What Is Greta Gerwig Trying to Tell Us?

From Barnard to Barbie, the director has always been interested in female ambition, including her own

- By Allison P. Davis

Everyone at the alamo Barbie Blowout Party advance screening I attended had come ready to Barbie party, decked out in head-to-toe pink, high heels, and blonde wigs. As the soundtrack blared, moviegoers yelled “Hi, Barbie!” to strangers, snapped pictures in their promotional pink berets and heart-shaped sunglasses, drank watermelon margaritas, and seat-danced to Dua Lipa. A male photographer roamed the room taking pictures of everyone vibing on the anticipation that was building to a near frenzy thanks to a relentlessly ecstatic monthslong marketing campaign. As he stopped to take a photo of the woman next to me, and the new Margot Robbie Barbie she’d purchased, he asked if the movie was supposed to be lighthearted or cerebral—he couldn’t tell from the trailer. Her advice: “It’s the Barbie movie. Just leave big words out of it and enjoy.” I don’t think my neighbor or anyone else there expected to weep over the state of womanhood.

But in every Greta Gerwig movie, there is that speech, the one that forces the emotion out of you no matter how unsentimental you might be. That big juicy monologue somewhere in the third act that states everything the female protagonist wants out of life—her dreams, her desires—and everything she fears. The emotionally pure, ultrarelatable moment when Gerwig tells us how a woman should be. The music swells; the actress’s face splits open with yearning and pathos. Inevitably, someone in the movie theater gives a reflexive “Yessss” under their breath, and thousands of theater kids suddenly know what their audition monologue will be for the fall production of Our Town.