Little Women
What makes for an enduring work of art? Why has Hamlet, for instance, or Pride and Prejudice lasted in the cultural imagination? Is it quality — a combination of artistry and insight? Or is it a specific capacity to reach lots of people, to meet them where they’re at, in the most generic way possible? It may be one of the most ironic, subversive novels ever written, but Pride and Prejudice is also a heterosexual love story, while Hamlet is as relished for its ambiguous subtext as it is for its expressive soliloquies.
There’s a conversation about Shakespeare in the new Little Women: it’s between Jo March (Saoirse Ronan), a working woman writer in 1860s New York City, and Professor Frederich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), her neighbor and not-too-subtle admirer. He’s just finished reading all her published short stories, and tells her, with charming bluntness, that he feels they’re “not good.” Naturally, Jo is a bit miffed at his response. But Frederich believes that Jo is capable of great art — she shouldn’t reduce herself to pulpy stories about murder and intrigue.
“But Shakespeare wrote for the masses!,” Jo protests.
“Shakespeare was a poet. He smuggled his genius through his work,” Frederich replies.
Such an exchange is, in fact, one of several scenes where writer and director Greta Gerwig rewires her classic source material to introduce broader conversations about women in the arts. I must confess that I’ve never read Louisa May Alcott’s novel, though I have seen two of its earlier Hollywood adaptations (one from 1935, directed by George Cukor and starring Katharine Hepburn; the other from 1949, directed by Mervyn Leroy and starring June Allyson — both directed by men). The crux of Gerwig’s argument is that Alcott, in trying to say politically daring things about womanhood in post-Civil War America, was required to camouflage her gifts — to smuggle them through her writing, while appeasing “mass” (i.e., patriarchal) tastes.
But is Little Women a work of genius? Do its gender politics alone qualify it for the highest echelons of artistic merit? Alcott’s novel is much-loved, yes — but so are the Harry Potter novels. So is Family Guy.
The story follows several years in the lives of the March family. While father (Bob Odenkirk) is away fighting the war, mother Marmee (Laura Dern) roosts over her four bustling, lively daughters: Jo, Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). During their happier years, the girls put on plays and engage in other lighted-hearted activities, like playing on the beach, stumbling through snowbanks and burning one another’s personal belongings. But time marches on, and so do the Marches: marriage happens, trips are made to Europe and one of the young chicks grows ill. And Jo is left to parse through the wreckage — reckoning with all that’s changed, and the way things once were.
If this course of events calls to mind the schmaltzy lull of an old love song, it’s because, really, it is just that. Part of what I think Gerwig misses in her assessment of Little Women is that its ending — famous for implausibly marrying off Jo — isn’t the only cloying aspect of the work. The whole thing is a sentimentalized affirmation of family values (idiosyncratic, yes, but very traditional) — endearing and warm, ultimately too tidy. There’s a reason why middle school teachers so often push the book on their students: Alcott’s characters and plot are easy to comprehend, concrete and functional. She doesn’t ask much of her audience.
From a literary point of view, there’s nothing altogether important about Little Women, much less radical. And while feminism is always a worthy cause, I’d wager that the book means about as much in today’s political discourse as The Great Gatsby or Frankenstein. Its value is symbolic, not dynamic; our recurring cultural effort to revive it attests less to a liberal imagination than it does to a conservative one.
That doesn’t stop Greta Gerwig, however, from taking up the revivalist’s mantle. Her movie is pretty good: whereas the earlier film adaptations have been rather banal retellings, Gerwig’s flashback-reordering of Alcott’s linear plot is inspired and economical — not in terms of screen time, but as a resourceful boost to the story’s emotional sweep. The result is a brisk, uptempo pace similar to that found in Lady Bird (2017) —Gerwig’s directorial debut and an affecting, funny portrait of one teenager’s life in G.W. Bush-era Sacramento.
Her two films are birds of a feather, really, set as they are on the home front during times of war, seen through the eyes of a girl approaching adulthood — though I’d say Lady Bird is the greater success, because it charts unknown terrain and maintains a far more grounded estimation of its characters. Little Women tries for a contemporary sensibility that never quite squares with its historical New England mise-en-scène. It’s 19th-century Concord via 21st-century California.
Don’t let that estimation fool you, though: Greta Gerwig is proving to be one of the most capable filmmakers working today — on par with Spielberg as a storyteller of vibrant, uncomplicated ease. If she ever directs a superhero movie, I’m sure she’ll do it very well; I could equally see her doing a biopic on Hillary Clinton or Sally Ride. (She is currently co-writing a live action Barbie movie for Margot Robbie — a prospect that, if it doesn’t fill you with a mixture of queasiness and glee, ought to.)
There’s the cast to look at, too. Timothée Chalamet has never been more beautiful, donning the anemic Laurie’s resplendent vests and loose pants with the lean, moping cut of a Danish prince. His bowlegged amble and acrobatic instincts are present, too — not to mention his offensively good hair. He demurs to the margins and admires the female cast with gorgeous generosity. Saoirse Ronan is suited for Jo, photogenic and invested, and although Mervyn LeRoy’s version featured perhaps the most formidable lineup of sisters March (Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh and Margaret O’Brien), this crew is certainly worthy of appreciation: Emma Watson is sincere, Florence Pugh is tough as turpentine and Eliza Scanlen is by turns flushed and then red-faced as the sensitive, doomed babe.
And of course there’s Meryl Streep as Aunt March — a dithering expenditure of the production who’s carted in from time to time simply to remind you that she’s there. Don’t expect any kind of heft to her character; here Streep is just a flashy accessory, a humble-brag decked out in black veils and skirts — as if mourning the fact that she’s too old to play Jo. (My favorite moment in the whole movie comes when Chalamet gets down on his knee to offer Streep to dance. You can see the delight on his face.)
Go see it if you must. There are greater movies out there, but Little Women won’t put you at any sort of ill-ease. And there are worse things than spending upwards of twenty dollars on a solid studio product directed by a woman. When one comes down to it, in terms of box office, where should we be allocating our hard-earned funds? Do George Lucas and J.J. Abrams really need your money? Why not make an investment that sort of counts for something?
In this coming-out season of awards-friendly debs, offer your hand to the one carrying the cheapest bouquet. It’s not like you’ll be missing out by passing over the richer sort — none of them are works of art. The question of genius will have to wait for another day.
