Summary

• Greta Gerwig has been making films for over 15 years, developing her own directorial style and exploring the themes of relationships and feminism.
• Gerwig often collaborates with her partner Noah Baumbach, with their films like "Little Women" and "Marriage Story" competing for Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars.
• "Barbie" is Gerwig's best film to date, combining themes from her entire body of work and featuring large set pieces, attention to detail, and an ending that celebrates life in its fullest form.

Barbie has made Greta Gerwig a household name, but she's been making films as a director, writer, and actress for over 15 years, enough for a thorough ranking of her movies. Watching all of her films, especially her earlier ones, allows the viewer to follow a trail that leads directly to her most recent, acclaimed movies Lady Bird, Little Women, and Barbie. Gerwig has been developing the humor in Barbie for a long time, as well as the themes and character types.

Gerwig often collaborates with her romantic partner Noah Baumbach. Throughout the years, Gerwig and Baumbach have made movies together, including Barbie, which the pair co-wrote. Their collaboration has spanned from their earliest years as independent filmmakers to their most recent films now, where Gerwig and Baumbach actually competed for Best Picture with Little Women and Marriage Story at the 2020 Oscars. As Gerwig has defined her own directorial style, her films have become modern feminist classics, a quality that she definitely brings to Barbie.

8 Northern Comfort

Northern Comfort is written by Greta Gerwig, Joseph James Bellamy, and David T. Grophear. It is directed by Rod Webber, who also stars alongside Gerwig in the film. The movie is about two strangers who find each other on their way to Canada, while Gerwig's character, Cassandra, is concealing an illness. Gerwig's style is only just beginning to develop in this film, with a heavy focus on comedic dialogue. The shaky, digital camera footage makes Northern Comfort feel more like a documentary or home video, an aspect which is intensified by the improvised dialogue, which lacks the precise intentionality of Gerwig's later films.

7 Hannah Takes The Stairs

Hannah Takes The Stairs is Gerwig's film debut as a writer. It establishes a running theme throughout Gerwig's works, exploring relationships between men and women, especially romantic ones. The film is hyperrealistic, from the cinematography shot on digital video to the dialogue that is largely improvisational. It belongs to a subgenre of independent filmmaking called mumblecore, characterized by naturalistic dialogue and aimless characters in their 20s or early 30s. Rather than large set pieces, Hannah Takes The Stairs relies more on moments of downtime, or of characters just speaking to one another, to capture the feeling of realism.

6 Nights and Weekends

Gerwig co-stars in this film about two lovers long-distance lovers who form a relationship together, but eventually grow apart. It is a low-budget drama, co-written by Gerwig and Baumbach, and directed by Baumbach. Many of Gerwig's works explore the relationship between men and women, and Nights and Weekends fits squarely in that category. It is another film considered to be mumblecore, and shot almost exclusively in tight close-ups, making the audience feel like they are right in the middle of every meandering conversation between the two main characters. The acting is strong, but the movie lacks the plot urgency of Gerwig's later films.

5 Mistress America

Mistress America is co-written by Gerwig and Baumbach and directed by Baumbach. Gerwig co-stars as the future sister-in-law to the main character, Tracy, a lonely college students who reaches out to Gerwig's character and gets sucked into her whirlwind life. The film has several qualities in common with Gerwig's other movies, like the use of New York as a setting and a young woman feeling lost in the world as the main character. It does away with the use of improv in Gerwig's earlier films and harnesses a new kind of character dynamic that makes the conversations between the sisters-to-be engrossing.

4 s Ha

s Ha is co-written by Gerwig and Baumbach, directed by Baumbach, and stars Gerwig as the titular s. It bears many similarities to Gerwig's earlier films, with a heavy focus on dialogue and a single character feeling directionless in life. s Ha has many memorable quotes, from deadpan jokes to heart-wrenching insights about life. However, it also represents qualities that bring new energy to Gerwig's work, like more sequences set to music that convey the characters' state of mind without any dialogue. It also has several perfectly awkward scenes that would pave the way for a film like Lady Bird, such as when s is working as an RA at her alma mater at the age of 27.

3 Lady Bird

Lady Bird was Gerwig's directorial debut, even nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. It follows the difficult relationship between the main character, who names herself Lady Bird, and her mother, as Lady Bird navigates her senior year in high school and prepares for college. The film is the first movie from Gerwig that grapples with adolescence, and it is equal parts funny and heartbreaking. Many regard Lady Bird as one of the best coming-of-age movies, which captures all the messiness and emotions of being young. Gerwig's cinematography is frequently theatrical, pausing to observe Lady Bird in her life, and like many of her films, places a large emphasis on dialogue.

2 Little Women

Little Women is an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel of the same name that Gerwig made entirely her own, particularly in the use of parallel timelines showing the girls' childhood and adulthood. At the time of its release, it was the most developed cast of characters Gerwig ever depicted, from Jo's desire to define herself independent of romance to Amy's desire for artistic greatness. It is a moving film that captures all of life's emotions - grief, joy, sadness, anger - in intimate snapshots of the March sisters' lives. Though it was nominated for Best Picture, Little Woman was snubbed by the Oscars for other categories that it should have easily contended in, like Directing, Costuming, and Production Design.

1 Barbie

Barbie is Gerwig's best film to date. It is a coalescence of themes from her entire body of work, from the exploration of the dynamics between men and women to the desire for women to define themselves as individuals. Gerwig has even explained that Barbie is a mother-daughter story, a return to a major theme of Lady Bird. The sequence where the Kens battle each other is one of the largest set pieces Gerwig has ever done, and yet her attention to detail is never lost. Barbie herself goes through a journey of not just becoming human, but learning what that means, particularly becoming a woman in the real world.

The ending sequence, a montage of home videos depicting life's greatest joys, is a sequence that leaves few dry eyes in the theater. It's an ending that celebrates what Gerwig's films strive to capture: life in its fullest form. Greta Gerwig uses wonder and wisdom in Barbie to make it a memorable movie. It is the kind of filmmaking audiences should continue to and expect - not something easily digestible and highly sanitized for the greatest market appeal, but a film that truly entertains and inspires the people watching it. For all those reasons, Barbie is Gerwig's best work, a triumph built on all her films that came before.