Now, I’ve never actually read Little Women by Louissa May Alcott, but I have vague memories of seeing a play of it when I was little and I’ve just now skimmed the Wikipedia expert so I guess I’m an expert now.
There’s a lot to love about this new adaptation about Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Amy (Florence Pugh) March. The movie cleverly intertwines both the past and the present, contrasting the cheerful youth of the four sisters with the more dreary present. The flashbacks are all coated with warmer tones giving a sense of coziness to the girls memories in sharp contrast to the cold blues of the present. Little Women is not the first movie to have flashbacks in a different color tone than the main story, but Greta Gerwig manages to make all the colors come from the natural environment, making both the flashbacks and present day feel very real despite looking very different.
The movie, like the story, centers around the second oldest sister, Jo, as she grows up over the seven-some years that the movie covers. Jo is tomboyish and generally opposed to playing the feminine part that society wants her to play. The movie begins with her struggling as a writer in New York, writing harsh and violent stories in an effort to make her writing relevant in a world of men. Despite managing to sell many of her stories, she is told very early on by a fellow tutor at the home that she works at teaching children, Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), that her stories simply aren’t good. The movie never admonishes her dislike of traditional femininity, but over the course of the movie she learns that it is possible to embrace her life as a woman and all that entails while still maintaining her sense of identity. Ronan excels both at her hard resilience against the marital institution and all other misogynistic institutions and the softer, more sensitive side of Jo that loves her sisters and eventually
Little Women ends up being both a celebration for both women who fight against society and push for greatness and women who choose to live a domestic life with a husband and kids and women who choose to live both lives. The movie begins with Jo’s publisher saying that if she is going to write a female protagonist that she has to be either married at the end or dead and it’s treated as if it’s another example of the suppression of women’s stories. Then, at the very end of the movie, when Jo has brought her new novel, an autobiography or memoir finally allowing Jo to embrace her domestic side, to be published, the same publisher insists that if Jo needs to marry off her protagonist, an extension of Jo herself, saying that marrying the protagonist off isn’t patriarchal, it’s romantic. Once again there’s a hint of misogyny, but Jo amusedly agrees to the marriage as the movie intercuts to her chasing her recently discovered love Bhaer to the train station.
The rest of the sisters build off this film in their own ways. There’s a flashback early on in the movie where each girl through some way or another announces their passion and what they want to do with their lives. Meg wants to be an actress, Beth wants to play music and Amy wants to be a painter. Out of the three, Florence Pugh is easily the strongest as Amy. Amy has similar ambition to Jo, but also loves elegant life and realizes that she will have to marry rich in order to provide for her family. Pugh manages to turn what would otherwise be an annoying, selfish character into a real person who’s attention seeking as most younger siblings are while also ambitious and yearning for genius or something that could let her make her mark in a world of men while also being very aware that she’ll have to marry some rich man simply to have money that she can take care of her sisters and family with. Pugh becomes almost a second lead to Ronan, rivaling her in depth and growth in character. Unfortunately, Emma Watson and Eliza Scanlen get less to do with Meg and Beth respectfully. Emma Watson plays Meg similarly throughout the entire movie and although there is some sort of sub-plot of her learning to settle for domesticity with her husband John Brooke (James Norton), it doesn’t quite feel that she’s grown from the experience or changed at all. Scanlen does a fine enough job portraying Beth but unfortunately, the movie doesn’t do quite enough to endear us to her besides the occasional nice thing that she says followed by all the sisters saying that “Beth is the best of us”. The fact that Beth never quite comes into her own as a character diminishes the emotional punch of her death somewhat and makes her appear as more of a narrative device to allow Jo to embrace domestic life more. Nevertheless, Scanlen portrays the shy warmth of Beth very well and, what the script lacks, she is able to make up.
The rest of the supporting cast fares about as well as the sisters, with a few shining while a few others disappoint. Timothée Chalamet excels as Laurie, playing both the lazy, rich boy along with the endearing neighbor and love interest. Chris Cooper does a fine job as his grandfather Mr. Lawrence and Meryl Streep turns in a very entertaining role as Aunt March. It’s Laura Dern however, that proves to be the weakest, not that she isn’t trying, but it is simply hard to believe her as the mother to the four girls. As for Bob Odenkirk and Tracy Letts, they play such insignificant roles that you wonder why they’re in the movie at all even though Amy needs a love interest and the sisters need a father. The movie might have benefitted from cutting them all together, because as it is it’s asking the audience to have some connection to characters that almost don’t exist.
In the end Little Women will be very poignant for some and a enjoyable enough use of two hours for others. This isn’t a movie that’s going to blow a lot of people away, but what you’re left with is a well crafted story of family and femininity that gets better and better the more you think about it.
P.S. Emma Watson really struggled with an American accent, I’m not normally the type of person to pick up on these things but it was painfully obvious at many points.
Personal Rating: 9/10
Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆
Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆
Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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