The Greta Gerwig "Cross-Over"

We can add another film artist that paid their "no budget dues" to the growing list of those that are breaking out into films that have larger audiences. And this is not to portray working in the no budget world as some sort of a necessary evil (well it could be), but instead as a means of artistic survival. You work with what you have, and when you have something you really want to say, you say it. You look around you, and you gather up those that want to say something similar, and you say it together.

But the cool thing is sometimes what you want to say, simply speaks to more people than just one or two film festivals and your personal facebook friends. Sometimes, your stories cannot be contained to just a couple hundred people.

In the recent years there seems to have been this undertone of apprehension in the digital DIY arena. A reluctance, if you will, to admit to any sort of career ambition. But when certain opportunies have presented themselves, most, not all but most have accepted the opportunity to expand their audience, their pool of acting talent, their budgets - many to considerably successful results. The Duplass Brothers eventually went from a first feature for roughly 15 grand to a film starring Marisa Tomei as Jonah Hills' mom in Cyrus, with only one feature in between. Andrew Bujalski took a similar path, after cranking out two groundbreaking DIY features that managed to actually connect with critics, as well as their dedicated, but limited audience. His latest feature Beeswax was his breakout film, as it relates to wider film audiences and name actors. Lynn Shelton managed to do the same. A third feature that was the charm - more people saw her latest offering Humpday, than either of her previous features. Joe Swanberg recently worked with Jane Adams on Alexander the Last, which may have been his most financially successful film to date. These works broke out because quite simply, they were good. A natural progression of learned lessons, a sharper eye, and personal circles that probably benefited from the inclusion and encouragement of those with an honest, critical eyes.

Enter Greta Gerwig, who as this recent article from the NY Times reveals, probably made more intentional choices in not only her acceptance of certain roles, but her acting itself, than many would imagine. It is refreshing to see her blossom, from DIY cinema's version of an "it-girl" to the girl who simply was too talented to be contained. She has added to the list of those artists that have broken out because, quite simply, she is good.

Here is this really cool piece, after the jump:

NOAH BAUMBACH’S new movie is called “Greenberg,” but it is equally — maybe even more so — the story of Florence Marr. Roger Greenberg, the title character, has the more familiar face by far; he’s played by Ben Stiller, a big movie star sliding comfortably into a small, sharp movie. But Florence’s face is the first one we see. She wanders into the frame pulling a large, slow-moving dog and is then captured in close-up as she negotiates Los Angeles traffic on the way to her job as the household assistant of a well-to-do family with a house in the hills.

That face, its soft jaw and wide gray-green eyes topped by untameable dirty-blond hair, is not likely to be recognized by most viewers. Greta Gerwig, the 26-year-old actress, screenwriter and filmmaker who plays Florence, has appeared mainly in the kind of low-key, low-budget, socially networked features that I will try, from this moment forward, not to call mumblecore. “Greenberg” is obviously a breakthrough for her — even if Mr. Baumbach, whose four previous features include “Kicking and Screaming” and “The Squid and the Whale,” is not exactly Michael Bay — though not necessarily a departure.

Instead, what Ms. Gerwig does in “Greenberg” confirms a suspicion that began to bubble up through the diffidence and indirection of movies like “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” “LOL” and “Nights and Weekends,” all of which she made in collaboration with Joe Swanberg. Ms. Gerwig, most likely without intending to be anything of the kind, may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation, a judgment I offer with all sincerity and a measure of ambivalence. She seems to be embarked on a project, however piecemeal and modestly scaled, of redefining just what it is we talk about when we talk about acting.

Part of her accomplishment is that most of the time she doesn’t seem to be acting at all. The transparency of her performances has less to do with exquisitely refined technique than with the apparent absence of any method. The determined artlessness of Mr. Swanberg’s films — the wandering camera and meandering stories, the ground-level observations of unfocused young people desultorily negotiating the challenges of romance and friendship — is epitomized by Ms. Gerwig, who carries some of the loose, no-big-deal aesthetic of those movies into “Greenberg.”

The rest of this enlightening piece HERE.