osprey_archer | Little Women

Gillain 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

asakiyume

Wow, that sounds excellent! I will definitely watch it.

I wonder how Louisa herself thought about her fiction. Did **she** think the sensationalist fiction was less worthy? Is Jo a good stand-in for her here? Louisa wrote Jo, but it doesn't mean their views are entirely the same.

And why did Louisa make Jo end up with Professor Bhaer? Was it a realism choice, a romantic choice, or something else? And is it a failure on the part of the novel that so many readers prefer Laurie? Was that always true?

Things I wonder about...

From:

osprey_archer

You've hit on some questions I can actually answer! After she published the first volume of Little Women (which is the first half of the book we know today), Alcott found herself besieged by letters begging her to let Jo end up with Laurie, and married her off to Professor Bhaer instead basically out of spite. I don't have the exact quote to hand, but it's something like, "Jo should have ended up a literary spinster, but everyone wanted her to get married so I made a funny match for her."

There's also a bit at the end of the final novel in the Little Women sequence where Alcott says something like 'I wish I could end this book with all the characters being swallowed up in an earthquake so no one could ever ask me about them again." Clearly, not an author concerned with cultivating her fanbase.

I know Alcott wrote some sensationalist fiction for money under a different pen name, earlier, but I'm not sure what her personal views on the subject were. The idea that certain kinds of reading can be dangerous shows up in her other novels - not just sensation fiction but French novels - but I'm not sure to what extent that was her personal belief, or something that she knew the parents in the audience would approve.

From:

asakiyume

!! Gosh, yeah, not a fan-friendly author! From these few facts alone, she sounds both interesting and like the sort of person I wouldn't want to become close friends with. Yikes.

From:

staranise

I had a professor who was something of an Alcott scholar once, who claimed that Jo having a love interest at all was on the direct orders of an editor, so she basically did her best to give her the most asexual husband ever.

From:

kore

I think she thought it was trashy fun, but not actually harmful. She's a lot more easygoing and sarcastic about some of her period's moralizing than in her books. I think she and L.M. Montgomery wound up in similar places -- they both wrote from the heart, the books became WILDLY popular and they were stuck writing sequels, and they were half amused and half frustrated at how they couldn't really do anything else. Alcott was the sole support for her family (Bronson Alcott, her father, was a real piece of work) so she talks a lot of the time like making money was what mattered to her, but she also satirized herself a lot.

Not to get squicky, but Pro Bhaer in a LOT of ways is like Bronson Alcott. I don't think Alcott wanted Jo to wind up with anybody, but that wasn't possible, so she basically created this wish-fulfillment daddy figure. (I personally wish she'd been able to write a satire on utopian movements, like the fragment about her childhood days on a communal farm, but she apparently just didn't want to.)

From:

asakiyume

Ooh, is the fragment about her childhood days available online? That would have been Fruitlands, right?

I never actually finished the book of Little Women; at the time I read it, I was very young and ... not very interested in it, and I never picked it up afterward, so I only know Prof. Bhaer by reputation, from what people who **have** read the book say.

From:

osprey_archer

Yes, Fruitlands, and here it is: Transcendental Wild Oats.

It's almost too bad she never wrote a full book length version, but possibly she just didn't want to revisit that period of her life at such length.

From:

asakiyume

Thank you!

From:

minutia_r

My takeaway from Transcendental Wild Oats is that I had no idea "broadcast" was a word before radio and originally referred to a method of planting, and I am delighted by this information.

From:

kore

Yes! It's called Transcendental Wild Oats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Wild_Oats

Unleavened bread, porridge, and water for breakfast; bread, vegetables, and water for dinner; bread, fruit, and water for supper was the bill of fare ordained by the elders. No teapot profaned that sacred stove, no gory steak cried aloud for vengeance from her chaste gridiron; and only a brave woman’s taste, time, and temper were sacrificed on that domestic altar.

Full confession, I LOATHED Prof Bhaer from a young age because I loved Jo's Gothics (still do, or Louisa's anyway) and was horrified and angry at him messing with her writing that way. Then when I read some biographies of her and her family, all I could see was Bronson Alcott. Mr March is also sort of Bronson Alcott, but in a wimpier and less aggravating way. (Some author won a Pulitzer rewriting LW from March's point of view. Of course they did. -- Of course nobody wrote from Marmee's POV, although there's a pretty good 'dual biography': https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15748199-marmee-and-louisa) The school Jo sets up in the sequels to LW is pretty much based on her father's (absolutely loopy) educational principles, and is meant as a valedictory of him. So for me it was double extra creepy and unwanted that her most famous character spends her life kind of glorifying Bronson Alcott, much like Louisa did. (He was a total laughingstock until she got famous. Then people took him seriously, but he took all the credit.)

//is obviously way too overinvested in this author

From:

asakiyume

//is obviously way too overinvested in this author

Not at all! She's got a kind of harrowing and emotionally complex life. She must have had very complicated feelings about her dad.

From:

kore

True story, he died March 4 1888 and she died two days later.

From:

kore

I loved that movie. I saw it like three times when it came out, grew up on the book.

Edited (wtf space bar) Date: 2018-07-19 03:08 pm (UTC)

From:

osprey_archer

Such a good movie! This is an adaptation made by people who clearly loved the source material.

I've just started watching Anne with an E, and it could have really benefited by someone on the production yelling "MAYBE WE SHOULD TRY TO BE A LITTLE MORE FAITHFUL TO THE BOOK, GUYS."

From:

kore

Oh Lord, I heard that was like the grimdark adaptation of the Avonlea books and was just like....but why? It also annoys me that L.M. Montgomery is often criticized for being too bright or sappy, when in reality that market wouldn't let her publish much else. So she gets criticized for not being "realist" or "feminist" enough, but I think that's more than a bit unfair.

From:

osprey_archer

I've just finished the first episode and it ends with them sending Anne back to the orphanage. The second episode appears to be all about Matthew rushing after her to bring her back. Why? Why would anyone think that this would be an improvement on the story as it is in the book?

From:

kore

....WHA

From:

osprey_archer

Given their other choices, I'm assuming they read Anne of Green Gables and thought NEEDS MOAR ANGST, because that would explain most of their choices. But... no. That's not Anne of Green Gables. Adapt another book if more angst is what you want!

From:

sovay

I loved that movie. I saw it like three times when it came out, grew up on the book.

I have now seen it twice and it turns out I love it! My mother had never seen it; we watched it together. It was great.

From:

kore

I wish I'd seen it with my mother, but I don't remember if she was that into Little Women (altho she bought me the book, which I still have).

From:

sovay

I don't remember if she was that into Little Women (altho she bought me the book, which I still have).

We would watch the 1933 version together when I was young. My parents very definitely gave me my copy of the book, which I read along with its sequels and some other random Alcott we had around the house, like Eight Cousins (1875) and Rose in Bloom (1876), and I have no idea how any of those hold up.

From:

kore

My parents got me both an American Classics-style hardback with illustrations of LW, and a complete set of Alcott which looked a lot like this https://www.etsy.com/listing/609120669/three-vintage-louisa-may-alcott-novels?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=alcott%20book%20set&ref=sr_gallery-1-33 which of course I don't have anymore (most of my book got sold). I was clutching the Little Men volume from that as they wheeled me in for a tonsillectomy, and I still remember the nurse kind of struggling to pry it from my hands.

From:

sovay

A lovely, lovely film.

I rewatched it about a month ago for the first time since it was in theaters and I loved it; it held up. I had not been able to appreciate it properly in 1994, when I was taken to see it by some friends and their mother and enjoyed it but spent too much of the runtime noticing the absence of Katharine Hepburn. I actually think it does a really good job of showing Jo and Laurie as the kind of closely bonded friends who would not make a good couple, even if the connection is strong enough that they keep feeling the near-miss for a while. (What the hell happened to Christian Bale's sense of humor? He's so young and gangly and funny! Did he just misplace his goofiness somewhere in the Batcave?) I like the strengthing of Bhaer's political aspects as well as his acknowledgement of the space Jo needs for her art, whatever it is and whether or not he likes it; this film was my introduction to Gabriel Byrne and I assumed he was German for years, because I recognized his accent from the father of my best friend. And I suspect this film was my introduction to Winona Ryder as well and she's wonderful. Her Jo doesn't feel like an avatar of a particular kind of girl. She feels like herself.

Edited Date: 2018-07-19 07:20 pm (UTC)

From:

kore

This is unfortunately such a SHARP LEFT TURN, but I gotta say that Bale was also hilarious in the woman-directed American Psycho (2000) -- I loathed the book but the movie wound up being the hilarious satire on toxic capitalist masculinity the book only wished it was. Then he was in that awful Reign of Fire, and seems to have decided I WILL BE GRIM. No more fun.

Ryder is one of us Lit Girls -- she carried around Plath's Bell Jar in high school and wanted to adapt it for years and years, and Little Women was one of her passion projects. I wish she'd gotten to do more of them.

From:

sovay

I gotta say that Bale was also hilarious in the woman-directed American Psycho (2000) -- I loathed the book but the movie wound up being the hilarious satire on toxic capitalist masculinity the book only wished it was.

So noted! I have generally avoided that movie, but the satirical part seems relevant.

Then he was in that awful Reign of Fire, and seems to have decided I WILL BE GRIM. No more fun.

I am disappoint! As Laurie, he hit the sweet spot between being basically sort of funny-looking and carrying it off like a Romantic pin-up anyway. (Not the goatee. The goatee was a terrible idea. The film knew it was a terrible idea. I don't understand why Christian Bale has ever had unironic facial hair in his life.)

I wish she'd gotten to do more of them.

Agreed. Maybe she will still direct, if not star in, The Bell Jar. What is she doing these days beyond Stranger Things? I'm pretty sure I last saw her in Experimenter (2015).

Edited Date: 2018-07-19 08:08 pm (UTC)

From:

osprey_archer

Awww, if Little Women is an example of one of Ryder's passion projects, then I'm wishing we lived an an alternate timeline where she got to do all of them.

From:

staranise

Reign of Fire did have the absolutely amazing scene where Christian Bale and Gerard Butler re-enact Star Wars for children who have never seen the movie. That was absolutely glorious.

From:

kore

OMG. //goes to Youtube

From:

kore

Oh, man, have you not seen Heathers? You would like Heathers.

From:

sovay

Oh, man, have you not seen Heathers? You would like Heathers.

I have not seen Heathers.

From:

kore

OH MY. Well you are in for a treat if you do. As far as I am concerned it is The Gen Ex Movie (altho not at all dated).

From:

osprey_archer

I first saw Winona Ryder in The Crucible, which put me off her for years, somewhat unfairly; it wasn't her fault that I didn't like the way The Crucible handles the Salem witch trials in general or the relationship between John Proctor and Abigail Williams in particular. She's a dependent servant in his house, and it's her fault they slept together?

Also the real Abigail Williams was about ten, and obviously she got aged up for the play/film, but still.

From:

sovay

Also the real Abigail Williams was about ten, and obviously she got aged up for the play/film, but still.

I've read The Crucible, because I went to a public high school in the United States, but I've never seen the movie, and increasingly I feel I dodged a bullet there. I'm glad you were able to see Ryder in something worthwhile.

From:

staranise

I loved Maria Dahvana Headley's takedown of The Crucible from last January so very, very much.

From:

osprey_archer

Yes! I didn't have the link to hand, but that's the article that really lays it out.

From:

missroserose

I adore this movie. It came out at precisely the right time in my life—I saw it in the theater at age 11, and watched it numerous times during my teenage years, and it never failed to help me feel grounded during the whirlwind of change that was puberty and adolescence; it was something my mother and I used to watch together when we were feeling particularly at odds and needed to reconnect. No joke, I used "Under the Umbrella" (the ending music) as the processional in my wedding.

...I think I need to visit my mother so I can watch it with her again.

From:

osprey_archer

It really feels like an anchor, doesn't it? I think it's partly the scenery - it's almost literally grounding - but there's also the influence of Marmee. Such a good mom. Always ready to go to bat for her daughters!