The Ending of ‘Begin Again’ Explained: What Happened to Gretta & Dave?

‘Begin Again’ is a 2013 musical comedy-drama film directed and written by John Carney, featuring Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo in lead roles. Knightley portrays a singer-songwriter, Greta who catches the attention of a struggling record label executive (Ruffalo). Together, they embark on a journey to create an album recorded in various public spots across New York City. ‘Begin Again’ is a solid movie without too much depth to it, my only criticism of the movie is that it tries to be “authentic” while being horribly utterly fake. But, we’re not here to review the movie we’re here to explain its somewhat open-ended ending. Did Dan and Miriam save their marriage? Did Dan fix his relationship with his daughter? What happened between Dave and Greta? We’re here to explain. Let’s go.

Dan’s life is in shambles but he discovers a diamond in the rough

The first character we meet is Dan Mulligan (Mark Ruffalo) he is a music producer with his own records company who hasn’t signed a new talent in several years due to struggling to understand the current music scene. Dan lives in New York but was forced to leave his home due to a falling out with his wife. He starts drinking excessively and generally has trouble keeping up with hygiene, work, and even the relationship with his own daughter.

Dan has a pitch for his company and instead of offering some new projects that they can undertake he is excessively vulgar and has nothing really useful to say. Following this failed meeting, Dan is fired by his long-time business partner and co-founder of the company Saul. It is only later that we learn that this was possible because Dan sold his shares to fund his new lifestyle. Dan’s personal relationship with his daughter is also not ideal. She is dressing provocatively and has some trouble in school. His soon-to-be ex-wife tells him it’s because she doesn’t have a proper father figure in her life but Dan dismisses her comments.

Following an extremely stressful day, Dan makes his way to the local talent competition and sees a young artist, Gretta (played by Keira Knightley) on stage. He immediately starts visualizing what her song would sound like with professional production. He approaches Gretta and offers her a record deal, before coming clean and explaining that he is actually no longer employed in that company but with her, he would have no trouble getting his old job back.

Nevertheless, Gretta refuses, she doesn’t want to sell out she wants to remain authentic, but Dan gives her proper advice that she will never advance in her music career looking like a tomboy with practically no professional work done on her song. Gretta still refuses, and it’s only later that we learn the reason why.

Gretta followed the love of her life to New York

In a longer flashback, we see how Gretta came to New York from the UK in the first place. As it turns out her boyfriend Dave Kohl (Adam Levine) made it big and was invited to tour in the USA. They both came to New York a bit naive if they expected to continue their relationship as usual. Dave Kohl got a massive deal with the records publisher, and considering that Gretta was his songwriting partner and his main inspiration he continuously tried to push her into the business with him. But after a while, after execs didn’t really pay mind to it, he stopped and started building his career solo.

Gretta was never jealous, she was never trying to insert herself into his career she gave him all the space in the world, and it came back to bite her in the behind. Dave was supposed to go to LA on a business trip, a recording session and he was supposed to be gone for a few weeks when he returned he played his latest song to Gretta, and as soon as she heard it, she slapped him, and asked him who he wrote the song for.

Dave admitted that she was a mind-reader, and admitted that he “fell” for Mimi, a production assistant working on his latest pieces of music. Dave tells her that he doesn’t want their relationship to end, but he also wants to see where things with Mimi will go. Gretta promptly moved out of his apartment and went to stay with her long-time friend Steve, also a musician and also from London like her. Steve was the one who talked her into going to that open mike night and he was the reason why Dan noticed her in the first place.

Gretta accepts to be produced by Dan

After she gave it some thought Gretta accepted Dan’s proposal and the two went to see Saul together. Saul liked the song but not enough to spend money to produce a demo. Gretta and Dan decided to finance their own demo, no, not a demo, an entire album, and then present it to Saul once it was finished. Since Dan was pretty much broke and Gretta was unemployed while in New York they had to use alternative sources of gear and money. Steve provided the backup guitars and most of the equipment needed to actually record an album. Dan also used his connection to Troublegum, a famous rapper he launched into stardom a long time ago to finance the aspects of the album they lacked. Dan recruited a team of unique but talented street musicians since he couldn’t afford the professionals.

Since they still had trouble figuring out where to actually record the song, Dan and Gretta agreed to record the songs in various locations around New York City, famous landmarks to really capture all the sounds of the city as part of their songs. I don’t have to insult your intelligence to explain why this would never ever ever work, but it is what it is. Dan also agreed to produce the album, although he hasn’t done something like that in a long time.

Gretta and Dan connect over their similar struggles

The album recording has started and both Dan and Gretta are having the time of their lives. Gretta also gets kind of close to Dan’s estranged daughter Violet and asks her to come to one of the recording sessions. Violet agrees but Dan is pissed since as far as he knows Violet sucks on the guitar and this is unacceptable if they were to make a legitimate professional album. Gretta calms him down by saying that she will teach Violet whatever she needs to know. The two also go shopping and we can see Violet wearing decent clothes and toning down on her promiscuous behavior.

As time passes Gretta and Dan connect on a both personal and professional level, with Gretta revealing how she ended up where she is now in the first place. We also find out that Dan was not the person who messed up his marriage it was his wife. According to Dan, his wife had an affair while on a business trip with a singer, and the two agreed to end their marriages as soon they returned home. Dan went to pick up his wife at the airport and Miriam told him about the affair and how their marriage was basically over. The next day she packed her bags and everything but her new boyfriend basically ghosted her, burned his phone, and returned to his wife.

Miriam didn’t leave but Dan did, and following this he had a mental breakdown which severely affected both his job and his alcoholism and this is what led him to be practically homeless. He gave Gretta a piece of advice, that people in the music industry make terrible life partners.

Dave wants Gretta back

Some time has passed since the breakup now and Gretta has a much clearer perspective on where her life currently stands. She and Steve are watching the television and see Dave accepting the latest music award. Gretta admits that she loved Dave like a fool but is ultimately better off without him. Steve talks Gretta into recording the words into a song, and Gretta does exactly that, but she sends the recording to Dave’s voicemail. Gretta intended the song to be a “f-u” message, but Dave didn’t get the hint and the following day asked her to meet him.

Dave comes clean to Gretta and tells her that he wants her back, apparently the thing with Mimi quickly blew over. He also plays for her heavily commercialized rendition of “Lost Stars” one of the songs she wrote for him as a Christmas present. Gretta is disappointed despite Dave giving her writing credits because the true meaning of the song has been lost and she advises Dave to re-record the song, with a different arrangement but Dave refuses, telling her that this version brings a special “energy” to the room.

Gretta also tells Dave that she doesn’t want to make up with him, too much has happened and she has learned too much in his absence. Dave nevertheless asks her to come and hear him play the song and the Gramercy Theater that weekend so that she can see how fans react to the new version of the song. After thinking it over Gretta decides to go to a theater and sees Dave already starting to perform the song, he asks her to join him on stage and tells the fans that he will play her version of the song.

Gretta starts crying but leaves the show realizing that things will never be the same again and that the Dave that she fell in love with is not who Dave is today. She is a much wiser and much clearer person and knows what she wants. She doesn’t want Dave however, he has sold out to commercialism while Gretta wants to stay true to herself and her songs.

The album is finished and Saul loves it

The album recording wraps up and Dan’s daughter turns out to be a virtuoso on the guitar (of course she does). Dan asks her whether she would like to play with him in the future and that they can do a sort of “family thing” out of it all, Violet accepts happy that she gets to spend more time with her father. Somewhere down the line Dan also manages to patch up things with his wife Miriam and the two can be seen happily spending time together.

Dan and Gretta go to negotiate a deal with Saul, and Saul is really impressed with what Gretta and Dan have done. He was so impressed that he gave Dan his old job back but Gretta wanted a bigger share of the sales of her own album taking into account that the company had absolutely nothing to do with it, Saul originally offered her a dollar for every copy sold.

Dan and Gretta leave the meeting without closing the deal with Saul and several days later, Gretta wants to self-publish the album. She aims to sell the album online for $1 and Dan initially refuses because he doesn’t want to sabotage his own company but ultimately accepts and publishes the album online, behind Saul’s back. Dan also contacts Troublegum and uses him as a promotion for the album. Troublegum tweets a mention to Gretta and as far as we know, the whole world follows him.

The next day, Saul comes to Dan and shows him that Gretta’s album has sold 10,000 copies in the first 24 hours since release and mockingly fires Dan chastizing him for losing this opportunity.

So, what happened with Gretta, Dave, Dan, Miriam, and Violet in the end?

The movie introduced a lot of issues related to family and all of them were resolved until the end of the movie. Gretta and Dave broke up for good, she dumped him that day in the Theater in the truest sense of the word and decided to follow her own path in life.

Dan reconciled with his wife, or they are at least on good terms now that the dust has settled and perhaps, in some time their marriage will be back on track, stronger than ever. Dan stopped drinking as much, now that he has a family and job that he has to focus on, and Gretta managed to restore his faith in new music and give him some of his lost passion for producing.

Violet calmed down, she once again has a father figure in her life and they are spending some quality time together jamming like true musicians. She stopped getting in trouble and dressing provocatively to get the attention of the boys largely thanks to the advice given to her by Gretta.

Dave supposedly continued his career, but in a different direction than he originally planned with Gretta. Steve, well we don’t know what ultimately happened to Steve but we do know that Gretta aimed to share the revenue from the album between everyone who took part to create it equally, so hopefully he will be able to move out of that micro-apartment.

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