Greta Gerwig

Barbie: Once in a Keneration

Jeremy BeckReviews
Simu Liu, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling in Barbie

Greta Gerwig likes a challenge. After her smashing debut of Lady Bird, which revitalized the hoary coming-of-age picture (and which this critic deemed one of the best movies of the prior decade), she pivoted to Little Women, a story that’s been adapted so many times, it was hard to imagine anyone breathing new life into it. Yet by leveraging her own ingenuity and craft (not to mention Saoirse Ronan’s eyes), she succeeded, transforming a well-trod literary classic into an urgently modern depiction of female fraternity. Now she turns to Barbie, which presents an even greater adaptive difficulty. After all, here is a live-action summer blockbuster that is based—as its cheeky, 2001-referencing cold open freely acknowledges—on a fucking doll.

Barbie is my least favorite of Gerwig’s three features as a (solo) director to date. But to judge her latest effort purely against the magnificence of her prior accomplishments would be, to quote a blond icon from a different generation, way harsh. If she hasn’t maintained her own level of excellence, she has nevertheless demolished any reasonable set of expectations for what a Mattel-inspired movie could be. Barbie is a fleet and entertaining romp—a gorgeously designed film that buzzes with energy and wit, even as it also makes room for some genuine ideas. Read More

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Little Women: Sisters, Suitors, and Other Nightmares

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, and Eliza Scanlen, in Greta Gerwig's "Little Women"

I keep thinking about the ink smudges. Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation of Little Women is a film of boundless beauty, full of ravishing sights and sounds: bright hoop dresses, handsome estates and gardens, Alexandre Desplat’s piano, Timothée Chalamet’s cheekbones, Saoirse Ronan’s eyes. But amid all of this delicate loveliness is a writer who cannot seem to scrub the stubborn streaks of pencil lead from her hands. The primary hero of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Jo March is the perfect embodiment of Gerwig’s creative spirit—not just because she’s a talented and intelligent artist, but because her work seems to bleed with feeling. Little Women, Gerwig’s second feature following the lightning bolt that was Lady Bird, is a surpassingly elegant movie. It’s also stained with life.

Jo (Ronan), an amateur playwright and aspiring novelist, is one of four mostly grown sisters; the others (in descending order of age) are Meg (Emma Watson), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh). You probably already knew this, seeing as Alcott’s book is beloved, and has previously been transferred to the silver screen four times, with Jo being played by personalities as varied as Katharine Hepburn and Winona Ryder. And so, the question that initially hovers over this incarnation of Little Women—the same skeptical inquiry that lurks beneath any new adaptation of a repeatedly staged classic—is why it needed to be made, why it stands out. Several decades having passed since I’ve read the book or watched any of its prior re-imaginings, I am perhaps not the ideal critic to answer this question. But I have seen this one, and I can say with some confidence that you should herald its arrival not with cynicism but with gratitude. The reason to see Gerwig’s movie isn’t that it rejuvenates old tropes or interrogates long-held assumptions or introduces a literary landmark to a new generation, even if it may very well do all of those things. The reason to see it is that it’s wonderful. Read More

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Lady Bird: Desperate to Leave the Nest, But Still Learning to Fly

Jeremy BeckReviews
Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in "Lady Bird"

There is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment late in Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s funny and piercing and achingly humane directorial debut, that perfectly encapsulates the movie’s warmth and lucidity. Christine, the tempestuous teenager at the center of Lady Bird who insists that everyone refer to her by the film’s title, is repainting her bedroom. As a ribbon of white varnish rolls over the formerly pink wallpaper, it obliterates the printed names of two boys that Lady Bird had previously scrawled into the wall. Those names, which once filled Lady Bird with ardent longing, have been erased, the desires they inspired living on only as relics of her own memory. The implications are plain: Time passes. People change. And life—forgive me if you’ve heard this before—goes on.

Movies, however, must end. Yet when the final frame of Lady Bird cut to black, I was not ready to be done with it. I preferred to linger a few moments longer in the finely textured world that Gerwig had conjured with such candor, intelligence, and care. Perhaps I was simply overpowered—by the film’s sincerity, by its humor, by its grace—but I like to think that I was expressing fidelity to one of the clichéd-but-undeniable truths that this movie articulates with such heartbreaking clarity: When you love someone, it is hard to let them go. Read More

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