Greta Gerwig is a serious comer. She reminds me a little bit of Christopher Nolan, obviously not in style but in her approach to the studio system.
- They both started off with small films that no one saw but got them noticed, The Following and Nights and Weekends.
- They followed up with low-budget “indie” films which got a massive amount of run in Memento and Lady Bird.
- They both then moved on to mid-budget studio remakes with serious A-list actors. Nolan with Insomnia and now Gerwig with Little Women:
Little Women looks just about as drab and unengaging as Insomnia was. Both those movies were basically skill-checks for their directors to see how well they could play with the big boy toys.
Gerwig passed because she is on to her Batman Begins… in the form of 2020’s Barbie.
Although I don’t care for her movies and the inevitable attempt that will be made to shoehorn the outdated sentiments of Little Women into modern gender politics make me cringe for her, I have a lot of respect for Gerwig. Maybe one day she’ll make an action movie like Point Break or a crime drama like The Destroyer.
