The New LITTLE WOMEN movie: 8 Quibbles & 14 Rejoicings

My first copy. (Circa we-won't-say,
but see that price in the corner?)

All Very Much in My Own Passionate, if Not Terribly Professional, Opinion

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I had to bust the Wuthering Yankee blog open again, because I've been watching the new movie version of Little Women, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, and find I have a lot to say.

Since I was 9 and devoured my first copy of Little Women -- an abbreviated paperback version that my parents, with excellent foresight and intuition, bought for me at an elementary school book fair -- I've been obsessed with the novel and, in turn, with the movies that get made of it. 

Here's what I thought of Gerwig's 2019 version.

Quibbles:

1. Marmee's hair: Come on. She's (at the very least) in her mid 40s by the second half of the story, and still her hair is completely, vividly blond. 

AND she wears it down in long lush ringlets over her shoulders. I don't care how much one wants to update the Little Women story (more on this later), Marmee should NOT look like Little Bo Beep.

2. Jo's hair. (Yes, I know: I'm also somewhat obsessed with hair.) I have a subset of quibbles. 

First, Jo has to have dark eyes and hair. She just does. Her darkness is part of her character. It's also part of what makes her a foil for Amy (blond and blue-eyed, more conventionally pretty). 

Pre-Raphaelite hair

Second, I don't buy the whole pre-Raphaelite look for Jo in her mid-20s. No self-respecting middle-class 25-year-old raised by Marmee would run around town with her hair hanging down to her butt. It looks beautiful -- Saoirse Ronan looks beautiful -- but that wild free hair for a young adult is not in keeping with one of the novel's themes: that of growing up and in some ways having to conform to society's expectations. (There's a whole narrative line in the novel about how Jo resents having to wear her hair up once she leaves girlhood behind.)

3. On that note: I don't buy Jo going to a beer hall on her own, much less dancing at it with a bunch of men she doesn't know, as she does in one of the early Mr. Bhaer scenes. I think what Gerwig was trying to do here was use a shortcut to show Jo's relationship to Mr. Bhaer -- look, Jo DOES have fun with him sometimes, even though he's usually such a stick in the mud! -- but again, I don't buy it for this character, in this time and place. (See: self-respecting young women raised by Marmee, above.)

4. Much has already been made of how hot THIS Mr. Bhaer is. And while I as much as anyone enjoyed glimpsing him when he flashed across the screen (Louis Garrel IS freaking hot), this guy is so different from the middle-aged, rather ill-kempt German professor of the novel, Gerwig's casting of Garrel seems like a joke. And maybe it WAS a joke. In one interview, Gerwig has said, "How is this different from all those movies where the supposedly unattractive or nerdy girl is really a bombshell wearing glasses?" (I paraphrase.) I take Gerwig's point, but still: Mr. Bhaer's hotness and general metrosexual sophistication in this version kept distracting me, so different was he from the novel. 

I mean, come ON.

Also, if Bhaer is supposed to be a deliberately DIFFERENT choice of partner for Jo than Laurie is -- if Bhaer is supposed to have a gravitas and world-weariness that Laurie lacks (which, in the novel, IS part of what makes him a more appealing partner for Jo), then this casting fails on that level, too.

5. Speaking of Mr. Bhaer, why in this movie (hot though he is), does he appear so very briefly? He's in a couple of scenes at the very beginning and then does not show up again for, seriously, 2 hours. Because his character is barely developed, we have no idea why Jo would fall for this guy (other than, again, his looks -- but that shouldn't be a leading reason for Jo; she's got much more depth than that). I've heard at least one reviewer suggest that Bhaer is, in this movie version, very deliberately a deus ex machina -- dropped in at the last minute like a glamorous hero, since this reflects what Louisa May Alcott (and Jo, as this movie version has it) was forced by her publisher to do with the Mr. Bhaer-and-Jo plot.

6. A lesser quibble, but still: I was distracted during Laurie’s cri de coeur on the windswept hillside where Jo rejects him. Jo mentions how proud she is that he’s graduated college, and Laurie throws into his plea that he’s tried hard to be a good man for Jo – has given up billiards, for example. But where was this coming from? It’s the first we’ve heard that Laurie has even BEEN in college. Or that Jo has been a redeeming influence on him. These are indeed elements of their relationship in the novel, but in this movie version, viewers see none of that backstory -- don’t experience a second of it. (I do get it that the movie already runs over 2 hours, long by today’s standards unless your last name is Scorsese. Surely Gerwig had to make some tough choices about what story lines to cut.)

Post (or pre?) cri de coeur.

 7. Also a lesser quibble, because I really like Laura Dern, but I wish someone (Gerwig) would have calmed Dern's acting down a little. In some scenes she came across as too giggly and giddy for Marmee's character. When Laurie first meets her, for example, Marmee comes bouncing out of the kitchen with her skirts hitched up to her knees and babbles about how she likes to bake at midnight. (Believable? Even remotely grounded in the novel’s characterization of Marmee? Uh, NO.)

8. Finally. When a letter must be read in a movie, and the director chooses to have the letter-writing character face the camera, delivering said letter as a monologue? Squiiiiirrrrm. I just can’t.*

Rejoicings:

1. Development of the Amy and Laurie relationship! Yeeessss! Even as a 9-year-old child falling head over heels for this novel, I always liked Amy best (here’s my argument about Amy that the New Yorker saw fit to publish). Nothing could have made my child self happier than to see her and Laurie’s slowly evolving romance, once they are both set free in Europe. In the novel, Alcott treats Amy and Laurie’s development from childhood friends to serious and well-suited partners with respect; she gives their relationship several chapters, which were always (still are) my favorite bits. Here, finally, is a film version of Little Women that does the same.

 

Yeeeesss!!!

2. Everyone’s saying this, too, but let me gladly jump on the bandwagon: OMG, Florence Pugh as Amy! She’s magnificent. Pugh inhabited the character both as a 12-year-old child and as a 20-year-old woman, which strikes me as almost a miracle of acting. Also just very lucky for viewers, because it’s so distracting when you have to switch actresses halfway through (as the 1994 film version does).

3. The clothes! Such tactility and variety – of pattern, of color, of texture. Such fun layerings, and so fun to look at. Also I liked how the clothes were part of the character development: Jo’s beautiful writing jacket told us that she expected glory; Amy’s clothes in Europe said she was learning style and sophistication; Meg’s clothes as a young wife and mother said she was struggling financially. And Beth was always in purple, I think as a sign of her quirkiness – which this movie version developed in ways I really loved. (More on this soon. Right below.)

Such fun clothes. 

 4. Eliza Scanlen in the role of Beth. As she’s a notoriously quiet character, Beth is always a quieter role, and I’ve never thought actresses in this role before were given much room to DO anything with her. But Scanlen actually made Beth funny for the first time I know of. This Beth gives frequent little muttered asides, and I loved her occasional explosions of opinion. (When Meg asks, “What color eyes do you like?” Beth shoots back, “Purple!”) Scanlen took Beth off the saint pedestal, and made Beth awkward in an appealing, gently humorous way – because this Beth actually has a strong personality, which doesn’t quite express itself in conventional forms.

They're as cute as pie, John and Meg at their wedding.
(But again with the HAIR. I am reminded of my hippie aunts
and uncles who got married in my parents' back yard
when I was a kid.)

5. I also liked Emma Watson in the role of Meg. Of all four sisters, Meg’s is the least dramatic / most traditional story arc, but Watson (and Gerwig, writing and directing) made her story feel equally alive and important. Seemingly small moments in Meg's life were given nice weight, and Watson showed us Meg’s guilt and frustration over the dress she wants but can’t afford as she discusses it with John. And I felt her mixed weariness and affection for her kids when she sits in her doorway at the end of a long day. (A shout-out to Gerwig for letting Meg continue to be a character with her own story line, post-marriage. Other film versions have pretty much shoved Meg off the screen once she marries.)

6. The physicality – the physical energy and expression of the main characters. Up to a point. I do think they overdid this with Marmee kicking up her heels in some scenes. And speaking of kicking up one’s heels, Timotheé Chalamet’s physicality may likewise have been a bit over the top – though Chalamet seems to be such a sprite or grasshopper or hyper-animated Gumby, I wonder if he COULD move without semi-levitating each time. 

But I generally did like the physical verve of the 2019 characters. Yes, the punching and running and tussling is more than they would really have done in the 1860s, but hey, you have to update certain things. A classic always stands to be refreshed, rejuvenated. The physicality, I thought, gave new overall energy to what CAN become a story too easily sanctified or preserved in amber. (Perhaps that’s one definition of a classic: that it can be made anew for different times. Its frame still holds, while smaller adaptations can be made inside it.)*

You believe them as a
family, don't you?
(I did.)

7. As for re-energizing an old-fashioned story: I love (LOVE!) that Gerwig used swathes of dialogue taken directly from the novel, but also sped it up – had people speak slightly over each other or interrupt each other. This renders dialogue more like real familial conversation. It also keeps the dialogue alive – keeps it from sounding too stiff or stodgy, as the novel itself, in these late days, is somewhat in danger of sounding.

8. The cutting between time frames – between the girl’s late childhood / adolescence and their young womanhood. (Or, to speak of the novel, between Part I and Part II of Little Women.) As someone who in my own childhood drank this novel down like a cherry lemon vanilla Sundrop (which is to say, many times), I can’t speak to how disorienting this structure may feel to someone who does not already know the story, but personally I loved it. (And hey, if you’re confused, you can always just pay attention to the lighting – to the warm golden color used for childhood, the cooler grays and blues used for growing up.) 

The movement between time frames uncovered deep resonances in the novel. It also underlines the movement between childhood and adulthood – what is gained, what is lost, in that transition – which is the heart of the book.

My first unabridged copy of the novel --
which I read 9 times, the year I was 9.

9. The ambiguity of the ending, which raises the question: Must a woman choose between being a serious artist and having her own family?** Louisa May Alcott did. She also resisted her editor’s request to make Jo marry by the end of the novel, though Alcott did eventually acquiesce on this point. I liked the way the movie sets those two choices – those two potential life paths –side by side, and celebrates both equally.

10. Speaking of which—the writing and bookmaking scenes! Usually (like anyone else whose heart is not made of stone) I cry when Beth dies. In this movie version, however, what moved me to tears was Jo falling asleep on top of her novel’s spread-out pages, and then Jo watching her novel be physically made, at the end. What a beautiful, tactile valorization of the printed word! And of the arduous work that goes into a book’s production.

Oh, Christian Bale!

11. No one will ever be as perfect in the role of Laurie as Christian Bale was in the 1994 version. (You can argue about this with me, but I will never agree. Plus, he looks like Dave!) But I did appreciate how Timothée Chalamet made Laurie so boyish and playful in the childhood scenes. He and Jo were like puppies together, and you could see and believe they were good friends but not, after all, potential partners. Also I appreciated that there was no self-indulgent kissing scene between him and Jo as there was in the ’94 version. (Bale’s kiss with Winona Ryder as Jo was much hotter than his later kiss with Samantha Mathis as Amy, which was irritating and also showed up the poor casting / writing of the adult Amy character in that version.)

12. I did like Saoirse Ronan as Jo. But a strawberry blond, blue-eyed Jo? How hard would it have been to have slapped a wig and some contact lenses on Saoirse and still let her do her awesome thing? (Highlights of her awesomeness: her speech about independence and loneliness to Marmee, in the attic; her intelligent, good-humored sparring with her book’s editor.)

13. I’m glad Greta Gerwig gave weight to Jo and Beth’s connection. I loved the scenes at the seashore where they confront Beth’s serious illness together – and yet, to a certain extent, still maintain their sisterly playfulness. (It was another moment that allowed Beth to be a more well-rounded character than I’ve seen in earlier versions.) And I found the last shot of Jo and Beth on the shore, with the sand blowing around them, to be lovely and poignant. Am also glad that Gerwig didn’t give Beth too many noble speeches about dying.

A happy childhood.

14. Finally – yes, finally! – the film does an artful, subtle job of threading this central theme through the story: the beauty of a happy childhood, the necessity of but also the resistance to leaving such a childhood behind, and the struggle to make that transition, to face the choices that accompany it.

Brava to Gerwig (the Golden Globes people should be ashamed of themselves for not nominating her writing and her directing -- they really should) and to her cast and crew. I hope they all the Oscars.

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* I realize this is an accepted device in movie-making, and perhaps it works sometimes, though I can't off the top of my head think of any instances where I have loved it. 

**How can I be okay with all the anachronistic physical tussling but still quibble about Marmee and Jo’s hair? It has to do with categories, and making consistent choices within those categories. There is, for example, the category of how people are costumed and how sets are designed—whether the movie has decided to try to stay true to the times of the actual setting (New England, 1860s)  or to play about with those conventions. This movie takes or approximates an historically accurate approach to clothes and furniture and so on. Thus, the weird hairstyle choices really stick out.

***The movie’s ending raises this question but then leaves the answer quite open.