Greta Gerwig: Queen of Mumblecore

If I told you to name your top five female directors, I bet the hardest part would be narrowing it down to just five. But I also almost guarantee Greta Gerwig would be on that list. However, in 2006, when Gerwig was just getting her start, you’d be hard-pressed to name five great female directors off the top of your head. 

Greta Gerwig has become one of the most influential and beloved filmmakers of our time—an Oscar-nominated director (only the fifth woman to claim this title), the first woman to solo-direct a billion-dollar movie (Barbie (2023)), and a true trailblazer for women in cinema. But her remarkable rise to fame has roots in the indie filmmaking movement known as Mumblecore. Understanding this early phase of Gerwig’s career can provide a deeper, more nuanced appreciation for her later works and the creative choices that have made her a unique voice in Hollywood.

Mumblecore is a subgenre of American independent film marked by especially low budgets, an emphasis on naturalistic dialogue and character portrayal, and handheld camerawork. Mumblecore filmmakers prioritize authenticity and creativity over elaborate, Hollywood-style productions.

Mumblecore films are made with minimal budgets, focus on real, everyday experiences rather than structured plots, and often include themes of coming-of-age, romantic entanglements, and young adult struggles. These films seem to randomly drop in on a character’s life and stick with them for an arbitrary amount of time, not often following a typical three-act story structure.

The Mumblecore movement was brought about by the invention of two technologies: easily accessible and affordable gear (such as handheld cameras and editing software) and the rise of internet video-sharing sites (such as YouTube and Vimeo). This made filmmaking cheaper than ever before and brought a brand new wave of young filmmakers into the film festival scene. Many critics compare Mumblecore films to documentaries due to their guerilla filmmaking techniques. Typically, a feature film's budget goes toward actors, crew, locations, gear, production design, and post-production. The style of Mumblecore meant that films could limit crew and gear to usually just a cinematographer with a camera and a few lights and a sound engineer with a microphone, they typically only center around a small cast of characters (two or three), and they use borrowed spaces like the filmmakers own apartments or public spaces to save on Production Design costs.

Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha (2002) is widely accepted as the first Mumblecore film. It premiered at the 2002 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival and inspired a whole generation of new filmmakers who realized, for the first time, they could make a film with the limited resources they had at their disposal. 

The film focuses on Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer), a recently graduated young adult who struggles to find her place in the corporate world. We follow her as she temps in an office while trying to figure out what it is she really wants to do. Marnie grapples with her feelings toward her good friend Alex (Christian Rudder), who doesn't seem to feel the same way about her. Along the way, Marnie meets Mitchell (Andrew Bujalski), a shy, neurotic coworker who helps her better understand herself.

Film historian and critic Ray Carney wrote of Funny Ha Ha:

“The loose weave of experience—the shaggy, baggy randomness of young adult life and love—has never been captured more truly and convincingly on film. Never.

Compared with Bujalski's characters, the ones in most other movies look and act like robots on autopilot. Funny Ha Ha brilliantly and touchingly communicates the awkwardness, the hesitation, the doubts and uncertainties of our souls as we muddle our ways through life–inadvertently and unconsciously stepping on each others toes, changing our minds, hurting, then apologizing and healing, and then hurting ourselves or someone else one more time. What a deep, beautiful—and funny!—understanding of life.”

Funny Ha Ha introduced a new way of telling stories, with all the ugliness, chaos, humor, and struggles that come with everyday life. It was the start of Mumblecore’s mission to tell stories about the average young adult just trying to make it in LA, New York, or elsewhere. 

The 2005 SXSW Film Festival was the break-out year for Mumblecore: Joe Swanberg's Kissing on the Mouth (2005), Mark and Jay Duplass's The Puffy Chair (2005), and Andrew Bujalski's follow-up, Mutual Appreciation (2005) all debuted at the festival marking the true start of Mumblecore as a movement. It was at this festival where a journalist, talking with Eric Masunaga, sound mixer for Andrew Bujalski, first coined the name Mumblecore.

Greta Gerwig was in attendance at the 2005 SXSW Film Festival, joining with her then-boyfriend. At this festival Gerwig met many of the central figures in Mumblecore including the Duplass Brothers, Joe Swanberg, and Kris Williams.

Gerwig’s first major involvement with Mumblecore came through Joe Swanberg. Gerwig starred in Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs (2006), which became one of the defining films of the Mumblecore genre. Gerwig’s performance as Hannah, a young woman navigating a complex emotional landscape, marked a breakthrough for her in indie cinema and solidified her association with Mumblecore.

Only a few years later, in 2008, Gerwig had solidified herself as a staple in Mumblecore films when she had five films come out in which she appeared as an actor. One of these films was Nights and Weekends (2008) which she co-directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in alongside Joe Swanberg. This film reflected Mumblecore’s emphasis on improvised style and personal relationships, as it follows a long-distance relationship with the same raw, unscripted feel that characterizes Mumblecore films.

Nights and Weekends marked Greta Gerwigs’s transition from actor to filmmaker. Although always a writer and a life-long lover of theater, Gerwig didn’t anticipate becoming a film director. Her involvement in Mumblecore (primarily its tight-knit, creative group of filmmakers and its low barrier of entry) undoubtedly influenced her career path. Its focus on low-budget filmmaking and personal expression, provided an outlet for her creative energy, giving her the freedom to experiment both in front of and behind the camera.

Gerwig’s early work in Mumblecore helped her hone her craft, leading to her transition from acting in independent films to directing her own projects. It also allowed her to develop a unique, idiosyncratic style, blending quirky, character-driven narratives with more universal themes of identity, love, and growing up.

Although many fans of Gerwig’s more recent work may not even know about the Mumblecore movement, Gerwig’s roots in this movement have undoubtedly influenced her solo-directorial endeavors. 

One of the hallmarks of Mumblecore is improvised, naturalistic dialogue. In Lady Bird (2017), Gerwig uses sharp, witty, and relatable dialogue to define her characters. Conversations are awkward, meandering, and not always goal-oriented; just like in Mumblecore, these semi-nonsensical conversations add to the “slice of life” narrative. In both Lady Bird and Little Women (2019), scenes centering around family and friends are rich in realistic exchanges, often filled with humor, sibling rivalry, and emotional rawness. We often feel as if we are intruding on an intimate, private event.

Mumblecore films emphasize personal growth, relationships, and emotional struggles. The narratives tend to be low-stakes, dealing with life’s small moments, rather than grand, overarching plots. In Lady Bird, we see a continuation of this focus on self-discovery. The film isn't interested in big external plot events but rather in Lady Bird’s (Saoirse Ronan) internal evolution, her push for independence, and her complicated relationship with her mother. While Lady Bird certainly includes large life events like leaving for college, the heart of the story is a series of small, everyday interactions. Similarly, Gerwig’s approach to Little Women focuses on the internal struggles of each sister—Jo’s conflict between art and independence, Meg’s struggles with romantic and social expectations, Beth’s quiet courage, and Amy’s evolving sense of self-worth. The subtle but powerful character moments are reminiscent of Mumblecore’s intimate exploration of identity and relational dynamics. Even in Barbie, a film with a clear goal for the main character, the plot still intrinsically revolves around Barbie’s character growth more than any goals she may have.

Through her directorial work, Gerwig has stayed true to the Mumblecore sensibility of intimate, character-driven narratives, naturalistic dialogue, and emotional complexity, while adapting these stories to more expansive, high-profile projects. Gerwig’s films continue to reflect the themes and sensibilities that first shaped her work in the Mumblecore movement.