Written for the screen and directed by Greta Gerwig
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson and Florence Pugh
MPAA rating: PG for thematic elements and brief smoking
Running time: 2 hours and 15 minutes

by Fiona Underhill

Full confession: I bought the Little Women book a few months ago, with the intention of reading it before the latest film adaptation (this time, directed by Greta Gerwig) came out. However, I ran out of time. So my previous knowledge going into this was based on the 1994 version (directed by Gillian Armstrong). I could remember the ‘big’ moments – Amy burning Jo’s book, Jo cutting and selling her hair, Amy falling through the ice and, of course, when bleep dies. A lot of my feelings towards Little Women up until now have been wrapped up in my teen crushes on Winona Ryder and Christian Bale. Now, a new generation of teen heartthrobs – Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet and Florence Pugh get to bring the story to a 2019 audience. When it was announced that Gerwig was directing “yet another” version of Louisa May Alcott’s book, many questioned whether we really needed another Little Women film. However, with themes that are this contemporary, fresh and relevant to each new generation that discovers the story of the March sisters, who cares?

So the March sisters are: feisty and independent writer Jo (Ronan), good, pure musician Beth (Eliza Scanlon), Meg, who enjoys acting but mostly wants to marry for love and have babies (Emma Watson) and pragmatic Amy, who wants to make a good (rich) match in order to help her family, while pursuing her dreams of being an artistic genius painter in Paris (played by Florence Pugh). They are living a life of more ‘limited’ financial means because their father (Bob Odenkirk) is away in the Civil War. Matriarch Marmee (Laura Dern) is a good, kind and charitable soul who does her best to help the local paupers and the soldiers who are away at war. 

Gerwig has taken Alcott’s novel and divided it into two halves. She then spends the film’s running-time inter-cutting between these two halves. So, we start by seeing Jo in New York trying to make her living as a writer and we cut back to her writing plays for her sisters to perform. Amy’s storyline cuts between her time in Paris, where she is a companion to the family’s Aunt March (Meryl Streep) and back to her school days where she is trading limes and being struck on the hand by her teacher. We see Meg struggling with not being able to afford a new dress because of her husband John Brooke (James Norton) being a tutor and then cut back to her making her entrance into society at a Debutante Ball, where again she cares about her hair and dress. Beth is a keen pianist who is taken under the wing of the older Laurence (Chris Cooper) in the big house nearby. He lets her play his piano (not a euphemism), as he misses his daughter who has died. Living with him is his grandson, Theodore Laurence – confusingly known as both Teddy and Laurie (Timothee Chalamet). Laurie is enveloped into the family as a brother, but there are rumblings of him being paired off with one or more of the sisters. He dances with Meg at the aforementioned ball, but insults her dress. Young Amy has goo-goo eyes for Laurie, following him out onto a treacherous iced-over pond and making a cast of her foot so he can remember how pretty it is. Laurie is closest to Jo out of the sisters, however and Chalamet and Ronan’s fantastic chemistry is used to great effect here.

Gerwig has done interesting things with the narrative and made the film quite meta – particularly towards the end, where Jo and Alcott are conflated. She has chosen a bold and audacious structure which really works well at times, carefully selecting which parts of the narrative from the latter parts of the book to pair with earlier parts. They often compliment or counteract each other and have been deliberately juxtaposed to illuminate elements of character development. Every moment feels earned and some of the more controversial plot developments are handled very sensitively and delicately. Throughlines can be clearly drawn from a character’s actions and decisions to what has brought them to that point. However, for those of us more unfamiliar with the source text, the editing can be somewhat whiplash-inducing at times. You have to pay very close attention to hairstyles, for example, in order not to get lost and there were some parts where each ‘section’ was too quick and this could be quite confusing. On that note, the costume design by Jacqueline Durran (who has also costumed 1917 this year) and the makeup and hairstyling (led by Frida Aradottir, Jennifer Bell and Judy Chin) are exemplary. 

The acting is phenomenal across the board. Many people have rightly singled out Florence Pugh (who is having a banner year, with Midsommar and Fighting with my Family building on her breakout role in Lady Macbeth) for bringing more empathy and humanity to Amy than previous incarnations. But having her play Amy at all ages, including in a classroom surrounded by twelve-year-olds was somewhat incongruous. Chris Cooper gives a lovely, understated performance as the grief-drenched Laurence. Timothee Chalamet continues to prove that he is an exceptional actor, with an exciting career ahead. His theatrical training is evident in the physicality and awareness of space that he brings to his roles. Laurie never once sits on a chair in a normal fashion in this film and it is delightful. We can also feel Laurie’s loneliness, as he watches the close bond that the March sisters have and his yearning to join a family.

Gerwig is one of the most exciting, emerging writer-directors working today and this film deserves to receive awards recognition in many categories. She has done something truly bold and original in adapting an extremely well-known text which has already had many film and TV versions. To inject it with the freshness and vitality that this has, is an amazing achievement. The March sisters prove that there is more than one way to be a woman and more than one way to be a feminist. Crucially, it is all about taking ownership of your life and decisions and having the choice to marry or to “make your own way in the world” and to not be judged either way. These themes are unfortunately still relatable today and we are lucky to have the distinctive voice of Gerwig reinterpreting a classic for a new audience. A perfect release for the holidays, a film that exudes warmth and one which will reward repeat viewings.