It’s a beautiful night in May. A friend I’ve had since preschool ballet class rests with me on her sofa, sleepily lounging in her cozy, dimly-lit living room. Despite having much to catch up on from years of growing up in different schools, we linger in a comfortable silence. We hear the chatter of her family from the kitchen, lulling by as we watch her TV intently. On the screen is the 2019 adaptation of Little Women– a gut-wrenching movie directed by Greta Gerwig, a master at depicting girlhood, grief, and indescribable forms of love.
Greta Gerwig is no small name in the film world. She is an Oscar nominee, best known for Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019), and Barbie (2023), powerful films that center around women and their experiences. I would argue that she’s a genius. She releases banger movie after banger movie, with heartfelt interviews to accompany them and an unmatched honesty in her work that enables an audience to laugh, cry, reflect, and feel at peace all at once. Greta Gerwig is not just successful, she is one of the greatest directors of all time.
Little Women (2019) was the first Greta Gerwig film I ever watched, and it instantly sparked my passion for her work.
An adaptation of the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, the movie centers around the domestic lives of four sisters: Meg, the oldest (played by Emma Watson), Jo, the second oldest (Saoirse Ronan), Beth, the second youngest (Eliza Scanlen), and the youngest daughter Amy (Florence Pugh). The film is not short of other talented actors, also starring big names such as Timothée Chalamet and Meryl Streep.
Avoiding spoilers, Little Women has some of the most beautiful messaging on love and girlhood intertwined that I have ever seen. The sisters watch each other fall in love and out of love. They care for their neighbors when they’re sick. They ice skate on a frozen lake. They attend a ball, they fix each other’s hair, but they also have interests, dreams, and passions. They yell at each other and cry and feel the messy feelings, but it never deters their love for one another.
Jo dreams of being a writer. Meg wants a family. Beth is a piano prodigy. Amy wants to be a painter. And all of their passions are treated with respect, not reduced to what they can represent for men or the progress of other characters. It’s refreshing to see female characters written with emotional depth and complexity, and to see their desires taken seriously. They are not written to be reduced to, or treated differently because of, what they want. The little women are people, and Greta Gerwig adeptly encapsulates emotional complexity for each of the four sisters, in their different but equally beautiful arcs.
Most importantly, the film centers women’s love and potential in forms other than romance or marriage. This scene with Jo is one of my favorites in the whole movie:
Not every story involving women should center around romance, or what we can provide for others. Women are people. We have dreams, we have capabilities, and the emotionality of this line delivered by Jo sums it up so well: being lovers or living for the sake of other people is not all we are fit for.
Watching this movie was comforting, life-changing, and interesting all at once. At a time I was experiencing loss and uncertainty, Little Women was a reminder that my dreams were achievable even after my failures. It was a reminder that I don’t need to experience a storybook romance to have worthy relationships, because the most important people stayed with me and became the family I needed. Most of all, it assured me that in spite of every opportunity taken from us, as much as people try to pit women against each other, as fragile as we are made to feel, as much as we are told the world isn’t ready for us, women will hold each other up.
What set Gerwig’s voice apart from the other adaptations of Little Women I’ve seen was this exact care in portraying the sisters’ love for each other, in spite of and alongside their flaws. As sweet as the domestic lives of the sisters were, and as endearing as romance can be, the little women forged their own happiness in unique ways. They didn’t need people to solve their problems for them. The girls were messy, but they were powerful, complex, beautiful, kind, and worthy at the same time. I’ve been hooked on Greta Gerwig’s work ever since.
Then, the film we’ve all heard of, because – let’s face it – if you haven’t, have you talked to anyone in the last year? Barbie (2023) has become the highest-grossing Warner Bros. film of all time, earning upwards of $1.36 billion at the box office. [1] Barbie was also directed by none other than Greta Gerwig.
Barbie, starring Margot Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Stereotypical Ken, is as heart-wrenching as it is humorous. I loved this movie for a number of reasons, but the main contributor for me was the way it balances humor and emotionality in a great way. The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet its message is still substantial.
Though Barbie may seem superficial, relying heavily on idyllic, girly, glittery, and pink aesthetics, the story at its core tackles real substance of what it’s like to grow up as a woman. For teenage girls, their mothers, their grandmothers, and strangers alike, every woman in the movie has a different perception of Barbie – whether of a feminist icon or a body-image fascist – but all of them have a story, and these women ultimately unite over the urge to love and protect one another. It deals with heavy themes and silly ones alike. The film tackles mourning the loss of girlhood, experiencing hardship from patriarchal expectations, and neglect in care for mental health, while simultaneously featuring fun themes such as a surplus of pink paint, feathered nightgowns, sparkly gowns, the Mojo Dojo Casa House, Kens playing “Matchbox Twenty” AT the Barbies (not to them, at them), and “Sublime!”. The movie did a great job of not becoming overly edgy, pretentious, or incomprehensible, even though much of its commentary was serious. Balancing silliness and depth in the film made it more approachable.
When I went to see the Barbie movie, it was a rather spontaneous backup outing with my family. I didn’t plan to go with a group of friends, or wear a coordinated pink outfit, even though I would have loved to do so; and yet, it was a priceless experience. I could see how much this movie meant to people.
People of all ages were lined up with their groups of friends dressed in full pink to get slushies and popcorn, almost out the door in the concessions line. There was a cardboard cutout of a Barbie doll box moviegoers could stand in. Throughout the showing, I heard laughter, sobbing, excited murmurs, and more. It was a connecting and humanizing experience to other women, and I truly felt seen by the movie. I left that evening with Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” reeling through my head, feeling whole and consumed by a love for women.
There is so much negative messaging towards women in this world. Young girls are told we can’t be “basic” at all costs, but when we grow up and express ourselves differently from others, we get called “pick me girls.” We are told aging isn’t beautiful, that young women need to begin using anti-aging creams and injecting Botox into our faces when we’re still young, so we won’t be wrinkled when we’re old as that process of nature makes us “ugly.” But then when women get older and make cosmetic decisions for themselves to appear younger, we are called fake and plastic. Women’s body types go in and out of style. There is so much that’s scary in this world for women to exist around. And yet, we keep going, we keep loving, we keep persisting. We lend hairties to complete strangers as simple acts of solidarity and kindness. We persist, and overcome, and do everything we’ve been told for centuries that we can’t. We’re allowed to do this, to keep going, to block out the noise. We’re allowed to know we’re beautiful.
Barbie was a reminder that people are kind at heart, and that even when it feels like society is pitted against women with a surplus of harmful gender norms and violence, most people truly want the best for women in the end. There was something so beautiful about entering a theater full of smiling faces and crying with complete strangers over our childhood memories, complimenting each other’s pink outfits, months later watching excited commentary online and complimenting people’s “I am Kenough” hoodies. It was a reminder that womanhood and feminism isn’t about making a full societal shift to become a matriarchy or crafting a world free of flaws, it’s just about loving each other and respecting the many different ways of being a woman. I once again left a Greta Gerwig film as a changed person.
Last, but certainly not least, my most recent Greta Gerwig watch was her earliest film, Lady Bird (2017). It is a brutally honest coming-of-age film about a teenage girl’s relationship with her mother, Sacramento, and her identity. Rated R, the film is somewhat edgier than the other two, but the themes in the movie are just as earnest and important. The messy parts of the movie don’t make it any less beautiful. Christine McPhearson gives herself the name Lady Bird, deciding that Christine isn’t exciting enough to suit her. She is a girl with dreams beyond Catholic school in Sacramento, or the flat her family is struggling to afford located on what she refers to as “the wrong side of the tracks”. Lady Bird (played by Saoirse Ronan, same actress as Jo March) wants to go to the East Coast, where she can meet people like her, who have hair dyed bright colors and eccentric souls.
Lady Bird is a simultaneously deep and humorous movie, much like Greta Gerwig’s other films. Christine McPhearson wants nothing more than to discover herself, romanticizing adult experiences and stumbling through them in her own life. Her teenage rebellion isn’t always responded to with kindness in her Catholic school, full of rich kids from the affluent neighborhoods of Sacramento. However, Lady Bird never lets that bother her. She joins school theater, and lives life in tandem with her ride-or-die best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein). She dates pretentious boys and discovers herself in a classic indie movie fashion, learning difficult lessons along the way. She drifts away from and back towards the things important to her. Lady Bird is an enigma, but a beautiful, shining one.
Lady Bird doesn’t believe that her mother likes her. In fact, she doesn’t believe her mother likes much at all; she is strict, harsh, doesn’t have faith in her daughter’s ability to succeed, and always seems to be troubled by something. Lady Bird views her mom as boring, jaded, resigned to Sacramento, depressed, and everything Lady Bird fears becoming. Lady Bird, on the other hand, is messy. She is changing, she has a dramatic spirit, she does impulsive things, is not a model student, and she dyes her hair bright pink. Her mother feels defeated, because she wants her daughter to be the best she can be. Lady Bird fears she’s not doing enough. The two have arguments, they draw away from each other, and they pick each other back up again each day. They don’t seem to enjoy each other’s company on the surface.
However, there is an unspoken and deep-seated love shared uniquely between the two as mother and daughter. The first scene in the entire movie is a moment shared between them listening to an audiobook of “Grapes of Wrath,” a seemingly familiar and ever-repeated ritual for when they go on drives. They are constantly making sacrifices for one another, and though Lady Bird may not admit it, they’re more similar than they appear. Perhaps her mother doesn’t show much affection on screen, but she shows a tremendous, unrelenting amount of care. Lady Bird considers her mother thoughtfully, too. They share moments, they grow together, and even in their fights, there is a deeper vulnerability where they each want nothing but the best for one another and their relationship. They may not like each other all the time, but Lady Bird and her mother will always love each other.
Lady Bird received raving critical acclaim, including multiple Oscar nominations, multiple Golden Globe awards, and numerous awards from film festivals around the world. The story is vulnerable and messy, but that humanlike quality is what makes Lady Bird resonate with so many audiences. Truly, Greta Gerwig excels at emphasizing the humanity in figures of her movies; despite their flaws, they all feel like forgivable, real people, with struggles, dreams, and aspirations.
Relationships between women, especially mothers and daughters, are multifaceted. It was heartwrenching to watch how Gerwig artfully contrasted the characters of Christine and Christine’s mother, drawing largely on her own experience growing up in Sacramento, and in many ways, growing up alongside her own mother. The two women are imperfect, but each are the same in their unconditional love for one another. There was a certain nostalgia embedded in the film that was undeniably Gerwig’s contribution, one that resonated with audiences around the world for good reasons.
These films are beautiful. But what magic does Greta Gerwig bring to them that makes them different, and so important? My observation is that she truly cares.
She puts a little part of herself into every story she directs, whether that’s her childhood growing up in Sacramento, being a young girl playing with Barbie dolls, or reading Little Women and resonating with it. She understands the complexity of women’s relationships, such as between mothers and daughters in Lady Bird, the ups and downs of sisterhood in Little Women, and even unconditional love from strangers as reflected in Barbie. She understands what it’s like to grow up as a girl, what messaging young women don’t receive, and most importantly, our humanity. Our fights are not petty or catty because they center around women’s problems and unique dynamics, they’re human. Our dreams are not silly or less important than men’s, because we’re still human. Our grief is human. Our desires are human. Our happiness doesn’t have to come from other people; we can make ourselves happy, as individuals with aspirations and interests. We don’t just have to be wives or mothers, but even if we choose to, that’s a beautiful path. Women don’t have to be perfect, because we’re human. We still have value when we fail. Women can be professionals, we can be good sisters, we can be good daughters, and it’s true that we are complicated, but that’s because we are human.
I don’t know if you, the reader of this article, like Greta Gerwig or her movies. Perhaps you don’t experience girlhood, or you just didn’t relate to any of these movies. Maybe the messages didn’t resonate with you or the people you love, and that’s ok. This article is still for you; we all have different artistic opinions, and this happens to be mine. No matter what, I hope that you can take away from this article either an appreciation for the care Gerwig puts into her work as a director, or an appreciation for the voices behind other media you enjoy. After all, there are many different expressions of care in art, and if we pay attention to the intention behind our favorite media, we can learn something from the creators. Maybe there’s a scene in a movie that always makes you laugh hysterically, or maybe you weep for hours after a moment in a show. No matter what it is, sharing emotional experiences is what makes being alive so beautiful. When you get the chance, allow yourself to think about what films represent you. I’m so grateful to have found joy and peace through Greta Gerwig’s movies. Don’t run away from what you love and want to explore in media – the vulnerability is worth it – your voice matters. And maybe, like Gerwig, you’ll master the art of sharing that voice with care.
Sources:
[1] Forbes Magazine. https://tinyurl.com/yc68b6wt
[2] Lady Bird. Directed by Greta Gerwig, A24 Productions, 2017.
[3] Little Women. Directed by Greta Gerwig, Columbia Pictures, 2019.
[4] Barbie. Directed by Greta Gerwig, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2023
Thank you to Mia and Aneesha for your amazing advice and support with peer review as I wrote my first article for The Hoot! Your edits were much appreciated and I couldn’t have done it without you 💗
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