Greta Gerwig knows what she wants
She's a leading lady to watch
This is the first installment of the Leading Ladies to Watch series: newsletters about the women who, in my opinion, are doing the best work right now in Film & Television. They are exciting, innovative, versatile. They’re often acting—and writing, directing, producing. They are women I keep an eye on because I can’t wait to see what they’ll do next.
If you have a woman whose work you love, send her name my way!
“I want to be great, or nothing.”
This is the line that Florence Pugh delivers with such simple intensity as Amy in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women (2019).
In a podcast interview with IndieWire about the film, Greta says that this line from the book stood out to her, as did so much of Amy’s dialogue. She goes on to say that Amy is a character who knows what she wants, and “what an interesting diagnosis of our culture that the character that says most clearly what she wants is the one we hated for so long.”
While Greta identified with Jo March when she read the book as a girl, she resonated more strongly with Amy as she read and wrote the script for her film. Past adaptations of Little Women focused on Jo March as the gifted one, along with the romantic narrative of her life, but Greta sees that Louisa May Alcott wrote all four sisters with artistic talents and ambitions.
Meg is an actress; Jo is a writer; Beth plays piano; Amy draws and paints. In Greta’s script, she wanted to take the sisters’ artistic pursuits seriously because she read Alcott’s characters as taking them seriously. And the difference between Jo and Amy, the two sisters who go on to use their talents in adulthood, is that Jo is willing to be a mediocre writer to make money, but Amy will not settle.
“It’s unbearable to Amy that she’s not going to be a genius,” Greta says in the interview. When you look at the timeline of Amy’s trip to Europe to study art in the mid 1860’s, you realize that she’s in Paris during the birth of modern art. Artists were breaking the rules of the Salon, and Amy sees that this movement is ahead of her.
“It’s something that people who have artistic ambitions understand,” Greta says. “Because if you love art and you see that you’re not going to be one of the greats, I think it’s painful.”
That moment of disillusionment and pain is played out so powerfully between Amy and Laurie in Paris, in Amy’s art studio. Greta’s screenwriting, and Florence’s and Timothée Chalamet’s deliveries, are flawless here. Each moment, the ebb and flow, of their conversation is perfect. I could watch it over and over, frequently hitting the 10-second rewind button because I can’t get enough of every word uttered and the energy that the two actors pass between each other.
“Why would you give up, Amy, you have so much talent and energy,” Laurie says.
“Talent isn’t genius,” Amy replies, “and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. And I will not be some commonplace dauber, and I don’t intend to try anymore.”
Well, it’s clear to me that, even if Greta Gerwig didn’t feel a genius when she was starting out in filmmaking, she certainly is one of the greats.
I remember the first film I watched by Greta. She also starred in the leading role. Greta co-wrote Frances Ha (2012) with her now partner Noah Baumbach. (They first worked together in Baumbach’s film Greenberg a few years prior, a fact I just learned and a film I have not see, but looks great).
I love Frances Ha. It’s a story of a 27-year-old girl, Frances, who is trying to be a dancer in New York City and barely making it by. Her best friend from college, Sophie, is successfully working in publishing and dating Patch, a frat bro-ish guy who works at a law firm and wears baseball caps. He probably also has a Patagonia fleece vest, even though we don’t see him wearing it in the film.
Frances loves Sophie, their friendship, their life together. She doesn’t love Patch. She’s also only an apprentice at the dance company, and doesn’t make a lot of money. Sophie is put together and wants to move to an apartment in Tribeca with another friend. Frances can’t afford it, nor does she really want to. This seemingly insignificant moment between Frances and Sophie on the subway, when Sophie tells Frances she wants to move even though Frances thought they were renewing the lease, is the beginning of their friendship troubles.
Frances valiantly forges on, even though she’s growing apart from Sophie and clearly missing her. There’s a relatable scene in which Frances is at a dinner party with people she doesn’t really know, but they happen to know Sophie and Patch—New York City is smaller than you think. She finds out from these mutual connections that Sophie is moving to Japan with Patch.
In an effort to validate her own life and choices, Frances makes last minute plans to spend 48 hours alone in Paris, crashing in one of the dinner party couple’s apartments. It’s a mess of a trip, and doesn’t meet her expectations. She leaves Paris before she can meet up with college friends there because she has a meeting with her boss at the dance company. When her boss asks why Frances’s trip to Paris was so short, Frances says, “Because I had this meeting with you.” Her boss replies, “You could have cancelled. I almost did. I had a tickle in my throat this morning.”
I want you to watch Frances Ha, and not spoil the endings for you, but I will say this: Frances, like Amy, wants to be great, or nothing. But her artistic journey is ultimately more like Jo’s.
In that interview I keep referencing, and all the following quotes are also from this interview, Greta says of people with great artistic ambition, “I think everyone is going to have a moment where they think, ‘I’m going to be great or nothing,’ and I think that’s wonderful. And then I think you have to have a moment where you say, ‘But I’m going to do it anyway.’” Frances and Jo—they do it anyway.
After acting in two of Baumbach’s films, and then 20th Century Women (2016, an enjoyable movie but not one of my favorites), Greta Gerwig made her directorial debut with Lady Bird (2017), a film she also wrote with key elements inspired by her own coming-of-age experiences.
There are writers/directors that, when you hear they have a film coming out, you can almost guarantee will use certain actors. Wes Anderson works with Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and the Wilson brothers. Noah Baumbach works with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. Greta Gerwig works with Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan.
Saoirse and Timothée play opposite each other in both Lady Bird and Little Women. I loved them in Lady Bird. I was originally skeptical that Timothée could pull off Laurie in Little Women, but when I watched it, I loved it. Still this newsletter is about ladies, so I’ll have to save my opinions on T. Chalamet for another time and place.
Anyway, from what I’ve read, Greta is a true collaborator with her actors. They inform and shape her writing and directing projects in essential ways, and I think that is absolutely the coolest. Working with Greta would be incredible. To work with Greta would be to work with, in my opinion, a genius.
Both Lady Bird and Little Women were nominated for 5+ Oscars. Lady Bird was nominated for best picture, best director, and best original screenplay. Both were nominated for best picture, and Little Women was nominated for best adapted screenplay. I think Greta should have been nominated best director for Little Women, too. Saoirse Ronan was nominated for best leading actress in both films.
Coming up, Greta is starring in a film, White Noise, with Adam Driver and directed by, you guessed it, Noah Baumbach. It’s currently in post-production. Greta is also writing (with Baumbach) and directing a live-action Barbie with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Since Greta is behind it, I’m here for it.
So we’ve got our assignments: you watch Frances Ha, Lady Bird, and Little Women. I’ll watch Greenberg and catch up on everything else Greta has done. And we’ll look forward to what she does next.
By the way, if you’re still skeptical of Greta’s Little Women adaptation, if you’re loyal to the Winona Ryder version, I understand. The 1994 film is the one I grew up with. I watched it once a year. I cry at the opening credits. However, Greta’s take brings out so much of what Alcott wanted Little Women to be about. I recently read more about Alcott and these intentions in a book called Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux. I definitely recommend this to all lovers of Little Women.
Greta saw that grounding the story in the March sisters’ adult lives brings both a seriousness and sadness to it. As she re-read the novel, she realized that once the sisters start leaving Orchard House, they never make it back home together again. She found that “unbearably heartbreaking” and thought to herself, “The thing that you miss is already gone.”
Greta says she wanted to “play with the iconography of Little Women because if I’ve rearranged the time and ground it in adulthood, then when we do some of the warm cozy scenes of Little Women that everyone knows, it’s given another layer of meaning. It’s the ache of ‘it’s gone’, which for me is always the position of the writer. You’re writing the thing that’s already passed.”
Greta’s work is smart. She knew she couldn’t please everyone with her adaptation, and she didn’t try. In the novel, Greta notes, Jo publishes a book. But because she took so many notes from so many people, the novel becomes “a shadow of its former self” and doesn’t do well financially or critically. Greta says, “When I read that I thought, I know exactly what that’s like… when you make a movie and take notes from too many people and you wind up with something that’s beige and nobody cares about. Because you’re trying to please everyone, you end up not pleasing anyone.”
Greta Gerwig knows what she wants. She wants to be great, and she is. She doesn’t try to please everyone, and because of that, I trust her as an artist. I know she will only do work that she believes in and wants to do. That’s a powerful thing. That’s a leading lady.