Little Women
Jul. 19th, 2018 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerGillain 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.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:08 pm (UTC)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.)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:25 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:35 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-24 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:47 pm (UTC)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
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:58 pm (UTC)//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.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 05:52 pm (UTC)