LITTLE WOMEN: Greta Gerwig’s Funny, Moving and Incredibly Warm-Hearted Adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Beloved Classic

Genre: Drama, Romance  

Produced by: Amy Pascal, Denise Di Novi, Robin Swicord

Directed by: Greta Gerwig    

Written by: Greta Gerwig    

Production Company: Columbia Pictures   

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Timothee Chalamet, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Louis Garrel, Tracy Letts, James Norton, Bob Odenkirk    

Runtime: 135 minutes                                                                                                                                                           

SYNOPSIS: 

In the years after the American Civil War, Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) is now a grown up young lady living in New York City, aspiring to be taken seriously as a writer. Jo’s journey towards completing her novel and also being the voice of the underrepresented takes her back to the time she spent in Concord, Massachusetts with her three sisters – Amy (Florence Pugh), Meg (Emma Watson) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) – as, like her, they try to live their life their own way and come to terms with its rewards and consequences. 

REVIEW: 

 

With a story that perfectly epitomizes its author’s ideals and criticism of the society’s way of life, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) is one of those 19^th century popular literatures with cross-generational appeal. The fact that many educational institutions today still consider her novel as required reading for students all around the world speaks volume about its long-lasting influence. Its historical context doesn’t detract from the modern-day relevance of its main subject matter: the struggle of women in a man’s world. In light of the #MeToo movement, Alcott’s work feels almost uncannily prophetic as history continues to repeat itself throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st century. 

Little Women’s boldness to bring the issue up, especially in a time when her material might seem too edgy, made it such an instant best-seller that it then became a literary franchise, spawning two more sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886). Since then, the franchise’s first chapter has been adapted for the screen numerous times, whether into a silent film, a black and white film, or a color film. But one thing that’s in common with those adaptations is they feature some of Hollywood’s celebrated actresses such as Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Winona Ryder playing members of the March sisters. 

2019’s Little Women simply continues this long tradition that had begun as far back as a hundred years ago with Alexander Butler’s lost 1917 adaptation. Written and directed by Greta Gerwig of Lady Bird (2017) fame this time around, the film marks the seventh feature-length adaptation of Alcott’s novel and the second one under the Columbia Pictures banner after Gillian Armstrong’s most recent 1994 version. Taking on such a mainstream title definitely represents a massive jump for Gerwig, following her humble, low-budget directorial debut. Still, her Oscar-nominated Lady Bird clout gives her the opportunity to get pretty much all of the who’s who in 2019 for the project, ranging from her previous collaborators Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet and Tracy Letts, seasoned actresses Emma Watson and Laura Dern and then up-and-comers like Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen. 

Little Women is the cinematic equivalent of a warm, cozy hug on a cold, wintry day: so lovely, reassuring and full of infectiously childlike exuberance. Though it has a 136-minute runtime, this umpteenth 2019 big-screen adaptation of Alcott’s story feels like 90 to 100 minute at most. The film manages to move the narrative along faster than most two hour plus long character-driven dramas. It’s such an utterly fun, delightful treat for the whole family that has its heart in the right place. It brilliantly carries over the source material’s timely and timeless theme of sororal bond in ways that not only capture the spirit of its writer’s work and life, but also add more than enough contemporary slants to justify its own existence. 

Thematically and scale-wise, Little Women is the natural progression for Gerwig’s fledgling career thus far. Her distinctively quirky and yet somewhat welcoming voice is prevalent throughout this version, demonstrating the filmmaker’s ability to reach the mainstream accessibility of a mid-budget studio drama while also preserving her trademark arthouse sensibilities. There’s a stately elegance and fly-on-the-wall intimacy about her direction that excellently transports the present-day viewers to the setting of Concord 1860’s and then deeper into some of its characters’ inner souls. Bearing in mind Gerwig’s success with handling a young adult coming-of-age story of a bygone era in Lady Bird, Little Women sits comfortably within her wheelhouse, making her just the right person to do Alcott’s vision justice. 

What sets the 2019 adaptation apart from the rest is its refreshingly ambitious, almost Christopher Nolan-esque storytelling style. Gerwig adopts a unique approach to retelling an otherwise familiar narrative, foregoing Alcott’s linear structure for a more fragmented and non-linear one as the film jumps back and forth between the March sisters’ childhood and adulthood. Watching her interpretation of Little Women is tantamount to someone ripping up all the pages out of its source material and then taping them back together again into something that resembles a book with all the pages in the wrong order. 

But somehow the overall impact of that rearrangement is still remarkable, with all those wildly disparate elements combining into a cohesive, satisfying whole. 2019’s Little Women is a well-thought-out subversion of the way people generally process the literary classic. Gerwig’ s screenplay ignites a profound feeling of hopefulness and regret that dovetails with the film’s reflective nature as the sisters try to come to terms with what happened in the past and what is happening now. As the narrative occasionally jumps ahead of the chronological order, the early revelation about what person a certain character has become and, through flashbacks, the gradual elaboration of how he/she get to that point in time adds poignancy and a note of melancholy to the rest of the proceedings.  

Gerwig’s Little Women is also a clever, subtly incisive meta-commentary on Alcott’s own experience writing the aforementioned novel, in which the film is bookended by the present-day scenes of Jo sitting across an unimpressed newspaper editor Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) in his office, trying to sell him her work. 

Reminiscent of Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002), it uses its story-within-a-story conceit to give some semi-autobiographical relevance to the assorted coming-of-age scenarios, intersecting the March sisters’ domestic lives with that of Jo’s attempt at a writing career in New York. This jumbled timeline helps sustain a weirdly real-time momentum to the idea of Jo as Alcott’s avatar developing her Little Women novel. The entire film is purely a vivid immersion into a writer’s creative process, where the faint outlines of Jo’s vague childhood memories living in Concord are a bunch of jigsaw puzzles she has to piece together until they eventually form the bigger picture. And sometimes, the first idea doesn’t necessarily mean the beginning of the story, lending credibility to the narrative’s skewed internal logic. 

The film reimagines Alcott’s coming-of-age story as a lyrical exploration on life imitating art and vice versa, where a story pretty much reflects the author’s reaction and behavior towards the real world. Thanks to Gerwig’s signature crisp, snappy dialogue, 2019’s Little Women creates a recognizable, fully-realized world that looks as if everyone inhabits the same reality as Jo and also deal with the same timely and timeless issues such as gender inequality, class divide and generational gap. 

Her screenplay doesn’t mind letting her characters and messages unravel slowly but quietly over the course of a series of lengthy discussions or conversations. The film’s wordplay walks that fine line between laugh-out-loud hilarious and thought-provokingly biting pretty well. In one scene, Jo engages in a polite, but philosophically heated argument with the filthy rich widow Aunt March (Meryl Streep) about what constitute a woman’s ultimate happiness that ends with the latter responding flippantly, “well, that’s because I’m rich”. 

The fact that the “I’m rich” line is not in the book and it is entirely Gerwig’s idea and that it is quite easily the best line in the entire film speaks volumes about her knack for dialogue-driven materials. Furthermore, that line, one amongst many, reveals quite a lot about the period’s black-and-white perspective of a woman’s role in the society: to be the wife of a rich man, a sentiment later echoed by Mr. Dashwood when he tries persuading Jo to change her story’s ending for the sake of political correctness. Jo’s unwillingness to accept such seemingly inevitable fate is what keeps the stakes personal and the constant threat of that particular societal norm tripping her way painful. 

At the same time, Jo is a sharply drawn character, a very complex heroine who teeters somewhere between tomboyish spirit and feminine grace. Little Women both recognizes and accepts Jo as simply a woman who deals with the same problems and feels the same way as her fellow gender, even if her ideals contradict with that of the stereotypical nineteenth century women. There’s this one tender, heartbreaking scene that encapsulates how a woman views womanhood, in which Jo, aware of her family’s financial problems, tries to appear stoic and resilient when she reveals that she cut her hair short to help raise some money and later devolves into an emotional wreck in Amy’s arms over losing her long hair. Speaking of Amy, she too more than meets the eye as an individual, the youngest and most manipulative of the March sisters who has got a compelling motivation behind going as far as burning Jo’s manuscript. Amy’s extreme actions in this version are a token of sisterly love, of someone who idolizes her elder sister so much she would do anything to get her attention. Jo’s tumultuous relationship with Amy is the emotional crux of the film. 

Little Women is also a film of undeniable technical craftsmanship. For a start, it is truly a miracle in costume design and makeup/hairstyling. 

Jacqueline Durran’s costuming is drop dead gorgeous and the makeup department’s hair work is done with meticulous precision. Everything about the March sisters’ period dresses and their look in general is period accurate and an ultimate fashion statement. Beyond that, they do quite a lot of the narrative heavy lifting for Gerwig, in which the contrast between beauty and squalor offer the film a clear sense of time and place. 

Yorick Le Saux’s immaculate cinematography sets the ambience and mood of the different timelines, settling for the idyllic brightness of a Christmas-themed mural for the flashback sequences and the gray bleakness of a nuclear winter for the present-day sequences. Nick Houy’s fine editing is the glue that holds its non-linear structure in place, making the scene transition from past and present flow seamlessly and comprehensibly. Alexandre Desplat infuses the score with playfulness and whimsy that compliments the film’s amiable display of sisterly and familial togetherness. 

Whether it’s by default of the source material or its own volition, Little Women falls slightly by the wayside because the story’s main focus on Jo and Amy eventually gives just about everyone else the short shrift. 

Meg and Beth are the most thinly drawn of the principal foursome, with little to define them beyond being members of the March sisters. They are barely in the film, often relegated to the background to allow Jo and Amy some more breathing space. These young women don’t seem to really have much of a personal life of their own outside their familial connection, which is too bad since their individual arcs have intriguing potential. But it gets lost in the screenplay’s overarching mix. 

The film has the basic idea of what it’s like to be them, but the development is half-baked and shallow. Meg, the eldest sister, is a traditional stay-at-home wife and that’s really it. A scene that suggests there’s a marital strain between Meg and her husband John Brooke (James Norton) is the only time her arc feels like it’s going anywhere, but that doesn’t detract from how bare-bones her overall story is. Beth, the second youngest, is a rather flat character who only has one trait for the majority of the film: she likes to play the piano. Her sickness serves as a conventional plot device to manipulate the audience into caring for a character that the screenplay kind of doesn’t. 

There is also the relationship arc between Jo and her colleague Professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel) back in New York that wounds up being truncated. Jo and Friedrich’s story begins directly with them already pretty close with each other, and yet, the film never bothers even once to explain how these characters arrive at this particular moment, skipping over quite a lot of the specifics necessary to flesh out their blossoming relationship. 

This aspect of the screenplay gets bogged down with too much of the telling and too little of the showing, reducing the historical significance of their relationship by a few casual throwaway lines here and there and a fleeting, blink-it-and-you’ll-miss-it montage. Rather than fill in the blanks, it further renders their relationship and, to a certain extent, Friedrich’s presence irrelevant, as if he’s just a guy she meets one time in her life than something much more. 

For the most part, the film doesn’t know what to do with the Friedrich character, emphasized by his conspicuous absence throughout the entire second act. He is such an afterthought, a long forgotten presence whose sudden reappearance later almost feels like it comes out of left field and unearned. 

Little Women’s uneven treatment of the supporting characters is salvaged by the embarrassment of acting riches. The ensemble cast all across the board is uniformly first-rate, making the most of the usual array of stock archetypes populating these period/coming-of-age dramas. But the biggest stars of this show are no doubt the four leads playing the March sisters. Gerwig has assembled an eclectic mix of accomplished and novice actresses for the aforementioned coveted roles, and her decision works, creating a sisterly dynamic that’s as sweet and dysfunctional as it is believable. The chemistry between Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen and Florence Pugh is so effortless it’s as if their characters transcend its fictional limitations. 

Saoirse Ronan provides a compelling case of why she is Gerwig’s favored muse, because she turns in yet again another magnetic, possibly career-best central performance in her film, this time around by portraying American literature’s most beloved heroine Jo March. Ronan taps into the character’s inner feminist angst and rebellious streak with wit, verve and emotional nuance. As far as supporting actresses go, Florence Pugh is the film’s real scene stealer as the pompous, driven Amy, the youngest in the March family. Pugh’s Amy is fierce, relentless and, most importantly, multi-layered, imbuing a seemingly irritable character on the surface with the kind of human dimension that makes her selfish needs understandable and even admirable. 

Eliza Scanlen is simply the epitome of angelic kindness here, showing sweet, almost too-good-to-be-true innocence as the saintly, ill-stricken Beth, the second youngest in the March family. Scanlen isn’t given that much to do on the page, but for what she was asked to do, she generates enough sympathy and even a tiny pull at the heartstrings. Emma Watson does a pretty decent job of channeling the prim and proper image and quality of the stereotypical nineteenth century American girl through her character Meg, the eldest sister in the March family. Her American accent though is a bit all over the map, too often slipping in and out of it throughout the entire film. 

In his second collaboration with Gerwig, Timothee Chalamet cements his status as one of the finest actors in the sad boys club. Chalamet is ideally suited for the part of American literature’s ultimate sad boy Laurie, playing the character with the sort of teen heartthrob-ish boyish charm and teen bravado that he has brought in other roles. Unfortunately, Louis Garrel is the film’s weakest link. Garrel is just passable and unremarkable as Professor Friedrich Bhaer, a pale shadow of Gabriel Byrne’s memorable interpretation of that similar role. His dashing, debonair good looks make him appealing as Jo’s love interest, but beyond that, he is unconvincing as a highly distinguished professor, lacking Byrne’s sophisticated swagger. 

Laura Dern brings pathos to the steady, nurturing maternal presence of the March’s matriarch Marmee, exemplified by the one shocking, well-acted moment of her character confessing to her daughter Jo about her well-kept anger issues. Tracy Letts injects his trademark gruff, tough, no-nonsense personality into the typically thankless role of a newspaper editor Mr. Dashwood, breathing some life into his razor-sharp interplay with Ronan’s Jo. Meanwhile, Meryl Streep is at the top of her scenery-chewing, domineering game here, so blunt and intimidating without having to lift even a single finger as Aunt March. Chris Cooper plays Laurie’s biological father and occasionally a father figure for the March family Mr. Laurence in a gentlemanly manner. 

CONCLUSION: 

Little Women is Greta Gerwig’s funny, moving and incredibly warm-hearted adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic that stays true to the essence of its source material while also taking an oft-told, public domain story to fresh, audacious direction. 

Score: 9/10