Photo by Wilson Webb
Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen in Little Women (2019)
In 1868, the first edition of Little Women arrived in bookshops. It was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic and unlike most bestsellers, interest never waned. Alas, author Louisa May Alcott didn’t live to see the advent of the motion picture camera. In the 20th and 21st centuries, no fewer than eight movie adaptations have been produced. It’s become a cliché: every generation gets its own retelling of Little Women. And like many clichés, this one contains a truth.
The latest cinematic version is told by Greta Gerwig, whose 2017 comedy Lady Bird revealed a fresh new talent emerging from the indie film scene. In Little Women, Gerwig deconstructs the chronology, shuffling the narrative in an occasionally confusing back and forth between places as well as past and present.
In the opening scene, Jo March (played by Lady Bird’s Saoirse Ronan) nervously (yet with determination) enters a New York publishing office and—concealing her unease—presents a short story to the editor. Her face sinks as he rapidly marks up her manuscript in pen, but instead of the expected rejection, he will accept an abridged version. Then he gives her some advice. If a story features a single woman, she must be married by the end—or die.
Marriage is a prevailing theme in Little Women, as is the rollercoaster rider of sisterhood. In Gerwig’s telling, Amy March (Florence Plugh) first appears in Paris, painting plein air and drawing the eye of the March’s Concord neighbor, Laurie Lawrence (Timothee Chalamet), touring the continent with his grandfather. Aunt March (Meryl Streep) is also in Paris, and, reappearing at several points in the time-traveling screenplay, advises her nieces to marry well Aunt has no husband but she’s rich, she explains; there are precious few ways for a woman to earn money and live independently. Jo seems determined to try by working as a writer and tutor. Amy plans to marry into wealth. Their sister Meg (Emma Watson) is happy with a love marriage to Laurie’s tutor, Mr. Brooke (James North). Sadly, the fourth sister, Beth (Eliza Scanlen), never has a chance to find her way in the world.
Although relations are benign, the lines of class are visible in Concord. Laurie’s family and Aunt March occupy mansions on the hills. The March sisters, their mother Marmee (Laura Dern) and their father (Bob Odenkirk), when he’s home from the Civil War, dwell in an ample but plain frame house. When married to Mr. Brooke, Meg is reduced to a nearby cottage. Filled with a sense of social obligation, Marmee and her daughters trudge through the Christmas snow to deliver food and sweaters to the poor family in the shack down the road.
The choices given the girls are plainly drawn: rise through marriage, remain in genteel poverty or slip down the social ladder.
Ronan’s Jo is a one-woman flurry of activity—when she isn’t pulling back to reflect with pen on paper. She flares in anger and registers petulance, concern and joy. The cast playing the other Marches are never better than when together at their Concord home, whether squabbling angrily, helping each other dress for a ball or working together on one of Jo’s costume plays. Each has a creative gift, a light in danger of being snuffed by social conventions.
Gerwig keeps the focus on Little Women as literature’s original go-girl manifesto. Despite the Victorian skirts that envelope them, the sisters speak their parts in a contemporary key delivering the truth of women’s potential to rise beyond limited expectations a message is that affirms the value of different dreams.
Little Women
Saoirse Ronan
Florence Plugh
Directed by Greta Gerwig
Rated PG
