Review of Greta Gerwig's Little Women
As you may have seen on my social media, I finally saw Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (LW), and I have THOUGHTS. So, I wrote…an essay? Blog post? Blog-say? Rant? Call it what you will, but to be fair, I thought I’d talk about all of the major adaptations in the last 30 years (LW 1994, LW 2017, and LW 2019). Respectively, they’re 115 minutes long, 180 minutes long, and 135 minutes long in case anyone wants to argue about having enough time for anything I mention.
For the TL:DR: Gerwig creates an adaptation of LW that tries too hard to be clever. It’s like she got a checklist of scenes that must be used in a LW adaptation and wanted to color outside the lines, but instead created a bad paint-by-numbers rendition.
I. History of the Book
Out of all of classic literature, LW was the first for me. The first adaptation of a book I recall seeing, the first "big" book I read. I still remember going to see the 1994 adaptation with my grandma, great-grandma, and step-grandma for my birthday that year. I remember my grandma dropping off a big hardback copy of it on our porch as a Valentine's present one year. I've spent countless hours reading and re-reading the first story of the March sisters' lives. I've spent even more reading Little Men and Jo's Boys, seeing the lively band of sisters grow into different but equally capable mothers and their children growing into bright young adults. I’m still holding out for an adaptation of Eight Cousins and A Rose in Bloom.
All that is to say, LW has a special place in my heart. At this point, I've seen every film adaptation of it at least once, along with the BBC's adaptation from 2017. Contrary to what some might know me think, I'm pretty accepting of a majority of adaptations. As a storyteller, I understand that changes have to be made based on whichever medium is being used (film, television, etc.). The main questions I ask myself are:
1) Did it capture the original spirit of the work?
2) Will someone new to the work want to read it after seeing this?
II. Structure
For those of you not familiar with LW, it’s a novel, written linearly covering the years of approximately 1862-1865, give or take. The second part/novel whatever you want to call it covers 1867-1869 or thereabouts. Typically, this is the structure followed by most adaptations. Different scenes are used or left out, but they all follow the same path.
LW 2019, however, decided to follow a different path, with middling results. If done right, the story could be told this way, but LW 2019 missed a lot of opportunities. The biggest part of being a storyteller is grounding the characters and making the audience, whether they be readers or movie viewers, care about the characters. As an established fan of the work, I knew who the characters were going in, but LW 2019’s structure was such that if I weren’t familiar with the story, I think I would have been on the struggle bus trying to feel…anything.
The movie starts about ¼ of the way through the second half and jumps back and forth to the early parts. The scenes that were chosen for inclusion don’t establish intimacy between the characters and the consumers. We’re not part of the journey as is usual in the case of LW. You don’t empathize with the characters, because you don’t truly have a chance to understand their motivations or how the family’s bonds are what drive the narrative forward.
By jumping around and not giving the opening scenes the same weight, you lose a key message about the goodness of the family and their bone-deep need to do good in the world—this was a key part of Alcott’s story and the allegorical nature of it that’s linked back to her family’s part in transcendentalism (she was taught by Emerson and Thoreau, so it’s a big part of her ethos).
They aren’t boxes to tick off the list. They’re deep moments where you learn to love this family and feel part of them rather than just viewing a documentary of their lives.
On a separate note, one of my biggest issues with this structure choice is that LW 2019 finds very loose links to prompt the flashback portions of the story, and the decision to use the same actress for Amy March throughout means you can’t tell when you’re visiting the past and when you’re in the present.
There were ways to make this work, even beyond something as simple as changing the actress playing Amy, though. For example, LW 2019 could have started during Little Men and had Mrs. Jo telling her pack of boys and girls at Plumfield the story of her family and using the stories as teaching opportunities. Or better yet, start during Jo’s Boys with Mrs. Jo writing her stories with her sisters sharing their perspectives/emotions/feelings about the events.
As a side-note, there are some changes that are necessary and some that are either lazy or extra. Aunt March is their great-aunt. She was based on one of Alcott’s aunts. She’s from a completely different generation from Jo’s father, just as Mr. Lawrence is. They show a shift in priorities through the generations. Having the fall picnic at Plumfield at the end is great—but including all those kids is wrong and unnecessary. There were 12 boys at the school at the time. Why over-cast??
A necessary change is excluding the fact that Amy’s trip to Europe was as the companion to her cousin and aunt, not with Aunt March. They’re extra characters that are only included in LW 2017 and even that’s tangential. Work smarter not harder is a good rule of thumb with casting, which I get. Just don’t change minor details for the sake of change.
III. Characters
A. Neglected Characters
Over the years there’s been varying levels of inclusion of different characters. However, there are some that are non-negotiable. While the story is about the March sisters and their coming-of-age, the warmth, compassion, and goodness of their mother is an unassailable part of the LW narrative. Marmie is the ideal mother—patient, kind, and gently honest. She leads her girls to womanhood with a deft hand and practical empathy.
The Susan Sarandon Marmie of LW 1994 was perfect and lovely and everything girls want in a fictional mother. Emily Watson’s Marmie of LW 2017 was good and kind and infinitely patient, but Heidi Thomas used the text to take a few moments to show Marmie as a human with a temper. It didn’t take more than two minutes of screen time, but it provided fathoms of characterization. While I adore Laura Dern, LW 2019 did a disservice to Marmie. She was brusque and one dimensional. You don’t believe how much she loves her girls. You don’t see it because they tick the boxes of do-gooder and mother without giving her any of the depth.
Another character who LW 2019 shamefully neglected was Beth. Honestly, to watch the movie, you’d think there were only two March sisters—Jo and Amy—but I’ll get into that in a minute. However, Beth more than anyone was deprived of her story. LW 1994 gave hints of Beth’s shyness and contentedness with her simply life. Anyone with a soul wept buckets when she died. They left out a lot of her story (the picnic by the seaside, Jo taking her to the beach to recuperate, her playing the piano at the Lawrences’ house) but they still kept the heart of her and her power within the family in tact.
LW 2017 did the best job I’ve ever seen of depicting Beth. If you read the book with a modern lens, it’s clear that Beth is a borderline agoraphobic. She’s terrified to go out, but when she does it’s to benefit others and offer them comfort. Gerwig almost seems to dismiss the importance of Beth’s quiet service. Again, the scenes I mentioned above are all technically there, but they gloss over key elements that give Beth a voice. Her lack of ambition seems to make her unworthy of a story to Gerwig. I COULDN’T EVEN CRY WHEN SHE DIED. That’s how badly Gerwig treated sweet Beth.
And now it’s time for a really controversial opinion: I love and adore Fredrich Bhaer. He ranks up there with Gilbert Blythe and Captain Wentworth for me. He’s sweet and thoughtful and nerds are sexy. Every adaptation handles him differently, with varying degrees of success. LW 1994 takes the time to build a gentle romance between him and Jo and establishes him as a musician and someone who respects Jo’s intellect, but it leaves out the fact that he’s raising his nephews on his own. LW 2017 gives the most well-rounded depiction of him, including Franz and Emil (who grow up to be as cinnamon-rolly as their uncle). Either way, by the end of the movies, you’re all for Jo to tell him his hands aren’t empty by the end.
LW 2019…kind of throws out the baby with the bathwater? They try to make Fredrich younger and cooler, which isn’t bad—LW 2017 definitely casts him as closer to Jo’s age than he is. But we never get time to know anything about him. There’s no mention of really anything identifying about him. And before you come at me with “show, don’t tell” they don’t even show anything. They even leave out the sexiest part of him—his ability to play the violin. Gerwig shows so little of him aside from the scene where he tells Jo to write what she knows that he comes across as an insensitive jerk who doesn’t understand Jo at all, which is the farthest thing from the truth when it comes to the book or its sequels.
B. Misused/Poorly Drawn
Every adaptation has issues working with certain characters. One of those is Mr. Lawrence, Teddy’s grandpa. In LW 1994, he’s somewhat absent, someone peripheral, but mostly harmless and charming. LW 2017 gets him just about right—a gruff old dude who is drawn out of his sadness and loneliness into the warmth of the March family just like his grandson is. LW 2019 tries to do this, but in spite of great casting of Chris Cooper, they dance around the character and skip over his growth. He’s just inexplicably grumpy, then suddenly loves everyone and helps out a bunch.
Amy March gets a lot of flack from those who know here, and most of it is…fair. She starts off as a brat—oh what the hell, she’s a bitch for burning Jo’s book. UNFORGIVEABLE. Except Alcott makes you forgive her and root for her in the end. Most adaptations you get to see her grow and learn to be a poised young woman. In LW 2019, all of the jumping around and the lack of differentiation in her age, makes her an inconsistent character at best. I actually enjoyed her little feminist moments that Gerwig snuck in, but we don’t see how she got there.
Amy’s love of Laurie is also a much debated/maligned part of literature. Just like Jo and her Professor, Amy and Laurie fall in love in little quiet moments. It’s not just a girl having a crush on her sister’s best friend. They have a relationship of their own beyond her role as Jo’s sister. Gerwig misses that. By leaving out the scenes such as Laurie taking Amy to Aunt March’s and promising to visit her every day and kiss her before she dies, you don’t get to see the seeds being planted. You also lose out on so much of Laurie’s character, including the fact that he sets aside his music (which we NEVER see him work on) and goes to work for a year with his grandfather to prove to Amy that he loves her and not her family.
And then there’s Meg. I will admit, I was BEYOND pissed when Emma Watson was cast as Meg and not Jo. Jo March is an ancestress of Hermione Granger, end of discussion. Setting that aside, Meg is a rich, complicated character that inevitably gets paired down to be the good big sister who marries the poor dude and has babies. LW 1994 does this and LW 2019 says hold my beer. Reducing Meg’s one non-sisterly storyline down to her feeling guilty for buying material for a dress is…well, reductive and dismissive. Meg was strong and patient and persistent. LW 2017 gets into some of that, on the surface at least, but there were so many missed opportunities for a feminist take on Meg March and her John (RIP OG cinnamon roll dude).
Last, but certainly not least, is Jo. In some ways, this was a very selfish adaptation given the indulgence Gerwig gave to Jo and Amy’s characters at the expense of the rest, but especially when it comes to Jo. Yes, Jo is a big focus of the book, and I am so okay with that. But if you’re going to focus THIS much on Jo, then get it right.
LW 1994 understandably skirts around a big element of the book because up until the last ten years or so, it wasn’t something that was openly talked about—the queerness of Jo March. That’s right. I said it. Jo March, as written by Alcott, would by today’s definition, be considered queer. From her desire to stride about like a man, to dress like a man, to shake hands like a man, to talk like a man, to refer to herself as a fellow—Jo is queer. I had high hopes that Gerwig might be the first to truly dig deep into this aspect, but she let me down—HARD. She followed the usual paths, clothing and “cursing” and cutting her hair. LW 1994 covers that too. LW 2017 isn’t much better, but they at least deal more with Jo wanting to be a man/dressing and acting like a man.
There’s also a distinct lack of depth in the depiction of Jo as a writer. The garret and her writing space is so central to learning about Jo, and we see…hardly any of it in LW 2019. We see her in NY selling stories she thinks will sell. We don’t truly see how deep writing is in her soul. We don’t see how profoundly Beth’s death affects her and leads her to need to write her sisters’ stories. It’s the story of her heart, just as LW was the story of Louisa’s heart. It wasn’t given the justice it deserved.
Conclusion:
Circling back to my criteria of:
1) Did it capture the original spirit of the work?
2) Will someone new to the work want to read it after seeing this?
LW 1994 and LW 2017 did their jobs on both of these counts. Hands down. They were perfect gateways to the books, even if you didn’t know the story going into it. LW 2019 arguably got half way there on both counts. There were moments of brightness and potential, but it got too wrapped up in itself to make it there.
Maybe someday soon Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy will get the visual adaptation they deserve that gets all of it right (you hear me Netflix?). But as far as I’m concerned, LW 2019 gets an “N” for Needs Improvement.