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Little Women
Jul. 19th, 2018 09:36 amGillain Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation of Little Women is totally charming. It’s a wonderful bucolic romp full of family and fun and sisterhood. Who can blame Teddy Laurence for wanting to become part of the March family? Surely at least half the people watching the movie must feel that exact same impulse.
The acting is stellar. I particularly liked Winona Ryder as the effervescent Jo March, quick to anger but just as quick to laugh; Kirsten Dunst as little Amy, sweet-faced but self-absorbed (I didn’t think the actress playing older Amy was quite as good, alas); and Susan Sarandon as Marmee, probably the best mother ever, gentle and loving but fiery, too, when she needs to be. The scene where she goes off on her rant about corsets to the shocked Mr. Brooke!
The anti-corset stuff actually comes from a different Alcott book (Rose in Bloom, I think), but it’s absolutely typical of Alcott’s reforming zeal, and I thought the movie honored that spirit - not just with the corsets but in school reform (Marmee’s avenging angel side comes out most clearly when she withdraws Amy from school as a protest against corporal punishment), and in the scene where Jo explains to a group of men that women shouldn’t vote because women are good, anymore than men vote because men are good; women should vote because they’re citizens.
(A particularly nice touch in this scene: even fiery, forthright Jo feels awkward speaking in front of a group of men, and needs a little encouragement before she opens her mouth. It illustrates the strength of the social prohibition she’s breaking in debating men at all, even so politely.)
Armstrong also gently updates some of Alcott’s plot points for the modern viewer. In particular, the movie did a good job coping with the Problem of Professor Bhaer, which is that to modern readers his insistence that sensationalist fiction is trash and Jo shouldn’t write it makes him an unbearable romantic interest. In the film, Professor Bhaer still looks down on sensationalist fiction - but when he sees how his stance hurts Jo’s feelings, he rethinks his position and apologizes to Jo for interfering with her writing.
I love this way of dealing with the scene. Hitherto he’s been something of a mentor to Jo, and now he’s acknowledging that he was wrong and needs to apologize; it puts them on a more equal footing and makes the eventual romantic denouement more palatable.
...Although I will join generations of Little Women readers in thinking that it’s just too bad that Jo and Laurie didn’t get together. Would they argue all the time? Maybe! But we don’t actually see them arguing that much, so… also maybe not? It does seem possible that Laurie wouldn’t be mature enough to give Jo the space she need to succeed and grow as a writer. Professor Bhaer is far less needy.
A few other things I love about this film:
The beautiful food scenes. In particular, many of them are not just eating scenes but cooking scenes, and it gives a fuller sense of the girls’ lives and how hard they work to keep this house so lovely and home-like.
The sense of place - and of time, the turning of the seasons in the bucolic New England countryside. (The landscapes are completely different than the spare Australian outback in Armstrong’s earlier film My Brilliant Career, but both films have this strong sense of place.)
The lovingly detailed interior of the March house: the crowded attic, the rooms the girls share, the ever-busy kitchen. They even found a piano with real ivory keys for Beth.
A lovely, lovely film. I’m glad, after all, that the new BBC series isn’t available in the US yet; it wouldn’t be fair to it to watch it too soon after this movie.
The acting is stellar. I particularly liked Winona Ryder as the effervescent Jo March, quick to anger but just as quick to laugh; Kirsten Dunst as little Amy, sweet-faced but self-absorbed (I didn’t think the actress playing older Amy was quite as good, alas); and Susan Sarandon as Marmee, probably the best mother ever, gentle and loving but fiery, too, when she needs to be. The scene where she goes off on her rant about corsets to the shocked Mr. Brooke!
The anti-corset stuff actually comes from a different Alcott book (Rose in Bloom, I think), but it’s absolutely typical of Alcott’s reforming zeal, and I thought the movie honored that spirit - not just with the corsets but in school reform (Marmee’s avenging angel side comes out most clearly when she withdraws Amy from school as a protest against corporal punishment), and in the scene where Jo explains to a group of men that women shouldn’t vote because women are good, anymore than men vote because men are good; women should vote because they’re citizens.
(A particularly nice touch in this scene: even fiery, forthright Jo feels awkward speaking in front of a group of men, and needs a little encouragement before she opens her mouth. It illustrates the strength of the social prohibition she’s breaking in debating men at all, even so politely.)
Armstrong also gently updates some of Alcott’s plot points for the modern viewer. In particular, the movie did a good job coping with the Problem of Professor Bhaer, which is that to modern readers his insistence that sensationalist fiction is trash and Jo shouldn’t write it makes him an unbearable romantic interest. In the film, Professor Bhaer still looks down on sensationalist fiction - but when he sees how his stance hurts Jo’s feelings, he rethinks his position and apologizes to Jo for interfering with her writing.
I love this way of dealing with the scene. Hitherto he’s been something of a mentor to Jo, and now he’s acknowledging that he was wrong and needs to apologize; it puts them on a more equal footing and makes the eventual romantic denouement more palatable.
...Although I will join generations of Little Women readers in thinking that it’s just too bad that Jo and Laurie didn’t get together. Would they argue all the time? Maybe! But we don’t actually see them arguing that much, so… also maybe not? It does seem possible that Laurie wouldn’t be mature enough to give Jo the space she need to succeed and grow as a writer. Professor Bhaer is far less needy.
A few other things I love about this film:
The beautiful food scenes. In particular, many of them are not just eating scenes but cooking scenes, and it gives a fuller sense of the girls’ lives and how hard they work to keep this house so lovely and home-like.
The sense of place - and of time, the turning of the seasons in the bucolic New England countryside. (The landscapes are completely different than the spare Australian outback in Armstrong’s earlier film My Brilliant Career, but both films have this strong sense of place.)
The lovingly detailed interior of the March house: the crowded attic, the rooms the girls share, the ever-busy kitchen. They even found a piano with real ivory keys for Beth.
A lovely, lovely film. I’m glad, after all, that the new BBC series isn’t available in the US yet; it wouldn’t be fair to it to watch it too soon after this movie.
