Lit­tle Women

When you watch Lit­tle Women by Gre­ta Ger­wig, it’s pos­si­ble to envis­age the orig­i­nal edi­tion of Louisa May Alcott’s clas­sic rites of pas­sage nov­el that was used to adapt the screen­play. It’s def­i­nite­ly a phys­i­cal copy that has been read mul­ti­ple times, pos­si­bly annu­al­ly. There’s no way Ger­wig down­loaded a PDF, dragged out all the dia­logue then edit­ed it down to fea­ture length. Or that she dashed down to the local dis­count book­shop and pulled a mass-pro­duced trade paper­back from the shelves.

She owns (and cher­ish­es!) a vin­tage vol­ume of ​‘Lit­tle Women’ – prob­a­bly a keep­sake from her teenage years. The pages are yel­lowed and well thumbed. Some of the cor­ners have been fold­ed down for ref­er­ence. The spine has tak­en on some light scuff­ing. There’s even scrawl in the mar­gins and maybe a tear stain or two. This is a book with sand in it. You imag­ine that Mar­tin Scors­ese owns a sim­i­lar­ly dowdy copy of ​‘The Age of Inno­cence’, and that Ter­ence Davies’ hard­back of ​‘The House of Mirth’ might fall apart were you to pick it up. We don’t know this for cer­tain, but all the clues are up there on the screen.

All of which is to say, Lit­tle Women by Gre­ta Ger­wig is a for­mi­da­ble, metic­u­lous lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion because the con­nec­tion to – and com­pre­hen­sion of – the source is pal­pa­ble in every frame. Words, char­ac­ters, pages, scenes, moments have been ingest­ed and merged togeth­er to form a rois­ter­ing, emo­tion­al­ly com­plete vision which cap­tures this snow­globe saga of young adult­hood and the bit­ter­sweet clash of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al aspi­ra­tions with none of the episod­ic iner­tia that comes with read­ing a book (or watch­ing a bad lit­er­ary adaptation).

At the end of the day, books are books and movies are movies and both are unique deliv­ery sys­tems for nar­ra­tive. Yet the print­ed page has been a vital source of cre­ative inspi­ra­tion for movie writ­ers and direc­tors since the ear­ly days of the medi­um. The great­est com­pli­ment you can pay Lit­tle Women is that it care­ful­ly con­ceals its lit­er­ary roots, while at the same time pay­ing jubi­lant homage to Alcott’s prose and the adorable March brood.

At the cen­tre of the film is Saoirse Ronan’s Jo March, an aspir­ing writer who is con­fi­dent enough with her abil­i­ties to make a quick pen­ny from sell­ing scur­rilous genre sto­ries to a local rag. It’s ques­tion­able, at this point, from where she gleans her inspi­ra­tion, but her insis­tence that a cou­ple of impor­tant, pro­to-fem­i­nist details are retained in her lat­est saucy tale sig­nals at a brassy com­mit­ment to the eman­ci­pa­tion of her sex.

Which, it tran­spires, is the per­fect intro­duc­tion to a char­ac­ter who is com­mit­ted to ques­tion­ing what feels like her pre-ordained jour­ney through life, all of which piv­ots around mar­ry­ing into mon­ey to ensure the eco­nom­ic well­be­ing of her fam­i­ly. Meryll Streep’s Aunt March is amus­ing­ly insis­tent on the fact that her grand­daugh­ters do not stray from this rigid path, even if the prospect of end­ing up a lone­ly dowa­ger, phys­i­cal­ly over­whelmed by the grandeur of her man­sion, might not hold such great appeal.

Jo adores her sis­ters Meg (Emma Wat­ston), Amy (Flo­rence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and they all adore her. And all four love their moth­er (Lau­ra Dern), and their father (Bob Odenkirk), who is off fight­ing in the Civ­il War. And they love Aunt March, despite her stern­ness. And they love their rich neigh­bours, and their poor neigh­bours. They love the peo­ple they meet and the peo­ple they work with.

The way the film is shot, and the way the actors are blocked with­in the frame, and how they play off of one anoth­er, and how they inter­act with the sets, and the speed and vol­ume at which they talk, all serve to height­en a sense of roman­tic real­ism. The lived-in aspect of the film, and the feel­ing that we are expe­ri­enc­ing mere high­lights (and low­lights) of these rich, event­ful lives, is how this love is articulated.

If it sounds a lit­tle sick-mak­ing and sac­cha­rine, it’s not. The film works because Ger­wig man­ages to re-empha­sise some new aspect of the pro­found con­nec­tion between these char­ac­ters in every new scene. Time is giv­en over for us to observe their domes­tic inter­ac­tions, and the girl­ish squab­bles that evolve into endur­ing moral lessons. Absence is fore­ground­ed, as the girls are always most con­cerned about the one who hap­pens not to be in the room with them at the time. Jo in par­tic­u­lar is quick to offer up an imag­ined time­line, or an affir­ma­tion of her deep psy­cho­log­i­cal affil­i­a­tion with her sis­ters – per­haps the fuel for the engine of every good storyteller.

As with a film like Vin­cente Minnelli’s Yule­tide clas­sic, Meet Me in St Louis, this is an intense­ly melan­cholic por­trait of a fam­i­ly pass­ing through time, and arriv­ing at the real­i­sa­tion that a fam­i­ly home is a mon­u­ment to hap­pi­ness, not a fortress that pre­serves that hap­pi­ness in glossy amber. The fizz of dash­ing through par­lours or com­ing togeth­er for a com­mu­nal meal or play­ing sil­ly games or engag­ing in a cir­cuitous argu­ment is sub­dued as, one-by-one, the girls grap­ple with their fate and come to terms with all that inde­pen­dence brings. Hard cuts serve to con­trast the chang­ing sea­sons, but also the harsh instant recall of strong mem­o­ries and how fond­ness for the past colours the present as much as it stokes a mea­sured trep­i­da­tion of the future.

Jo’s touchy-feely rela­tion­ship with fop­pish cad Lau­rie (Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met, phys­i­cal­ly chan­nel­ing the rak­ish charm of a young Jean-Pierre Leaud) is the cen­tral roman­tic focus, though Ger­wig is less inter­est­ed in push­ing a cheap will they/won’t they dra­mat­ic con­struct, and instead fix­ates on the bit­ter­sweet trau­ma of hav­ing to guess how those around you will be affect­ed by the big deci­sions you make. In many ways, the film is an essay on the dynam­ics of empa­thy, and how extend­ing empa­thy to your fel­low man does not always result in con­so­la­tion. It works because all the actors not only bring their absolute A‑game, but they con­vince as an ensem­ble and they sell you the idea that their attach­ment to the char­ac­ter and sto­ry tran­scends pro­fes­sion­al necessity.

It is, for this writer, one of the great films of the year, if not the decade, if not the young cen­tu­ry, and for Ger­wig it’s a tran­scen­dent leap from 2017’s Lady Bird. To describe Lit­tle Women as a tech­ni­cal­ly assured piece of film­mak­ing is a mas­sive under­state­ment, as every scene exudes a mas­tery of form that might be expect­ed from an artist with many, many films and years of indus­try glad-hand­ing under their belt. In this ver­sion, Jo is not deployed as a cipher to speak of con­tem­po­rary anx­i­eties, but as some­one who is absolute­ly attached to an ecsta­t­ic present – an arti­san deci­sion-mak­er who lives to test the the­o­ry that inde­pen­dence is empow­er­ment. It’s an over­whelm­ing achievement.