Little Women Review

Up until this past week, my personal experience with “Little Women” in any format was at exactly zero. I was aware of its existence, but was never really motivated to look into it. In light of this current adaptation, I became aware of the fact that it has been adapted a large number of times in various formats. It began as a novel by Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. It was immediately successful and was eventually published as one novel in 1880. In addition to the novel itself being extremely popular and widely influential, it has been adapted many times. It was first adapted into a stage production in 1912 and has since had a very successful stage life. The first movie adaptation was in 1917 as a silent film. This new 2019 version is the seventh film adaptation with films coming in 1917, 1918, 1933, 1949, 1994, 2018 and now 2019. It has been adapted into television by means of a series or mini-series on many occasions. It even became a Broadway musical in 2005 and an opera in 1998. So yeah, there’s been a lot of “Little Women” productions in the last 150 years and yours truly is just now jumping on the bandwagon in 2019. Why? Easy. Greta Gerwig. After seeing “Lady Bird,” I was excitedly on board with whatever she decided to do next.

If you’re not as crazy into film as me and you don’t immediately light up when I say Greta Gerwig, allow me to elaborate a bit. Greta Gerwig has been around the industry since 2006, primarily as an actress. She’s had aspirations to do more as she co-directed the 2008 film “Nights and Weekends” with Joe Swanberg and has jumped on as a co-writer on several occasions, but for the first decade or so of her career, acting is what she mainly did. That is until 2017 when she finally premiered her solo directorial debut, that of “Lady Bird,” a movie she also wrote. In concept, “Lady Bird” wasn’t necessarily the most original idea. But it was so personal to Greta Gerwig and executed so well that I was overcome with emotion on the ride home. It was about a teenage girl living out her senior year of high school in California, yet despite not having those specific connections to the story, it felt very personal to me and I crowned it as my favorite movie of 2017, ahead of a certain Star Wars movie that I loved. So of course I had to see what Greta did next. And if she decided she wanted to adapt “Little Women” again, then sign me up and consider my ticket purchased. Sometimes it’s as simple as that for me? And Saoirse Ronan is back with her? Even better.

We’ll eventually get to this whole movie review thing, but my history with Saoirse dates back even further than Greta. I discovered Saoirse in 2011 with the movie “Hanna,” which is a very underrated film that not many people are aware of. Not only is the movie beautiful and the soundtrack one of my favorites, but Saoirse is excellent as an action star in that movie. Then I saw her in things like “The Host” in 2013 and “Brooklyn” in 2015 and I quickly realized that this girl has versatility, yet she was only 17 years old in “Hanna,” and thus 19 years old in “The Host” and 21 in “Brooklyn.” I don’t know why I haven’t gone back and watched “Atonement” from 2007, where she was nominated for an Oscar at the age of 13, but I need to fix that. Then, of course, with all this history, she completely won me over in “Lady Bird” as the title character. This girl is a superstar and perhaps my favorite actress working today. And at some point along the way, I learned that she’s Irish, with a very thick Irish accent that is fun to listen to, which means all these American accents she’s been doing is not her normal speaking voice, which makes her more impressive. I also pride myself in knowing how to correctly pronounce her name, which is nothing like it looks since Irish is a bit of a unique language.

OK, fine. I’ll stop swooning over my girl Saoirse and give you a review of “Little Women.” But all of that is important because, even though I knew close to nothing about the source material of this movie I was watching, I am very biased in favor a strong Saoirse-led movie. Others might compare her performance to previous adaptations, like Winona Ryder’s Oscar-nominated performance in 1994, or more obviously to how the character of Jo March was written in Alcott’s original novel, but I was just sitting there enjoying Saoirse’s performance as is with no expectations of what she was supposed to be. It’s possible that may have given me an advantage because often it’s better to judge something on its own merits rather than how it compares to things around it. In regards to Saoirse specifically, I didn’t have seven or more versions of her character in my head to compare her to, which I think allows me to be completely unbiased in regards to how she did compared to others. With the movie as a whole, same thing. With no expectations of how things are supposed to be, I was able to simply enjoy what I saw on the screen. I was also able to be surprised at how the plot unfolded because I had no idea what was going to happen.

I don’t imagine there are too many people who need a plot summary of what happens here, given how long this has been around. But yeah, this movie revolves around the life experiences of four sisters: Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth, all of whom have very different life aspirations and different talents. Joining Saoirse in this cast of sisters is Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and newcomer Eliza Scanlen. I mean, talk about dream cast here. Emma is one of my other favorite actresses for obvious reasons. Everyone loves her. And Florence Pugh is having a phenomenal year with this, “Fighting with My Family” and “Midsommar.” If you don’t know her yet, you will soon as she’s starring alongside Scar-Jo in “Black Widow” this upcoming May. The three of them as established, excellent actresses just lit this movie on fire. And newcomer Eliza Scanlen impressively kept pace with her veteran co-stars. Given how excellent they all were, I cared about each of them. I wanted them all to succeed. Because I was so emotionally invested in their individual journeys, I became upset when they were upset. When they cried, I wanted to give them a hug and cry with them. When they succeeded and were happy, I leapt with joy. There were several moments worthy of applause.

This strong level of emotional investment was what made this movie so satisfying. One thing I want to heavily stress here is that this is not some silly chick flick. For obvious reasons, this is going to attract a large female crowd to the theaters, but if you’re a guy and you had no interest in “Little Women” because you think it’s a “girl’s only” film, you are absolutely wrong. I wouldn’t even qualify this is a romance film. Yes, romance is a strong theme, but this is a movie about life. It’s a movie about family, growing up together, and supporting each. It’s honest with how life goes. Sometimes when you’re young you have the naive belief that things are always going to be the same. You may have a sibling or a best friend who you think you’ll always be together with. But that’s not always true. Sometimes life happens. Sometimes people you care about move away, change who they are, or even pass away. And sometimes that’s tough to deal with. And this movie did a great job reflecting that, making it really difficult to get through at times. In my sold out screening, I occasionally looked around, especially at key moments, and the whole theater was sobbing and sniffling. This movie really gets to you. There’s a lot of moments, big and small, that are going to stick with me.

In putting this all together, I really liked how Greta Gerwig framed this story. I don’t know how things are organized in every version of this, but looking at the Wikipedia of the novel, the story is told in two parts. If I were to make a guess, I would think that some of the versions of this story are told chronologically. And perhaps that works for those versions. But Greta Gerwig set up this story as being told out of chronological order. She takes the two parts of the story and essentially slices it up and puts them on top of each other. This sometimes gets confusing because, outside the opening sequences where it says “Seven years earlier,” the movie chooses not to babysit you. It jumps back and forth constantly between the two timelines without informing you what timeline you’re in. You just kinda have to figure it out based on circumstance, and occasionally the hairstyles, because the cast is also all the same. But outside getting lost occasionally, for the most part this provides excellent juxtaposition, looking at the sisters at two very different times of their lives at about the same time in the movie. This beautifully drives home the themes I just talked about. There’s a lot of stark contrast between scenes that makes things even more emotional. 

This is also a movie that’s about more than just these sisters. They are, of course, the main focus. But there’s also a large cast around them, which includes Laura Dern, Timothee Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk and Chris Cooper. Each one of them plays a very important role. Some roles are large, like Laura Dern playing their mother or Timothee Chalamet playing the main love interest. But then you have Meryl Streep showing up every once in a while or Bob Odenkirk making an appearance at the end of the film. And I think all of these roles were vital to the movie’s success because it helped paint a large picture of everything that happened in the sisters’ lives. There were a lot of small moments that became very rewarding because an actor or actress would step in for a brief scene or two, make a strong impact, then step away. These moments were so effective that I would love to spend more time in each of their individual worlds. Thus a great puzzle was perfectly put together. The full scope of life was beautifully represented. Life itself is a puzzle and oftentimes things are hard because we don’t understand everything. We only see a small portion. Yet the movie “Little Women” helps us take a step back and see the big picture of life.

I really think that Greta Gerwig has hit yet another grand slam as a director. After delivering a debut of “Lady Bird,” she was immediately on my radar. Yet I can’t claim someone as a favorite director after just one film. And I don’t know if I can do so after just two films, either. But with “Little Women,” Greta Gerwig has proven that she’s not just a one-hit wonder, but rather is a force to be reckoned with. And given that she’s married to Noah Baumbach, who just rocked my world with “Marriage Story,” the two of them are quite the power couple. And as I think about, “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” have a lot more in common than I was initially anticipating. They’re both movies about life and Greta has now proven that she is excellent at developing these real-world themes into stories that really stick with you. Thus with just two solo films under her belt as a director, I already feel confident in saying that she’s one of my favorite directors. Whatever she decides to do next, consider me first in line. In a year that provided us with both “Avengers: Endgame” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” I honestly might be more interested in returning to “Little Women,” which is not something I thought I was going to say going into this year. My grade for “Little Women” is a 9/10.