Our Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan Double Features
In honor of BARBENHEIMER, we pair two Gerwig films and two Nolan films
This week we have been burning up with BARBENHEIMER fever! Yes, the weekend movie lovers have been hotly anticipating for several months is finally here: Barbie and Oppenheimer arrive in theaters today. The two films have nothing in common except that they are both made by major directors featuring countless movie stars. And you can bet we’ve got our tickets reserved for both this weekend.
In honor of this momentous double feature, we are creating our own double features for both Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan today. Drew has paired two Gerwig films (written, directed, or starred in) and Billy has paired two Nolan films. Watch or rewatch these before or after you take part in Barbenheimer weekend.
Also, if you’re still thinking about Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, we had a full spoiler discussion on the podcast this week about the latest action spectacle from Tom Cruise and co. Listen and subscribe!
Drew’s Greta Gerwig Double Feature
Mistress America and Little Women
As Greta Gerwig’s career has progressed, female authorship has remained a prominent theme in her work. She spent her early years acting, writing, and co-directing “mumblecore” films with Joe Swanberg and the Duplass brothers, where she was able to hone her voice in low-budget indies. But she didn’t earn greater notoriety until she started working with her now-partner Noah Baumbach in 2010. After starring in and co-writing a few of his films (Greenberg, Frances Ha), she has emerged from that fruitful creative partnership with a strong directorial point of view.
Mistress America was the last film she co-wrote before becoming a director on her own, and Little Women was her most recent film behind the camera. On the surface, these two might not seem like a natural pair – one is a small original story set in the present-day and the other is one of the most famous novels of the 19th century – but they both have female authorship, and how women write their own stories, very much on their mind.
The main characters of both films are writers, in a sense. Tracy (Lola Kirke) in Mistress America is a lonely college freshman in New York City that befriends Brooke (Gerwig), her older soon-to-be stepsister. Brooke is a chaotic and complex woman that seemingly has the self-confidence that Tracy aspires to, so Tracy writes a short story about her time with her. We come to find out Brooke is just as lost as Tracy, and both young women stumble around the city (and a Connecticut home) in an attempt to find themselves.
Mistress America was directed by Baumbach, but, as co-writer and star, it’s just as much Gerwig’s as it is his. In fact, Baumbach’s films took on a new dimension when he started working with Gerwig, resulting in some of his best and most keenly observed movies. So it makes sense that Gerwig quickly moved from collaborator to auteur. In two years, Lady Bird became a beloved instant classic, and, in just her second solo effort behind the camera, she turned her attention to a literary classic that had been adapted several times before.
Gerwig’s Little Women is so remarkable because she printed her own stamp on Louisa May Alcott’s familiar story by cutting between timelines (in somewhat of a Nolan-y way, now that I think about it). Gerwig’s Jo March (Saoirse Ronan), much like Mistress America’s Tracy, starts writing from her own life, and thus, taking authorship of her own story in an era when most women were not afforded that opportunity.
Throughout her work, Gerwig has proven adept at portraying the female experience from adolescence to adulthood. Whether she’s acting, writing, or directing, the material always possesses her playful humor, messy emotions, and vigor for experiencing all that life has to offer. Mistress America and Little Women may have different settings and ambitions, but they share Gerwig’s preoccupation with young women striving to write their own stories, much like Gerwig herself has done as an artist.
Billy’s Christopher Nolan Double Feature
Memento and Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan is notorious for messing with the structure/time of his movies for seemingly unnecessary reasons. All of his original works from Memento to Inception developed a reputation of having M. Night-type twists, creating an event for each of his movies unlike any director in the 21st century. But what I have learned and began to appreciate is that our most celebrity director’s obsession with time is manifested most competently and brilliantly in his most simple stories.
Memento is a murder mystery noir in reverse from a character that suffers an untreatable form of memory loss. Forcing him to leave constant notes and tattoos on his body to continue the process of solving the mystery of his wife’s death. And Dunkirk is about the failure and rescue of British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk during WWII. Nolan shows the desperation of survival from the perspective of the land, sea, and sky. The land story is shown over a week, sea over a day, and sky over an hour, converging together at different times.
The manipulation of traditional story structure only works if the director can keep the attention through the confusion. If attention isn’t grabbed up front then the audience abandons the story. Thankfully Nolan notices this and generally opens his movies with blood pressure-raising intensity. Nolan’s attempt to mess with structure is understandably grating to many filmgoers and for me works the best when he uses that ambition on story elements we have seen time and time again. Watch Memento and Dunkirk before Oppenheimer (haven’t seen yet as of writing this) to see his riff on the traditional noir and war drama. I imagine he will use the biopic archetype in non-traditional ways that will at the very least be incredibly compelling and at the most be borderline masterpieces in this curated double feature I’ve laid before you. '
From the DYLA Archive
Links
Interested in some Oppenheimer prep? Read this behind-the-scenes account of how Nolan crafted his epic biopic.
Interested in some Barbie prep? Here’s Gerwig discussing her many inspirations for bringing the famous toy to life.