Christmas Movies Month: In Theaters Now: Lady Bird

Lady Bird (2017)

Lady Bird, a new coming of age story written and directed by Greta Gerwig, opens with a quote from Joan Didion, “Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.” Didion was born and raised in Sacramento, as was Gerwig, as is Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, the title character of this critically acclaimed film. (The film is not only making most of the “Ten Best Films of 2017” lists, it has a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes -- with a record high number of reviews.)

This month we’re pushing the definition of a Christmas film here at Movie Churches, but this film not only opens with that quote mentioning Christmas, and we also get to see Lady Bird celebrate Christmas with her family. “Dance of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker is even included in the soundtrack.

And for this blog, it should be noted that there are churches, and there are clergy: priests and nuns. Lady Bird’s family doesn’t appear to be at all religious (Gerwig, who based this story on her own life, was raised Unitarian Universalist). Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) is sent by her parents to a Catholic school, not for religious reasons, but for safety’s sake (Lady Bird’s mother repeatedly mentions her son, Lady Bird’s brother, seeing a knifing outside a Sacramento public school.)

They’re not not required to fully participate. Sometimes Lady Bird appears to join in with the  singing and unison prayers, and sometimes she does not. When communion is distributed Lady Bird crosses her arms, which is often a request for a blessing while refusing communion. Lady Bird is also required to attend an anti abortion assembly and is suspended when we she argues against the guest speaker (to be fair, it is probably because Lady Bird uses obscenities in her argument.)

Films featuring Catholic Schools often portray the priests and nuns as being out of touch and clueless, even in films meaning to present them as positive (like last week’s featured film, The Bells of St. Mary’s). In films like Sing Street, the priests are downright mean -- if not outright evil. The teachers in Lady Bird really seem like kind people and good teachers.

Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith) genuinely cares about her students and presses them academically. She encourages them to read Augustine, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard (warning students that his description of “falling in love with God” will make them “swoon.”) When she chaperones the school dance, she encourages couples not to dance too close together, saying “Leave six inches for the Holy Spirit.” She also monitors skirt length, but not harshly. And when Lady Bird plays a mean-spirited practical joke on Sister Sarah Joan, the nun takes in all in good fun.

Lady Bird and her friend Julie sign up for the school drama program which is taught by Father Leviatch (Stephen Henderson). He obviously loves the theater and enthusiastically leads drama exercises along with his rehearsals. He takes on a very challenging musical, Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. We see students gossiping about the priest, wondering how he came into the priesthood. They say he was married before, and his son died because of suicide or a drug overdose. He seems to suffer great emotional stress which leads to his leaving his position at the school.

Father Walther (Bob Stephenson) takes over as drama teacher, but his experience is in coaching football. His passionate direction of a rehearsal like football practice is probably the funniest scene in the film..

We see that Lady Bird is not exactly devout. She and Julie steal the communion wafers for snacking (but before they are consecrated). She mocks the priests and nuns, but when she goes off to college, we see that her days at Catholic school had an impact. Belief in God means something to her, as does church. The school may not have made her a Catholic, but she has been changed.

If this blog was for evaluating films, I’d happily join all the other critics in their praise of Lady Bird. Instead, I’ll praise the nuns and priests in the film, giving them the highest Movie Church rating of Four Steeples.

(Rated R for language and sexual content)

New York Movie on the Big Screen

I grew up singing along with the radio, “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.” Everyone knew that song, because everyone knew who the boxing heavyweight champion of the world was; whether it was during Muhammad Ali’s reign or George Foreman’s or Smokin’ Joe Frazier’s. In junior high, we talked at snack break about the fight on pay per view that we couldn’t afford to watch. On rainy days our P.E.  teacher, Mr. Grey, would sometimes show ABC’s Wide World of Sports highlights reels, often featuring Ali (sometimes from back in his Cassius Clay days). The last time I knew the belt holder was in Mike Tyson’s day. When Ali passed away a few weeks ago, it felt like the death of that part of my childhood.

Which is why, when I saw that Michael Mann’s 2001 Ali was playing at a local theater in Staten Island, I knew it would be our New York theater film. (Actually, it wasn’t our first choice. We hoped to visit Nitehawk Theater in Brooklyn because it’s rated as one of the best theaters in New York on various polls and lists. But the show we wanted was sold out, so we didn’t see The Lobster there.)

Ali was playing at a United Artists Theater. I worked several years for a UA theater in my college days, but when we went inside we found that the box office and the lobby were covered with Regal Cinema merchandising. Sad to hear UA had merged with Regal (and Edwards). Regal seems to be taking over all the theaters in the nation.

But neither Mindy or I had seen Ali, which was acclaimed upon its release. Will Smith was deservedly nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Ali. I thought it was a cool thing to re-release the film in honor of Ali’s passing, and the ticket tearer told us that after Prince died, the theater screened Purple Rain. I wish theaters did this kind of thing more often. Still, considering that we were the only ones attending our matinee show, I understand why they usually don’t.

Religion plays a big role in the film, as it did in Ali’s life. Much of America was shocked when Cassius Clay joined the Nation of Islam. Clay appears embarrassed by the Christian faith of his father, who painted blonde haired, blue eyed portraits of Jesus for African American churches. The Nation changed his name to Ali, but many Americans wouldn’t acknowledge the change. Ali faced even more opposition when he was drafted and refused to serve in Vietnam. When he faced prison time for that decision, the Nation of Islam excommunicated him; he was not allowed to go to the mosque to worship or communicate with other Black Muslims. The film also portrays another man excommunicated from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X. (We see Malcolm preaching against turning the other cheek.) After Ali won his case before the Supreme Court, he was reinstated.

Best of all for this post, Ali was partially set and filmed in New York. We see the Apollo Theater and hear about the New York State Athletic Commission banning Ali for his decision to refuse the draft (though they did allow convicted murderers to fight). Admittedly, it is less difficult to find a New York film than a film made in most other states. But we almost went to see The Lobster at the Nitehawk, and it was filmed in Ireland.

New York Movies on the Small Screen

There are states where I search high and low to find a few films set and/or shot in a state. Face the facts, Delaware, you are not the new Hollywood. But then we come to New York. Aside from California, more films have been made in and about New York than any other state. So the problem I face here is not trying to scrape enough films together to write about, but to narrow films down. Instead of a dozen films, there are thousands of films to choose from. So I needed a system.  I decided to go with a dozen New York films from a dozen of the best of American directors.

You might be surprised that when I say that I’m talking about the best of directors, I first bring up Rob Reiner. It’s been a couple of decades since he made a decent film. But for one decade, he made some of my favorite films. One of the most quoted comedies of all time is his mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, and a number of people would call The Princess Bride their all time favorite films. And one of the best of romantic comedies -- and New York films -- is Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally. Made in 1989, the film brings to life the Rodgers and Hart song, “I Could Write a Book,” by showing “how to make two lovers of friends.” There is a lot of talk of sex in the film, but it is also a celebration of marriage, with an interesting device of interspersing the story of Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) with old couples telling their love stories.

And the film is full of New York icons: the Yankees and the Giants, ice skating in Central Park, marvelous views of the skyline, and, of course, delis. Nora Ephron’s screenplay makes this the best Woody Allen film Woody never made.

My favorite film director is Alfred Hitchcock. He made a number of films partially set in New York (such as North by Northwest which we will come back to in a later state), but The Wrong Man was filmed primarily in NYC and is also set entirely in the city. It is also unique in that it is based on a true story, and it’s not a thriller. Henry Fonda is a man falsely accused of robbery, and the film follows his struggles with the criminal justice system. There are also some faith moments in the film, as Fonda turns to God for help. Aside from I Confess, it’s Hitch’s film most filled with Catholic imagery.

My second favorite director is Akira Kurosawa. You may not be shocked to discover the Japanese director never directed a film about New York. But another favorite, Billy Wilder, did make a great New York film. 1960’s The Apartment won that year’s Oscar for Best Picture. The moral satire shows that Fred MacMurray could play sleazy as well as he played avuncular.

My favorite director(s) currently working are Joel and Ethan Coen. They’ve made films in all parts of the country, and they have worked in New York. 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis is the tale of a folk singer in the early 1960’s going to Greenwich Village to seek his fortune. It has a wonderful soundtrack rivaled only by the soundtrack for the Coens’ Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? For a key to what the film is all about, pay attention to the name of the cat.

The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, won the 1972 Oscar for Best Picture, and since then has often topped polls of the best films ever made. The film has scenes in a great variety of locations, including Italy, but a majority of the film is set (and was filmed) in New York City. There is a climatic scene in a church, the baptism of a child, within a montage of great acts of violence.

John Huston, a two time Oscar winner, directed a lesser known but very good New York gangster film, Prizzi’s Honor. Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner star as two professional killers who fall in love and (inevitably) are given the assignment to knock off the other.

The drug trade is the theme of William Friedkin’s Best Picture Winner, The French Connection.

Mob control of the unions was the subject of Elia Kazan’s Best Picture Winner, On the Waterfront (which featured Marlon Brando’s famous “I could have been a contender” speech and the film will be featured soon when Movie Churches looks at the Mob).

Crime was set to music in Robert Wise’s West Side Story, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet featuring juvenile delinquency, dance, and the Big Apple.

West Side Story also won the Academy Award for Best Picture, but it was not the first musical that featured location filming in NYC. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s musical, On the Town, was the first MGM musical to film on location and it has fewer deaths than WSS.

I asked my daughter Jil, who lives in Brooklyn, what I should feature as a New York film and she suggested 2012’s Frances Ha. Directed by Noah Baumbach, creator of a number of independently produced comedies, the film features a millennial woman belatedly coming of age. Jil suggested the film because she likes it and because it features upstate New York and not just the city.

If one was to pick the quintessential New York director, it seems the two most likely options would be Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. And because life isn’t fair, I’m not including a Scorsese film (sorry, Marty). I will include Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.  Chuck Colson once listed this comedy/drama as essential Christian viewing. In the film, a man gets away with a crime and finds that the worst possible punishment is not being caught. It is my favorite film by Allen and like most of Allen’s work, it is set and filmed in New York.

(Coming Wednesday, another New York film by a great American director, as seen on  the big screen)