The Lovely "Little Women"

I have an interesting relationship with "Little Women." It was one of my favorite books as a child, but the copy I had only contained what some would consider the first half of the story, about the March sisters as children. It wasn't until I was much older that I got my hands on the second volume, where they grow up and deal with suitors and separations and death. I didn't like it very much, finding the Marches all less interesting when they were separated. I never had much curiosity about any of the adaptations either, after seeing bits of the Hepburn version which seemed entirely too concerned with the romances instead of the sisterhood.

So I wasn't looking forward to Greta Gerwig's adaptation, as much as I've enjoyed her work and as much as I thought Saoirse Ronan was the perfect Jo March. Fortunately, it seems that Gerwig had some of the same issues with the original material that I did, and sought to address them. The best choice she made here was starting with the March sisters as adults, and then having the events of their childhood introduced via Jo's flashbacks.

For the uninitiated, "Little Women" is about the four talented March sisters, Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh). Jo March is the aspiring writer and most fiercely independent of her sisters, who we first meet working as a teacher in New York in the 1860s. She travels home to Concord to take care of an ailing Beth, while Meg struggles with domestic life, and Amy is traveling in Europe with their aunt (Meryl Streep). Jo looks back on their childhood together, with their do-gooder mother, Marmee (Laura Dern), while deliberating over her own future. Others in their circle include their housekeeper Hannah (Jayne Houdyshell), a brooding neighbor boy, Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) and his reclusive uncle (Chris Cooper).

Gerwig really brings out all the bits of "Little Women" that I loved, treating them as precious childhood memories, while drastically reworking the particulars of the girls' adventures as adults. The entire story is now framed by Jo's struggles to become a writer, and her attempts to reconcile her desire for independence and creative fulfillment with her need for emotional support, companionship, and even the much dreaded prospect of love. Attempts to modernize older classics have often fallen flat due to the clumsy integration of revisionist POVs and updated themes. It works in this version of "Little Women," however, because most of those themes are already there - Jo March's dissatisfaction with her options, Meg's disappointment with married life, and Amy's pragmatism. Gerwig also took a lot from the life of "Little Women" author Louisa May Alcott, who was a feminist and abolitionist. So yes, there's romance for Jo in the end, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of healthy negotiation to get to it.

The entire production is fabulous. I adore the cast, especially Ronan as stubborn and temperamental Jo, and Dern as ever-patient Marmee. However, I think the lynchpin here is Florence Pugh as Amy, playing her both as a bratty thirteen year old and a much more mature twenty year-old woman. Amy was Jo's major antagonist in the book, but the film gives her an entirely separate narrative to flesh her out, and shows us important events from her point of view. She's still not as likeable as Jo, but much more sympathetic and deserving of respect and forgiveness. Everyone gets these vital little character moments throughout, similar to "Ladybird," suggesting other stories playing out just offscreen. The best scenes are of the four sisters together - the girls putting on their fantastical plays, clamoring over a new letter from their father, and creating a cheerful chaos during visits and celebrations. There's nothing staid or stuffy about them. Their language sounds old, but their dialogue doesn't.

The filmmaking is utterly gorgeous throughout too. Gerwig dramatizes so many incidents and events from the March family's history so deftly, cutting from past to present, contrasting characters in different situations and points during their lives. The cinematography is to die for, full of beautifully framed period sets, natural scenery, and immaculately costumed characters. The March home is cozy and inviting one moment, and then dark and desolate the next. There's a real sense of place and history about the film, and a very welcome moral center that isn't remotely dogmatic. And best of all, despite all the little changes, the book's underlying sweetness and optimism has been perfectly preserved without ever feeling cloying.

"Little Women" is not what I expected, but it's everything I should have expected from Greta Gerwig and her collaborators. And it's made me want to go back and give the back half of the "Little Women" novel another shot.
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