Little Women (2019)
Based on Louisa May Alcott’s much-beloved and oft-adapted novel of the same name, Little Women relates the story of the four March sisters, growing up in their humble existence in 19th Century Massachusetts. Greta Gerwig adapts the screenplay and directs the feature, and though it’s an age-old story, it plays with an eye for a modern audience. Gerwig’s eye for authenticity is impeccable in her second solo effort as a director, coming off of her excellent personal comedic drama of 2017, Lady Bird. Little Women comes across feeling no less personal even though the story, the setting, and the era, are not her own.
As a novel, “Little Women” had been published in two volumes, one in 1868 and the other in 1869. The film version interweaves these volumes together in a rearranged timeline that jumps back and forth, spotlighting their hopes and dreams as teenagers, then tempering those ambitions with the grimmer realities of the real world in their adulthood. It spins the yarn of four young sisters with artistic and romantic dreams – Jo, Amy, Meg, and Beth – living with their mother Marmee while their father is off fighting in the Civil War. Much of the film concentrates on Jo’s story regarding her ambition and struggle to become a published writer. We meet her first, at a newspaper editor’s office, who chops up her story and pays her less than usual to publish it, but Jo is ecstatic that her work, even diminished, is going to appear in the paper. Throughout the film, we see her maturation finding her voice, both as a woman and as a writer.
The artistic Amy takes a sizable secondary role, mostly stemming from her possible romance with Laurie, as well as her difficulty in accepting that the only real path to achieve financial success for a woman in this era of society is to marry a rich man. The third spotlighted is aspiring actress Meg who married for love with a tutor of lower means. And last is Beth, a promising pianist, whose suffering due to Scarlet Fever becomes the reason the family stays bonded together.
For Greta Gerwig, Little Women represents a story she has carried since her youth. Her mother read it to her when she was very young, and she had re-read it several times through her early teens. Gerwig didn’t reread it until her early thirties. As an adult, she found much that resonated with her in a very different and personal way. What once seemed like a heartwarming, old-fashioned tale when Gerwig was young now read like it had modern, topical themes underneath. Her familiarity with the March sisters and their story come through in her film, and you can sense what parts Gerwig may have found meaningful from Alcott’s writing by what she decides to showcase thematically on the screen. You can tell from the narrative that both Alcott and Gerwig identify with Jo, the most among the sisters. All are storytellers who must traverse in a field that is primarily dominated by men at the top.
The desire to adapt Little Women for a new generation started in 2013 with Sony Pictures feeling that the last major adaptation was approaching 20 years, the 1994 version with Winona Ryder. After a script by then-newcomer Olivia Milch didn’t pan out, things went into limbo until producer Amy Pascal took over the project. Pascal made it her mission to emphasize female-led stories and filmmakers. She began discussions with Sarah Polley initially in 2015 with an option for Polley to direct if they decide to go with her adaptation. Gerwig heard about their intentions to make a film in 2016, immediately petitioning to be the one to write the script and received the go-ahead when Polley became wrapped up with the Netflix mini-series “Alias Grace.” Once Lady Bird was released in 2017 to soaring critical acclaim, they asked if she’d like to also direct from her script. Hers would be different because, while others who’ve adapted “Little Women” see it as a tale of family and sisterhood, Gerwig sees it more governed by money issues, passion for art, and what it means to be a woman. To have money gives you freedom, freedom to pursue one’s art – something women have rarely had the luxury of up to that point in history.
To help flesh out the story to mirror Alcott’s life, Gerwig consulted her diaries, letters, and other novels, using some of her entries and bits of dialogue to merge them with Jo’s story. She layers the stories with a jumbled chronology that contrasts the two volumes in the book. The first volume is much more crowd-pleasing in its telling, ranging from one Christmas to another. The second volume, which concentrates more on the relationships and marriages of the sisters, contrasts their dreams and sacrifices. In both volumes, Beth becomes ill, and what occurs to her in each sets the tone of the work, with the first volume representing the compromises Alcott made to get her story published, while the second shifts it more toward semi-autobiographical viewpoints.
Many adaptations only concentrate on the first volume of the sisters as young girls, crafting a heartwarming tale of Christmas and family unity. Gerwig’s treatment shows the girls as adults, facing the realities that young women of aspiration met in her day to find their paths in life, only to learn that their journey must be tied to a man to achieve anything. The first volume resonated with her and to many readers as young girls; the second volume resonated much more as an adult. Gerwig’s Little Women is Alcott’s what sticks when viewed with the eyes of an adult. Alcott wrote her volumes in her mid-thirties with that perspective in mind; Gerwig adapted the book in her mid-thirties, keeping in mind viewing Alcott’s writing with a similar outlook on where they are in life as struggling talents.
Gerwig constructed her dialogue so that the actors would talk over one another on occasion, much like the real conversation might, especially with a family of a mother and four sisters who know each other well and aren’t afraid to share their ideas when the thought strikes. The actors aren’t stationary, usually performing actions as they talk or walking room to room in a way that draws out how people might do so in real life. Gerwig felt that period pieces don’t need to move slowly because, in their times, they were bustling and modern, with plenty of dancing, singing, running, and feeling alive. There is a naturalistic flow to these performances due to their well-rehearsed and choreographed interactions that make Little Women feel less scripted and stiff, even though much of the dialogue comes straight from the novel. Gerwig places a good deal of emphasis on keeping the action moving on the screen, with shots of people running, spinning, twirling, and active, moving the story in a propulsive way that keeps viewers engaged from a visual standpoint. These young women are restless, and so must be the camera.
It’s an odd thing to see the film play on two levels, one of Jo March as a character in the book and the other as Jo March, who is the author of her own story. Gerwig makes a concerted effort to draw the connection between Jo March and Louisa May Alcott in a seamless way. More than this, Gerwig makes the connection between Jo and Louisa, and then herself. The link extends toward any young woman who has dreamt of pursuing her artistic desires and felt undermined by a male-dominated structure. The structure often tells women how they should be and what it means to be a woman. Criticism often comes from the mouth of a man who claims he knows more about how women feel and think than the woman putting herself out there with her thoughts and feelings.
Little Women benefits from a solid cast, with Saoirse Ronan delivering another fantastic performance worthy of the highest accolades. As great as she is, others deliver memorable and robust character performances. Florence Pugh as Jo’s younger sister Amy anguishes, not only in her lifelong struggle with feeling inferior to her free-spirited older sister but others who may have more talent at expressing themselves as artists. Amy claims she either wants to be great or nothing, so it’s a heartbreaking realization when she concludes that she may not achieve for the greatness to which she aspires. Timothee Chalomet also provides the requisite charm as Laurie, caught between the loves of two sisters who seem to want to make something more of themselves before they might choose to settle down into societal expectations. Emma Watson was a last-minute addition to the film, replacing the initially cast Emma Stone, who left due to scheduling conflicts.
There’s a telling line in the film delivered by French actor Louis Garrel, who plays Jo’s German boarding house critic friend, Friedrich Bhaer. He states, “Shakespeare was the greatest poet who ever lived because he smuggled his poetry in popular works.” As with Shakespeare, so too with Gerwig, who takes a wholly accessible work like Little Women and smuggles in her distinctive and personal insights regarding womanhood, artistic expression, and the way money influences infused through informed selections from the original artist’s own words and expressions throughout the entire body of her work. The best happy ending is not for a wedding, but in seeing a woman coming into her own as a storyteller and woman. In Little Women, this occurs both in front of and behind the camera.
Qwipster’s rating: A+
MPAA Rated: PG for thematic elements and brief smoking.
Run time: 135 min.
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothee Chalomet, Emma Watson, Laura Dern, Eliza Scanlen, Louis Garrel, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, James Norton, Bob Odenkirk, Jayne Houdyshell
Director: Greta Gerwig
Screenplay: Greta Gerwig (based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott)