It’s Oscars season, and with her third film being nominated for Best Picture, will Greta Gerwig finally pull out a win in the category?
Greta Gerwig is on her way to becoming a very esteemed director in the film world, especially with 3 of her films being nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Lady Bird, Little Women, and Barbie are positively acclaimed by audiences everywhere, but are specifically praised by women who love film. Gerwig has a profound understanding of womanhood and a masterful ability to create worlds and characters with warmth, empathy, and happiness.
Her three films nominated for Best Picture each tell the stories of different women and perfectly illustrates the female gaze to viewers. I recently revisited them while deep-diving through her filmography and wanted to remind or introduce the film girls to Greta Gerwig’s big three.
Lady Bird
A story from the perspective of a feisty teenager, Lady Bird is a touching depiction of the complexities of growing up and finding your place in the world. The titular character, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, is a strong-willed senior in high school who wants to get out of her hometown and move to the big city. To the average person, the movie may appear as another basic coming-of-age movie, but Lady Bird’s ability to learn about herself on a deep level and truly understand the relationships she has with the women in her life are what escalates this movie to a different level. Lady Bird’s tumultuous relationship with her mother and overall progression from high school to college is a story that deeply resonates with many young adult women.
Little Women
As a newer adaptation of a beloved classic, Little Women managed to gain a lot of traction and love from audiences, even with all the comparisons to the book Little Women (1994). Greta Gerwig not only twists the ending but differentiates her version of the story with her orchestration of the dialogue and not putting the movie in chronological order. She’s once again able to draw in female audiences by making the March sisters so likable and relatable. They deliver these famous lines at a very rapid speed and as if they’re being said for the first time – how real sisters talk. Gerwig’s Little Women inspires and relays the message that women are multifaceted and can have dreams of love and ambition.
Barbie
As her biggest movie yet, Barbie has made waves around the world. It grossed over $1.4 billion at the box office, the highest-grossing film of all time directed by a woman. Something I really love about the movie is that Greta Gerwig was able to make a captivating narrative out of a doll who didn’t have any personality or story compared to the immenseness of the film’s message. Over the past year, Barbie has taken the world by storm and although I’m sure a lot of people are kind of over it, its inspiration to women and girls everywhere is something that will always be appreciated and remembered.
Greta Gerwig has proven herself to be a visionary director and understands women clearly through her representation of the characters in her three big films. With more to come as she works on an adaptation of the Chronicles of Narnia series, Greta Gerwig is only at the start of what could be a legendary career in filmmaking. Although it’s unclear whether or not Barbie will be her first movie to finally win Best Picture, I have a strong feeling this is only a fraction of her work that will be considered for the category in years to come.