Little Women

[osprey_archer]

At last I have seen Greta Gerwig’s Little Women! And I loved it: I take back every doubt that I ever had about whether we really need another take on Little Women, because we certainly needed this take on Little Women.

Gerwig’s innovation, what sets her film apart from previous adaptations, is her decision to tell the film in non-chronological order, which heightens certain thematic elements and also, especially, the emotional impact. Beth’s death is always sad (I don’t think I’ve ever seen an adaptation where it didn’t make me cry), but here it’s even sadder because of the contrast to the happier scenes that we’ve just seen: Jo’s joy at Beth’s recovery contrasted with her grief when Beth does not recover from a later illness.

And yet overall it’s a happy movie, even a joyful one, which I think is one of the things I most love about Gerwig as an artist (not just a director; this is present in her work as a screenwriter and actress, too): she has such a capacity for capturing joy. You can see it in Frances Ha when Frances (played by Gerwig) dances through New York City, and see it in Little Women when Jo and her sisters frolic on the beach - meet as the Pickwick Club - when Jo meets Laurie and they dance on the porch - when Jo and Friedrich Bhaer dance in a barroom in New York.

Professor Bhaer is a problem in any Little Women adapation, and Gerwig solves it by blithely casting a hot young dude as Bhaer, and also by changing his moral condemnation of Jo’s work for sensation magazines into a moment of, basically, not knowing how to give a good critique: “I don’t like it,” he says, after he reads Jo’s work, and “Do you have no one to discuss your work with?”, but he doesn’t really get an answer to that question because Jo, infuriated by his response, is telling him off in a way that suggests that the answer is “no”: her family supports her work, but they’re an admiring rather than critical audience, and it seems that she’s reacting to his criticism so badly because she’s never really been criticized before.

Gerwig actually offers two solutions to The Problem of Professor Bhaer. One is Hot Young Bhaer; the other is to suggest that Jo never marries Bhaer at all, that she invents the marriage in order to please the publisher who is bringing out her novel Little Women (which is what Alcott herself did).

I thought these two solutions sort of undercut each other: “the marriage never actually happened” would be fine with a middle-aged, censorious Professor Bhaer, but with hot young Professor Bhaer who would clearly be a valuable critique partner if he could learn how to couch his criticisms a little less baldly, it’s kind of disappointing to think that Jo is not in fact going to be tapping that.

This is especially true because there’s a scene (I believe invented by Gerwig? I don’t think it’s in the original novel) where Jo, grieving and lonely after Beth’s death, says that she would marry Laurie if he asked again: not because she loves him (she doesn’t) but because she’s so lonely. I’m fine with spinster Jo if Jo is fine with spinster Jo, but if she’s that lonely then I don’t want her to be lonely for the rest of her life.



However, I felt that the real revelation of this film was Gerwig’s Amy, and particularly her scenes with Laurie in Europe - which, because the movie is non-chronological, come early in the story. Laurie is a dissolute wastrel and Amy thoroughly squashes him and his self-pity, which is a dose of cold water that he clearly needs - in that particular moment but also just in general, as witness the scene where he sees Meg at a dance and scolds her for wearing a pretty dress and drinking wine like every single other girl there, OH MY GOD LAURIE, just let Meg have fun for once in her life.

This scene gives Laurie all the censorious energy that you’d usually get from Professor Bhaer’s scolding of Jo, and the reason that Amy/Laurie works is that, unlike Meg, Amy is unwilling to be censored. Amy, in fact, will censure other people rather than endure censure, and unlike Meg, Laurie clearly needs it.

This adaptation also draws a parallel between Jo and Amy that I’ve never really seen emphasized before: they’re both young artists, both working hard at their chosen fields in a world that doesn’t take their ambitions seriously. (We do have the scene where Amy claims that she’s giving up painting, but in this version, it felt to me that she’s saying this to vent her frustration, not that she’s actually giving up.) And both of them refuse that evaluation of their work: Jo flies out at Professor Bhaer’s criticism rather than accepting it meekly as she does in the book, and although Aunt March always refers to Amy’s painting lessons in belitting terms, Amy insists, gently but persistently, on her own seriousness.

...And I just discovered that Florence Pugh, who played Amy, is one of the Black Widows in the upcoming Black Widow movie, and now I'm even MORE excited about that film. Bring it!

Comments

[asakiyume]

That's really cool about bringing out the parallels between Jo and Amy--I like that.

Was Laurie a wastrel in the book? (I only ever attempted the book once and can't recall from that attempt--so my knowledge of the story is purely from other people's talking about it.)

[osprey_archer]

Later in her life Alcott wrote a novella, Diana and Persis which was drew on her relationship with her own artist sister, which may have put those parallels in my mind - and perhaps Gerwig's too, although I don't think the novella's well-known. It's unfinished, and I haven't actually read it, although I really should.

IIRC (it's been a while since I read the book) Laurie goes through a period of wastrel-dom while bouncing around Europe after Jo's rejection, although as wastrels go he's pretty low-key, as I suppose must be expected from a children's book.

[asakiyume]

although as wastrels go he's pretty low-key --a down-tempo, chill wastrel.

[rachelmanija]

Laurie is a wastrel in Europe for a while, of the affectedly languid and pretentious kind, and Amy does indeed snap him out of it.

[asakiyume]

Good job, Amy!

[kore]

Sort of -- he's more lazy, or rather, slothful. What I like about that part of the book is they are actually good for each other -- he encourages her not to marry a man she doesn't love for money, and she tells him to stop wasting his talents/life because he can't have what he wants (Jo).

[asakiyume]

*nodding*

I'm glad the story builds in time for the two of them to get to know each other and appreciate each other.

[landofnowhere]

I should really see this movie! When I reread /Little Women/ as an adult (and realized that the version I'd had growing up was abridged), the main thing that struck me was the characterization of Amy and the Amy/Laurie interactions. So I'm glad there's a version that makes good on this!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'd highly recommend it! It's such a good movie.

[rachelmanija]

That's a very weird take on Jo/Bhaer. I can see multiple ways of handling it - he has moralistic issues with her books and she doesn't marry him, he's Gabriel Byrne and we're all jealous when she marries him, she's queer and moves in with a female "friend" instead, he's a middle-aged nebbish who's really nice and supports her in her efforts to write from the heart rather than solely for money, etc.

Making him seemingly the perfect match who she doesn't marry and is then single and miserable is, uh, certainly a decision.

[osprey_archer]

She may not be single and miserable! The ending is deliberately ambiguous, at least about the single part: possibly the climactic kiss actually happens, possibly she's just making it up to make her publisher happy. Definitely Bhaer ends up teaching at the school she founds in the house she inherited from Aunt March: we get a sequence at the end where it looks like the school has made it possible for everyone to fulfill their dreams, and we can definitely see that Jo's happy, so there's no ambiguous possible life-long misery, at least.

Maybe her whole "I'm so lonely I might marry Laurie even though I still don't love him" was a reaction to her grief over Beth's death, rather than a more long-term emotional state?

It just seems weird to me that the movie set it up so it's ambiguous whether they get together, when it's already committed to Maximally Hot Professor Bhaer who dances with Jo in a barroom in New York and respects her writing even if he personally isn't into the Daily Volcano style of sensationalism. If it's going to be ambiguous, don't make him perfect!

[rachelmanija]

Oh good, I'm relieved.

[ancientreader]

Oh, thanks for this! The trailer I saw did not impress, and while I try not to judge movies by their trailers, I just hadn't heard anything that really sold me on the film till now.

[osprey_archer]

I wasn't super sold by the trailer either (as I recall, it only strengthened my "I really like Gerwig's work but do we really NEED another Little Women?" reaction), and I'm not sure if it's because it was a particularly bad trailer or if it would just be hard to capture what makes this adaptation special in trailer form. It's not like you can use the trailer to show the non-chronological storytelling, for instance, because trailers are always like that.

[skygiants]

I also loved the parallels between Amy and Jo -- aside from the artistic parallels, the way the book-burning scene played out made it feel really clear that they have more in common than otherwise, that both of them have this kind of ambition and capacity for anger and passion (and deep, deep judginess) that expresses itself in really similar ways, and that's what draws Laurie to both of them.

I loved Hot Young Bhaer and honestly loved the ambiguity of the Hot Young Bhaer ending -- maybe they did get the hilariously dramatic kiss in the rain, or maybe Bhaer moved to California for a while, and they wrote letters back and forth, and he learned to give critique better and she learned to take it, and they developed the kind of profound soul-friendship that Jo clearly wanted and eventually he moved back, or maybe Jo's soulmate was books after all! All options are satisfying to me so it is delightful to have a plethora of them.

[staranise]

I kind of loved that the movie went, "This is a story! What do YOU think happened?"

[osprey_archer]

I had the impression that Professor Bhaer could be a super useful critique partner for Jo if he ever learned how to couch his critiques a little less bluntly (who starts off with "I don't like it," Professor Bhaer???) - her family is uncritically admiring of her work, and that's great, but she's clearly reached a point in her development as a writer that she needs someone to discuss her work with. So no matter what else happens in her and Bhaer's relationship (he comes back to teach at her school and just pines quietly while she bonds with her true soulmate, books??), I hope they do become critique partners.

[troisoiseaux]

WASN'T IT GOOD?!?!?

I second basically everything you said, but I do think that while the incredible parallels between the two scenes of Jo finding out about developments in Beth's illness deepened the emotional impact of the second one, the non-linear timeline meant that almost the next shot we saw was of Beth, alive, with flowers in her hair as she got ready for Meg's wedding, which made me feel better.

I am one of the few people I know who has strong feelings about Little Women but never actually minded that Jo ended up with Professor Bhaer,* mostly because they seemed happy together in the sequel. Still, getting a Young Hot Professor Bhaer (played by an actor that I... was mostly aware of as a popular faceclaim for a very different character from another 19th century novel, on Tumblr, circa 2013, so that was wild) was a plus! (Based on the last shots of the movie, I assumed that Jo and Bhaer actually did end up together rather than Jo making it up for her publisher?)

Props to this movie for making me love Amy (which... was not the case when I read the book in 4th grade) but you could tell who in the audience had identified with Jo as a kid by the scattered gasps when she burned Jo's manuscript. >p<

* I may have a different opinion on this when I re-read the book.

[osprey_archer]

Well, we couldn't continue suffering about Beth's death forever. Leaving us hanging without another shot of still-alive Beth would have been just cruel.

I always find it interesting how different adaptations deal with the Professor Bhaer problem. This one (aside from the two strategies listed above) also played up Laurie's less appealing qualities: his neediness, his petulance. I've seen the argument before that Jo and Laurie would be a bad match because their tempers would make them fight all the time, but this is the first adaptation where I went "Yeah, actually, I buy it, even if Jo loved him they wouldn't be happy together."

I didn't read Little Women till I think actually after college? I read part of it as a child, enough for me to decide that Beth was my favorite because she was the shy one, but I can no longer recall how I felt about Amy and I wish I could.

[kore]

Amy and Jo really are the dyad of the novel, they're magnetized to each other in a way Jo and Beth and even Jo and Laurie aren't. To me they have the most actual sisterly bond.

Florence Pugh is amazing -- she started breaking out with Lady Macbeth and the TV series of Little Drummer Girl, and I heard Fighting with My Family was great, and then BOOM she was stunning in Midsommar. I have been waiting for FOREVER for a Yelena/Nat movie and I'm so excited she's in it.

[osprey_archer]

I don't think that I agree, or rather, I don't really see a reason to pick one single dyad out of the novel as THE dyad. I think they're similar to each other in a way that Jo really isn't similar to either Meg or Beth (and this is why her relationships with Meg and Beth are less fraught: it's the similarities, the passionate tempers and the belief in their own artistic visions/importance, that makes Jo and Amy butt heads), but at the same time, Jo never wishes that she could marry Amy to keep her in the family or rushes Amy to the sea to make her well. She has strong bonds with all her sisters.

[staranise]

The parallel between Jo and Amy makes Amy burning the manuscript so much more meaningful, somehow--if you want to upset Meg, then you damage her dresses or embellishments; if you want to upset Jo, you burn her work. Amy gets why that's meaningful.

I also loved the way Amy greeted Laurie in Paris. Like, she's so dignified and elegant for most of it! But in that instant she was the bratty little sister again.

Also, I felt like Amy and Laurie's marriage was very much based around, "I will give you ALL the money and let you paint AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. Oh wait, love is on the table? Holy shit."

[osprey_archer]

I love (in a OH AMY NO DON'T kind of way) how when Amy is trying to apologize to Jo she's like, "I did it because I wanted to hurt you! And spoiling your clothes wouldn't have hurt you!" Naturally this just makes Jo madder, but does show that Amy knows how Jo ticks and also the wrongheadedness of that approach to an apology just seems to follow naturally from Amy's thought process in burning the manuscript in the first place.

[silverusagi]

it’s kind of disappointing to think that Jo is not in fact going to be tapping that

Okay, I laughed.

[osprey_archer]

I mean, if you're going to make THAT casting decision, then surely Jo DESERVES to get a piece of that after all that pain and suffering. Right? Right?

[legionseagle]

I couldn't see "hot young Professor Bhaer" because he reminded me strongly of the actor playing Albert in TV's Victoria (probably because of styling choices which decreee that Unexpectedly Sexually Attractive 19th Century Germans must have their hair Like That) and Albert in Victoria is such a controlling so-and-so.

[osprey_archer]

There's gotta be some ur-portrait somewhere of a Sexually Attractive 19th Century German and all the TV and movie Germans are styled after him.

[legionseagle]

You're right! And I bet it's someone's fantasy portrait of Young Werther, from the Sorrows of...at that.

[ladyherenya]

This sounds like it's worth making a point of going to see, rather than waiting to see if I ever stumble across it on Netflix/TV/DVD at the library, which was what I was previously planning on doing.

I do wish that there could be more adaptations of books which haven't been adapted yet instead of adapting books which already have -- in my subjective opinion -- a perfectly adequate adaptation out there, but I guess well-known books have a better chance of attracting an audience than more-obscure ones. And the lack of other adaptations that I want to see is really not the new Little Women's fault.

[osprey_archer]

I doubt Gerwig has any plans to work her way through Alcott's back catalog of books that don't have movie adaptations, but at this point I think everyone would support her if she decided to give it a go.