This is ‘Little Women’ for the age of distraction
Little Women
★★★ (out of 4) Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Meryl Streep, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, James Norton. Opens Dec. 25 at theatres everywhere. 135 minutes. G
To visualize Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” imagine a snow globe depicting a perfect Christmas scene from 1860s Massachusetts: four sisters walking together outside, carrying food baskets to a less fortunate neighbour.
Now imagine shaking that globe and sending the snow flying, maybe even setting one or more of the sisters loose.
That’s how much writer/director Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) plays with Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel about the romances and rivalries of the March sisters, a classic tale that has been brought to big and small screens more than a dozen times.
The effect is bracing, perhaps even unsettling for those who know the story of “Little Women” well and like it the way it is. But if you’re going to do yet another screen adaptation of it, why do it the same old way?
The traditional telling is chronological, watching Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy March as they grow from young girls into young women. There are good events (makebelieve attic theatre shows, beach visits, dancing at parties) and bad (a lifethreatening illness and a near-fatal skating accident).
Gerwig puts most of these well-known occurrences into her account, but she drastically changes the timelines and places the emphasis on the March
sisters as adults. The intent really is to see them as women, when they have discovered more about themselves.
“Little Women” now begins not in the Concord, Mass., home of the March sisters, but in a newspaper office in New York City.
Jo March (Saoirse Ronan), a writer of fiction with novel aspirations, is getting up the gumption to persuade a comically brusque editor (Tracy Letts) to publish her work. He’s impressed enough to offer to run her prose.
However, he tells her not to make it didactic (“Morals don’t sell nowadays.”), but rather to make it “short and spicy.”
Oh, and make sure the female protagonist gets married or dies, he breezily advises. (The times never really change; it’s easy to imagine such instructions being given to a fiction writer in the 21st century, too.) We’ll just see about that. While Jo is in New York, where she crosses paths with a curious professor played by French actor Louis Garrel, her sisters are all busily living their own lives. Amy (Florence Pugh) is in Paris, pursuing her dream of being a painter; Meg (Emma Watson) is married with twins back home in Concord, struggling to be a wife and mother. And Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is also in Concord, sitting before a piano, filling an empty room with beautiful music.
We are suddenly whisked backwards seven years, when all four March sisters are teenagers still living under one roof, watched over by their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern) and housekeeper Hannah (Jayne Houdyshell). Their father, Bronson (Bob Odenkirk), is away serving as a Union minister in the Civil War.
The March sisters catch the eye of their rakish young neighbour, Laurie (Timothée Chalamet, who seems a tad too young). He lives across the way with his wealthy grandfather, Mr. Laurence (Chris Cooper), and Laurie’s tutor, John Brooke (James Norton), who is also interested in the sisters, but is less sure of himself than Laurie.
Coming in and out of the sisters’ lives is their wealthy and eccentric Aunt March (Meryl Streep), who has strong opinions about what women should do; her main advice is that they should “marry well.”
Jo is adamant that she’s not going to spend her life finding a man: “I intend to make my own way in the world.” That’s her head speaking. Her heart may have other plans — and her sisters have their own thoughts and desires.
The cinematography by Yorick Le Saux is gorgeous and so is the piano-drenched score by Alexandre Desplat, although the former is subtle and textured and the latter so voluble it threatens to overwhelm some scenes.
“Each generation deserves its own ‘Little Women,’” reads a line from a companion book to the film. This is the version for the age of distraction, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Gerwig’s take on the Alcott classic may shock people who really know the story and who expect a more leisurely pace. But it could also invigorate them with its bold approach.