One of my biggest gripes with movies nowadays is that there are too many sequels and remakes and adaptations of existing IP and not enough original movies. But this latest version of Little Women from Greta Gerwig is original – it remains faithful to the books, but is a fresh take on a timeless story that feels both classical and modern all at once. Anyone unfamiliar with the Little Women books (or previous movies) might be expecting a stuffy period piece, but it is such a fun and rambunctious story with such vibrant energy – emotional, charming, and full of life – what Little Women is really supposed to be about.
Years ago, Quentin Tarantino coined the term “hangout movie“. For most of its runtime (essentially during every single one of the childhood scenes), Little Women is a phenomenal hangout movie that you immediately cannot wait to watch over and over again. I can empathize with Laurie because let’s face it, deep down, all we really want to do is be an honorary March sister. It might seem like not much is happening, but it’s life – all the little inside jokes and jealousies and arguments and crazy things you did growing up with your sisters and brothers – this film is built on that. This could have been made into an entire TV series to give us more time to hang out with them (I guess that’s what reading the books are for). Then, the third act hits you with waves of payoffs and emotions. It is superb storytelling.
At its core, hangout movies are a subgenre of character films, and while this isn’t a traditional character study, Gerwig does a masterful job in presenting each of the siblings’ unique personalities, making them feel like real people that you understand and recognize – something exceedingly more difficult to do on celluloid than on the page. It starts with the writing and ends with the acting, it is all pitch perfect and imbued with a sense of passion and infectious charm that makes you fall in love with them. Emma Watson and Saoirse Ronan are the big names coming in, but Florence Pugh shows up with a heat check performance to steal almost every scene she’s in. She is snarky, bold, opinionated, boisterous, hilarious, and yes, a little bratty growing up, but her Amy has the biggest arc and character development over the course of the movie. Gerwig fleshes out Amy’s character and motivations much more compared to past depictions, and as a result she’s relatable, sympathetic, and a real person instead of just being the sister that all the readers hate.
The film is wonderfully cast – other than a slightly odd Bob Odenkirk turn – and Ronan, Watson, Laura Dern (incidentally, between this and Marriage Story, Dern has unofficially played both the sweetest and the most detestable movie characters of the year) and Meryl Streep are all reliably excellent. Chris Cooper is surprisingly fantastic as the warm hearted Mr. Laurence, while Timothee Chalamet is a perfect Laurie – slightly shy and awkward and silly growing up but endearing and magnetic and completely believable as the rich boy next door that you’d fall in love with. Chalamet attacks the screen with the energy that’s needed to keep up with the bustling March girls.
Little Women is also an extremely well constructed film from both a technical and a storytelling perspective. The cinematography and camera movements, the blocking, the production design, the use of color, it is all outstanding. Gerwig also structures the movie in an innovative and effective way, presenting the parallel stories of the Marches as children and as adults. The film opens by following each of the four sisters, all separated as adults in different places, and the adult shots are dreary and cold and colorless, while the flashback scenes are shot with a warm, glowing filter on the cameras that reflects the sense of cameraderie and the joy that comes from hard earned, time tested, familial bonds and shared experiences.
The adult storyline, then, imparts a sense of loneliness and longing for the togetherness of the family but also makes watching the movie quite a ride, moving unpredictably along the range of emotions as you do in life, much more than it might have if it were strictly chronological. The delicate tonal balance stays engaging so that a lot of the suspense is how things play out rather than just what happens. It is so satisfying to see, for example, the showdown between Laurie and Jo (Gerwig and Marriage Story director Noah Baumbach, real life partners, really know how to shoot couples’ fighting scenes). It’s made known from the very beginning of the movie what had happened between the two, but the actual scene of seeing how it played out is absolutely riveting. The two timelines are tied together by the sense of unshakeable and inimitable love and closeness of a family that we see at their worst and at their best.
This is also as important and relevant of a story as it was in the 1860s. Between Parasite, Us, Knives Out, and Hustlers, just to name a few, films in 2019 were preoccupied with the effects of classism and socioeconomic inequality, but Little Women offers a rather more encouraging and positive (and less revenge based) take on this theme, as well as the more obvious gender based ones. Large chunks of the dialogue were lifted straight from the book – surprising because it feels so fresh – but Gerwig’s additions are significant. That powerful speech by Amy to Laurie about the economic proposition of marriage was not in the book but is critical in giving Amy sympathy and nuance, and also gives the audience a little perspective into women’s hardships and challenges facing their ambitions and dreams. Jo, too, is given a new sense of ownership, independence and authorship in this version that is both playfully meta and also meaningful. The theme of being taken seriously as women is so embedded throughout the film, and when the punches are thrown, they aren’t pulled. Jo’s monologue to Marmee in the attic is so affecting, and it’s all taken straight from the book, but the addition of that one single line at the end is an absolute gut punch.
Greta Gerwig has quickly turned from one of my favorite actresses and a talented sometimes writer to one of the most exciting young auteur directors working today. She’s molded a timeless tale into her vision of a breathlessly rousing and tender film, and brings something to the table to delight both familiar readers as well as the uninitiated. Channeling Amy, this version of Little Women boldly shows off its ambition, it swings for the fences, it wants to be “great, or nothing at all.”
