Gerwig 🔝

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Greta Gerwig is not the director or the scenarist of this film, but it is her that I want to write about. Her being in a big city, walking down the street with a cheerful music in the background, her urban manners, her hair which you want to fall until where it is and stop at where it does, and her simplicity which never feels unexamined. In 'Mistress America', her sister said about her "Being next to her was like being in New York City", and with Frances Ha as well as this last movie I'll write about today, she confirms her place in that genre: Independent, American, and a city-dweller. 

In Maggie's Plan, Gerwig is a young woman with only a few lines around her eyes that can't stop making her even more beautiful and real. She has a small studio of her own, filled with books, and in there she decides to make a baby for herself. All on her own. She meets a guy along the way who, in my opinion, couldn't be uglier. This ugly jerk is an academic working on fictional critical anthropology, a field I believe to be created for the scenario of this movie alone. A good invention; one you can only have in fiction-writing. Gerwig and the jerk have several interesting conversations about the human perception of the society: the jerk tells her that almost all our understanding is based on fictional anthropology. I think so too. Not because I know what this character means, really, by this term, but because I agree that in anything that the masses follow, there has been an inventive process. It's just not always there- only at the beginning.  

"Who would not change a raven for a dove?" a street actor cries out a line from Shakespeare. Lewis Carrol's interest in ravens, on the other hand, lies in them not being like a writing desk. Different. The dove and the raven for Shakespeare and for this movie refer to the human beings tossed around in supposedly romantic relationships. The jerk that Maggie has been talking to is a husband of all. He has an ex-wife who sounds super smart and looks super smart, Julianne Moore. Everyone writes his or her life in novel form: "Can someone be too smart to write a novel?", Gerwig asks a friend. Conferences are venues for academics to act like they are not, in the movie. Because almost all characters are academics, Gerwig's character presumes that everyone should be: "You studied maths, why didn't you become a mathematician?" she asks someone. "It's so beautiful. I couldn't risk the frustration" he replies. Rebecca Miller has a good thread going on as the director. We look forward to the independent woman of the independent genre, Gerwig, to finish writing the new 'How I Met Your Father' for more.