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Film Review

This film review summarizes Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women. It discusses how Gerwig structures the film by zigzagging between two time periods in the March sisters' lives, rather than following a straight chronology. The film explores the sisters' coming-of-age amid the social constraints of their time and examines themes of freedom, independence, and women's roles. The review praises Gerwig's direction for bringing lively energy to the dialogue and family scenes. It concludes that Little Women is generous entertainment that tells a critically intelligent story in a sincere and grounded way.

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Cristina Capraru-Diaconescu
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152 views

Film Review

This film review summarizes Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women. It discusses how Gerwig structures the film by zigzagging between two time periods in the March sisters' lives, rather than following a straight chronology. The film explores the sisters' coming-of-age amid the social constraints of their time and examines themes of freedom, independence, and women's roles. The review praises Gerwig's direction for bringing lively energy to the dialogue and family scenes. It concludes that Little Women is generous entertainment that tells a critically intelligent story in a sincere and grounded way.

Uploaded by

Cristina Capraru-Diaconescu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Capraru Alexia

Little Women

-film reviw-

Little Women is a 2019 American coming-of-age period drama film written and directed by
Greta Gerwig. It is the seventh film adaptation of the 1868 novel of the same name by Louisa May
Alcott. The film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern,
Timothée Chalamet and Meryl Streep.

Rather than starting where Alcott does, during an austere wartime Christmas, Gerwig
introduces us to Jo seven years later, an ink-stained scribbler paying a visit to a New York publisher
(Tracy Letts). The rest of “Little Women” zigzags between two periods in the lives of Jo and her
family. Whereas Alcott traces their fates in a straight line, Gerwig proceeds by association and
recollection. It’s as if the book has been carefully cut apart and reassembled, its signatures sewn
back together in an order that produces sparks of surprise and occasional bouts of pleasurable
dizziness. The March sisters’ simultaneous comings-of-age take place amid the constraints and
opportunities of their time, place, class and gender. The publisher who buys Jo’s sensational tales
instructs her that women in fiction must wind up either married or dead, and “Little Women” the
movie obeys that imperative. Romance arrives in the person of young Teddy Laurence, the slightly
dissolute grandson of a wealthy Concord widower. Meg, by consensus the prettiest of the four, falls
for Laurie’s tutor, which means that her wedding vow is also a vow of poverty. The more practical-
minded Amy, counseled by Aunt March, grasps the economic implications of marriage. Jo, who
catches the eye of both Laurie and a certain Professor Bhaer, might prefer not to marry at all. The
question of freedom — in particular of a woman’s independence in a society that is both liberal and
governed by tradition — is threaded through nearly every scene. “I’ve been angry every day of my
life,” Mrs. March says matter-of-factly, and while “Little Women” is full of silliness and sorrow,
sweetness and warmth, it doesn’t minimize or apologize for that anger. Nor does it mock or
marginalize the March family’s commitment to social justice, civic responsibility and artistic
excellence.

And it is in these chaotic rooms in the March family home that the film derives its giddy
energy. Gerwig’s masterstroke is to take the dialogue as it was written by Alcott but to have her
actors deliver the lines in a tumbling clutter of ideas and mass hilarity. Alexandre Desplat’s
unremarkable mulch of a score – one of the film’s few weak points – does little more than provide
decorative wallpaper for the bustle of family life. But the design departments, both in the interiors
and the costumes, excel. Laura Dern’s Marmee raises her girls in a magpie stash of bohemian
jumble, punctuated with impromptu midnight baking sessions and amateur dramatics. It’s a home
that radiates warmth, and not just because Gerwig borrows a trick from Tom Ford’s A Single Man,
flooding the frame with lush, saturated glow at moments of joy. The home is a crucial element in
Little Women. It’s not Jo’s escape to New York that allows her to find her creative voice, but her
return to the heart of the family.
So this kind of entertainment: generous, sincere, full of critical intelligence and honest
sentiment, self-aware without the slightest hint of cynicism, grounded in the particulars of life, is
accessible to everyone. Don’t let the diminutive title fool you. “Little Women” is major. It seems
fitting to finish with Alcott’s last sentence: “I can never wish you a greater happiness than this!”

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