Little Women
Jan. 16th, 2020 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAt 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!
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!
