, so it is filled with commentary and deep themes, which exploring fully would be another essay for another day. Moonlight is a commentary on toxic masculinity, emotional vulnerability, how trauma impacts someone over years. It is also deeply metaphorical. The two most notable being the symbolism manifested in the use of moonlight and of water. The moonlight symbolizes vulnerability. It reveals. Scenes set under the moonlight are when characters are at their most vulnerable. The use of water symbolizes cleansing and purity.

These symbols, themes, and emotional concepts are fundamental to both Lady Bird and Moonlight. This is where they get their identity and meaning. The concept of maternity is foundational to both films and yet they explore it in two completely different ways. Their concepts and themes are both so universal, but are executed in ways that feel both unique and effortless at the same time.


CONCLUSION

All art is personal. Art may be grand or sweeping or epic, but all good art comes from a personal place - an emotion, a belief, a stage of life, or a feeling of home. Moonlight and Lady Bird serve as two fantastic examples of this in action. Barry Jenkins and Greta Gerwig have formed two excellent film, films destined to be remembered, that show off humanity at its best and at its worst. They serve as both surface level explorations and celebrations of human emotion and experience, but also deeper themes of compassion, masculinity & femininity, and growing up.

Both Gerwig and Jenkins are deliberate with what elements they include, how they write characters and scenes, and with their choice of setting in order to form an important emotional connection with the audience. They each have a mastery over the craft that is not often seen in cinema. Lady Bird is the memory of growing up and Moonlight is the dream. They are strange in their relationship with one another. With their powerful emotional cores and personal origins, they explore the past and the age old themes of maturity and growth in two ways that complement each other flawlessly, and form a compelling meditation on growing up.



Works Cited

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Gerwig, Gretta and Barry Jenkins. “All the Way Home.” The A24 Podcast. A24 Films.
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“Lady Bird (Film).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 2019.
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“Moonlight (2016 film).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 2019.
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