Little Women (2019)

“Little Women’s monologues, though powerful, rattle their importance as if delivered in a playhouse.”

Title: Little Women (2019)
Director: Greta Gerwig 👩🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Greta Gerwig 👩🏼🇺🇸 based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott 👩🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Elaine 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3.75/5

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women marks the sixth venture to the big screen for the story. I find a new adaptation almost as superfluous as another retelling of A Christmas Carol, especially considering how Gerwig’s latest retains two of the same producers (Robin Swicord and Denise Di Novi) from the 1994 version starring Winona Ryder. Still, Gerwig does actualize her personal vision of the March sisters who grow up during the Civil War under the watchful eye of their mother Marmee (Laura Dern).

In particular, Gerwig explores the motivations of the sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh), while playing all the greatest hits of the story we know and love: Jo’s first meeting with Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) at a dance; Amy’s burning of the manuscript; as well as Beth’s illness. Gerwig tells the tale in a non-linear fashion, interspersing the present storyline with luminous flashbacks. Although we lose dramatic tension this way, the new approach allows Gerwig to layer events, revealing new thematic and emotional connections.

Despite its plucky heroine of Jo March, the source material is chock-full of decidedly dated quotes such as, “When John spoke in that masterful tone, Meg always obeyed, and never regretted her docility.” Gerwig cuts away such swaths of obsolete dialogue rather than treating it as a sacred text, breathing new life into the story. Marmee’s line, “I am angry every day,” pulls directly from the novel despite sounding like a modern sentiment. That modernity is only possible because Gerwig omitted the rest of the book’s passage, which goes into how Marmee suppresses that rage and turns to her husband to help keep her in check. Dern delivers Marmee’s words not as a doting mother who is humbled by her own faults, but as a woman who has reason to seethe in life.

Admittedly, condensing a 500-page novel into the span of one movie proves impossible and some character development gets lost. We rarely see consequences unfold, nor do we sense any self-reflection. We never feel the weight of possible stakes. The girls sacrifice their breakfast only to be immediately served a more extravagant one; there’s no thought to how Beth’s illness could have been prevented; and Amy ultimately loses nothing by turning down her first marriage proposal.

But Gerwig does produce magic in the stacked cast, with chemistry and camaraderie bursting from every scene. She employed slashes in the screenplay to indicate how the sisters’ words tumble over each other, and the whirlwind of good cheer brings you into the family. Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux adds to this glow, using film rather than digital to emphasize softer tones, and the past sequences have vivacious colors. Pops of pastel, like sugary confections, dominate the wardrobe. The sisters regard their childhood through such rose-tinted glasses, but unfortunately, the present scenes literally pale in contrast—as if to suggest how their lives have become gray and flat.

Little Women also suffers from sloppy composition, and the low camera angle makes it difficult to follow movement. Continuity problems rage throughout; clothes, jewelry, and hand position vary from one cut to the next within the span of a single conversation.

I found the last act to be its weakest by far, where Gerwig commits the trite I Should Write a Book About This trope, right down to us seeing the Little Women title inscribed on a leatherbound book as Jo looks on lovingly. In real life, Louisa May Alcott felt pressured to marry off Jo, and Gerwig’s answer to that is to have Jo become the author Alcott. Jo/Alcott of Gerwig’s vision allows her book’s heroine to get paired off with a man to satisfy audiences, but concedes this point with an air of condescension. We see the fake ending, which has the saccharine tone of a rom-com, complete with a race-to-the-airport chase. But the insertion doesn’t quite work because it’s not clear where the meta part starts or stops. Does it begin before Jo’s family clamors to her that she’s actually been in love with Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel) all along and that she’s never been happier? Does it end before the final scene where the March women teach at the school, alongside all of their husbands? Should we just forgive the narrative fumble and somewhat jarring tonal shift because it’s meant to be a subversive nudge? The clumsy handling of it, as well as the way it seems to insist on its own cleverness, undermines the conclusion.

It’s that kind of heavy-handedness that weakens the film. At the start, Jo’s editor advises that people don’t like moralizing, yet that’s essentially what Gerwig does throughout. In Brooklyn (2015), Ronan has an incandescent moment where she simply looks around the room. We never see what she’s looking at, but we feel everything we need to just by watching the emotions flit across her face. It’s an impressive piece of cinema, and I wish we could have similarly been “shown” more here, rather than preached at. Little Women’s monologues, though powerful, rattle their importance as if delivered in a playhouse.

But what Little Women lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in spades with charm. Lines I’ve read or heard a dozen times still made me laugh delightedly in the theater. The talented cast performs no less than we would expect: The soul of the movie surges to life when Ronan joyfully races through the streets, or when Pugh’s clear gaze exhibits both emotion and constraint. As a sophomore outing for Gerwig, Little Women feels solid and provides a generally enjoyable time.

Gender: 4.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
GradeMyMovie.com Assessment: 89% of key cast and crew members were women.

The archetypes of the March sisters are almost as entrenched in popular canon as the quartet from Sex in the City (1998-2004). But other than Amy, they don’t extend much beyond those thin veneers in this film. Even Marmee never strays from being the unwaveringly perfect mother, other than the line where she claims she is angry. Beth is sweet and shy, stuck in time; Meg is not given much to do other than sighing after expensive silks; and while Gerwig has Meg say, “Just because my dreams are different than yours, doesn’t mean they’re unimportant,” she doesn’t seem convinced of the fact herself. She juxtaposes Meg’s wedding right next to a funeral scene, as if implying that a wedding amounts to a sort of death. She also claims that Meg nicknamed her daughter Daisy because it hearkens to the last time Meg truly felt “free,” when she was allowed to be frivolous at a ball. If that’s the case, it’s a crushing interpretation of Meg’s current happiness.

Jo also strangely develops very little, especially when compared to her book counterpart. At each major moment in the novel, her personal growth allows her to express genuine happiness for her sisters. She rejoices for Meg on her wedding day, and again when Amy marries Laurie. Yet Jo in the film’s present loses her temper just as easily as Jo of seven years ago, so much so that her ranting about how “the name Jo March will be remembered” comes off as childish rather than something to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, one of the most revolutionary aspects of Gerwig’s Little Women is how Amy, a traditionally maligned figure, transforms into one of the most interesting characters. Although the book has Amy blossom from the spoiled youngest sibling into a graceful, self-possessed, charming woman, she’s historically portrayed on film as a man stealer, a manuscript burner, and the closest thing we have to an antagonist. Yet Pugh dazzles as a character who Greta fashions to have depth, complexity, and growth. Just as much as Jo, Amy allows us to consider the world of Little Women in the context of its economic realities, instead of solely focusing on who marries whom. The second line of the novel has Meg saying “It’s so dreadful to be poor!” and Gerwig discerns that the story isn’t inherently about romance, but money. It’s about Jo’s art suffering because she needs to write what sells, and it’s about Amy marrying sensibly to provide financial security for herself and her family. Tellingly, two business transactions bookend the film.

Still, the biggest shame is that the March sisters never seem to understand that their true wealth is their love for each other. Gerwig’s interpretation of Jo and Amy’s relationship feels unfortunately adversarial and centered around a man, rather than akin to a loving relationship that matures over time. Because Gerwig interprets Amy as having been in love with Laurie all along, we see that her actions—whether in pleading to be allowed out late with Jo, Meg, and Laurie or rushing out to go ice-skating—have been fueled by her feelings over him rather than a desire to be included by her sisters. In the novel, Jo is the one who says Laurie should be with Amy, but in the film, she second guesses herself after rejecting him and essentially competes with Amy again. We never truly have a scene where they come to understand and support one another.

In the context of romance, Gerwig sets out to present the March women as self-possessed individuals making intelligent decisions, but their marriage choices seem nonsensical. Jo’s match especially, Friedrich, arrives like a suitor ex machina. In the book, he’s a middle-aged, portly professor with a heavy German accent who develops an intellectual relationship with Jo. In the movie, much is made of his svelte appearance, and he’s a suave French bachelor à la Laurie 2.0, granted only a few minutes of screen time. He reminds me of Karl (Rodrigo Santoro) from Love Actually (2003), who really only represented man candy. There’s nothing to suggest how he could have swayed Jo to forego her vow to never marry, other than his truly atrocious attempt at giving constructive criticism.

Representation behind the camera marks up the score here though, as this is wholly Gerwig’s vision and artistic accomplishment, with every interpretation, alteration, or emphasis a result of her choice. With Gerwig’s fingerprints on every scene, Little Women feels almost as personal as her semi-autobiographical feature, Lady Bird (2017).

Race: 1.25/5
GradeMyMovie.com Assessment: 0% of key cast and crew members were POC (!!!)

Little Women presents an insular world. Even though it takes place during the Civil War, we are hardly touched by outside events other than a few scenes with Marmee. Even as they keep bemoaning their poverty, the March sisters ignore their privilege. Their sighs of how poor they are come off as woefully naive, and worse yet, the narrative indulges rather than rebukes their entitled attitudes.

A few people of color dot the landscape, but they don’t really have a space or any significance. There are no non-white characters in the book, but it seems short-sighted to let a movie striving to speak to modern audiences—and that takes place during the Civil War, of all backdrops—commit the same oversight. You could argue that Gerwig didn’t shoehorn in any roles to check a box. However, if she found fit to finesse Louisa May Alcott’s ending, then surely she could have also created more inclusive roles to truly address current moviegoers—with all the diversity that entails.

Mediaversity Grade: C 3.17/5

Anthony Lane claims that Little Women “may just be the best film yet made by an American woman,” but this is wrong on two counts. First, using gender qualifiers in an argument dilutes the conversation. Second, Little Women may not be the best film made by an American woman, nor the best film of the year, nor any other hyperbolism...but that’s okay and it doesn’t need to be.

At the end of the day, Little Women is not a perfect film, but it’s certainly a good one. Greta Gerwig has miraculously made her film relevant in crafting a Jo who speaks to a swathe of today’s generation. I initially wondered why I would care about an overdone movie about a group of white girls who complain about their sheltered life, but Gerwig brings the March family back into the conversation with this vibrant portraiture—and she does it completely on her own terms.

Like Little Women? Try these other titles featuring feminism wrapped in privilege.

Grade: CLiJanuary 9, 2020Female/Nonbinary Creator