Not so little: Little Women (2020)

We might be familiar with Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s novel about the lives of the four March sisters growing up in Concord. Even if you’ve not read the book, the chances are you’ll have seen a film or TV adaptation or, at the very least, have heard of it.

My own encounter with it came as a six or seven year old when my mum rented the Susan Sarandon/Winona Ryder film from our local video store. Needless to say, I didn’t look back. I soon searched for the book in my primary school library. Over the years, I’ve re-watched that particular version countless times, soaked up the BBC three-part adaptation in 2017 and read the book on a few occasions.

On first hearing about this current film, I was apprehensive. It’s a story told many times, with different emphases. It’s a story that many of us love. I wondered what could be done to tell this tale in a fresh way.

Any doubts have since been dispelled. It’s a sharp, intelligent, poignant and powerful version with Greta Gerwig at the helm. One part of its freshness is to see its non-linear presentation of the story with lines and ideas from Alcott’s correspondence and other works. It feels cut and paste, patchwork, sketch-like, in the best of ways; a mirror of the creative process, the thinking mind and even of life itself. Death and life, youth and adulthood, artistic output and destruction are all seconds away from one another. This is carried through right to its end with a conflation of the novel’s ending with Alcott’s thinking and life. Its sense of messiness is a joy to watch and experience.

All four sisters and their Marmee (Laura Dern) give the feeling that the ‘Little’ of the title is very much imposed by a male-dominated environment. And each, in their different ways, seek to assert their own place in the world and to show their desires. For some, this is more pronounced than others.

Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is, of course, at the beating heart of the film. It opens with her selling a piece of writing and Gerwig gives this Jo a physical, published book. It is she, too, who utters the striking words which bring home this film’s message: “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts,” she says. “And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it!” Although, these words are taken from another of Alcott’s works, Rose in Bloom. Ronan is on fine form here, lending Jo every sense of injustice and indignation at how the world belittles women.

But it is not only Jo who takes the centre stage. While Amy (here, an exceptional Florence Pugh) is so often dismissed as being petulant and selfish, her character is invited into a much deeper dialogue with Jo’s. She equals her older sister’s desire for making a living as an artist, we see her need for experiencing the world around her, and she, too, recognises the adversities presented to her sex, uttered with a steady-but-impassioned speech to Laurie (Timothee Chamalet).

There are fine performances at every turn – even whilst the film feels like it centres itself around Jo and Amy – from Emma Watson as Meg, Eliza Scanlen as Beth, Laura Dern as Marmee and Chris Cooper as Laurie’s grandfather.

I sincerely hope as many people as possible see this film.This is a superb adaptation which blows any ‘littleness’ out of the water.