Treading a new path: Greta Gerwig and the type of filmmaker she always wanted to be
Greta Gerwig is undoubtedly plotting her path to the loftiest of heights. It feels as though she’s on her way to sitting among the pantheon of cinema greats, ensuring that history will remember her as one of the great filmmakers of the modern age. Along with Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Yorgos Lanthimos and more, Gerwig is working away at an outstanding filmography, each coloured with her own specialism and style that makes her so beloved. However, while other directors might have a visual signature, the type of filmmaker Gerwig wanted to be involved in a different process.
Part of what makes Gerwig so fearsome in the film world is that she’s really seen it from all sides. At first, she started out as an actor as she studied, getting experience in front of the camera. She’s also worked with others as a collaborator on projects, learning what it’s like to be part of the writing team. Then, as time rolled on, the two were combined.
On early projects like Frances Ha, written in collaboration with her partner Noah Baumbach, Gerwig wore several hats. She was the lead actor and the co-writer, seeing clearer than ever how a script or storyboard translates to a performance and learning how to translate one into the other.
It’s that play between the page and the screen that Gerwig seems to truly love. Growing up, she’d always wanted to be a playwright, and her film scripts seem to be handed in that same way. It’s only when combining her love for the written word with her experience in front of the camera that she understands the type of filmmaker she wants to be.
It was on the set of her 2017 film Lady Bird that it all became clear. “That movie was not really written but more devised and improvised,” she said. Even after pouring over the script for years, with one draft extending to over 350 pages long, the process of making the film taught her about the need to integrate the other side of the coin.
It would have been easy for Gerwig to go in with her carefully written script and demand it be followed to the exact word. Instead, videos from the filming show a level of play being involved, as she learnt to leave room for her actors and for the feelings they bring to the table as the characters from her page come to life. Across all of her films, it’s that mix of dynamic performances and Gerwig’s stunningly written monologues that have made her such a renowned filmmaker.
“Lady Bird was really the culmination of working both in front of and behind the camera — all these different roles — and the movies I’d written alone and the movies I’d written with Noah,” she said. But as she found the balance, she found that combining the roles of an actor and a writer didn’t mean she had to give up on her love for words but that it could be expanded into a larger love for language.
“I went back to what I’ve always been interested in, which is, in a way, language-driven cinema. It’s a bit odd because cinema isn’t primarily a medium of words. But words are what I love,” she said. Seeing that language come to life, both in her written words and in the performance she trusted her actors to deliver, it gave such a rewarding result that it made her path clearer than ever.
“When I was in preproduction and then shooting it and then editing it, it really felt like ‘this is what I always wanted to do’”, she said. It felt like a breakthrough moment where her whole career so far, as an actor, writer, director and beyond, were all able to combine and fit together perfectly. “I got to draw on all the experience that I had and the work that I’d done in learning to make movies,” she explained. “All of that kicked in, which was tremendously satisfying and what I had hoped would happen! But the truth is you never know until you’re there.”
