The Ultimate Glow-Up
From YA to Drama, Ronan Dazzles as Lady Bird Lead
by Jenna Lennon
Before I knew Saoirse Ronan as Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson in Lady Bird, she was the star of that movie my mom really didn’t want me to see (The Lovely Bones) and that movie I didn’t really want to see (The Host). Of course, at the time, I didn’t know that’s who she was; I was still in middle school and early high school (respectively), and I didn’t care much for actors or actresses that weren’t named Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, or Kristen Stewart so I never separated Ronan from her work enough to acknowledge her talents as an actress. I only knew that the adaptation of Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones was sure to freak me out, and Stephanie Meyer’s novel The Host could never top her first young adult romance series (the Twilight series, of course). But now, several years after her standout YA adaptation performances, she’s very much a contender for Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards, up for her third Oscar nomination for Lady Bird.
When I finally saw The Lovely Bones, it did exactly what I expected it to do: set in 1973, Ronan’s fourteen year old Susie Salmon is brutally murdered by her neighbor on her walk from school, sending chills down my spine in an eery, all-too-realistic sort of way. It was a story I never wanted to experience, but The Lovely Bones did just that; Ronan’s doe-eyed innocence made it impossible to forget that a fictitious story doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Ronan was only thirteen when she was cast as Susie, and she handles the complexity of the character and the story with a wisdom beyond her years. I bought the book on my Kindle just moments after finishing the movie, but I’ve never gotten past much more than the first few pages without having to put it down again; Ronan’s performance makes it excruciatingly difficult to forget the look on her face while she’s face to face with her captor or as she’s watching over her family from the In Between, stuck between Heaven and Earth.
In the 2013 adaptation of The Host, Saoirse Ronan plays Melanie Stryder, who’s on the run from parasitic-type aliens called “Souls” that inhabit people’s bodies and suppress their memories. Melanie is inhabited by a soul called “Wanderer” and sets out on an internal struggle against her own consciousness and the Soul taking over her. The movie, as a whole, was pretty mediocre with unpolished plot elements and wonky special effects, but Ronan’s struggle with herself and her inhibitor make the sci-fi fantasy enjoyable to watch.
Both films overall were poorly received by critics, but Saoirse Ronan still managed to be the standout performance despite a mediocre script for The Host and off-putting direction from Peter Jackson for The Lovely Bones. Ronan’s performances garnered numerous awards and nominations, from Choice Movie Actress for the 2013 Teen Choice Awards or Best Actress in a Leading Role for the 63rd British Academy Film Awards.
When I first saw Lady Bird, I understood the hype. It had just been released, so the excitement was mostly from commercials and pre-screenings for film critics, but either way I knew this movie would live up to my expectations. Christine McPherson is different; she’s senior in high school with pink hair and a Catholic-school-girl rebel aesthetic who doesn’t plan on going to any number of colleges that her mom and her school deem best for her. Instead, she dreams of going to a university in New York and insists on being called Lady Bird.
Lady Bird is the story of every kind of mother-daughter relationship rolled into a 93 minute tear-jerking film. Ronan’s on-screen relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf as Marion McPherson, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role) is passive-aggressive and uncomfortable yet full of unconditional love and admiration in a way that brought me to tears for the sheer realness of it all. When an argument over prom dress shopping is resolved after finding the perfect dress or every argument that lasts just a little too long, Lady Bird captures every eye roll, every huff of breath, everything I’ve ever said and instantly regretted in a beautiful, captivating, and angsty way.
There’s seemingly no connection from The Lovely Bones to The Host and now to Lady Bird, but Saoirse Ronan’s performances push her beyond her abilities. She finds a way to shine through the mediocre scripts and poor directorial decisions, so naturally when Saoirse Ronan is surrounded by a brilliant director and an even more brilliant screenplay (Greta Gerwig nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay), she’s sure to stand her ground and continue her powerfully captivating performances with an entire cast and crew to match.