The Beloved Tale of Love, Family, & Friendships Through the Years

Kaleidoscope's latest is on Columbia Pictures & Sony's production of "Little Women".  Written & directed by Greta Gerwig, the movie stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothy Chalamet, Tracy Letts, Chris Cooper, & Meryl Streep.  Rated 'PG" it has a running time of 2 hr., 15 min.

The film opens in the setting of 1868 New York.  Jo March (Ronan) visits an editor, Mr. Dashwood (Letts) with a story, written by a friend, she claims (editors at that time rarely bought stories written by women).  He buys the story, & when she asks if she can bring more by her friend, he advises Jo that if the friend writes about a woman protagonist, by the end of the story the woman must be either married or dead.  Such was the lot of women then.  Concurrently, Jo's sister Amy (Pugh) is in Paris with Aunt March (Streep).  Here Amy sees the sisters' childhood friend (& rejected suitor of Jo) Laurie (Chalamet); she invites him to a party.  Amy regrets that she invited him when Laurie becomes embarrassingly drunk.  Meanwhile back in NY, Jo meets Friedrich (Garrel), a German Immigrant professor who resides in the same boarding house.  It is apparent that Friedrich is infatuated with Jo, but it is unrequited.  However, when she gives Friedrich a story for him to critique, he criticizes the writing, & she storms out.  Soon thereafter, Jo receives a letter from her mother, Marmee (Dern) explaining that her younger sister, Beth (Scanlen) is very ill from scarlet fever, & Jo returns home.    Thus ends Act I.  Act II begins with much time shifting between the year of the first act & 1861, 7 years earlier.

Writer-director Gerwig has created another fine film to join the success of her excellent writing-directing effort in her 2017 film "Lady Bird", that also starred Ronan.  That film had an acute sense of place, setting, & character; her new film demonstrates that "Bird" was no fluke.  Her dialogue for the 4 sisters & supporting characters is a blend of Alcott's & her own words.  They are incisive, reflective, &, many times, very amusing.  Her direction of the many characters is sensitive & precise; she gives each of the sisters plenty of screen time during which the actors are able to fully develop their characters.  1 of Gerwig's improvements in this regard is in the amount of time devoted to Beth.  In the 1994 version, Claire Danes's Beth is given short shrift; the audience barely gets to know her before her death.  She is almost treated as a prop to bring the sisters back together.  That is not the case with Gerwig; she allows Beth to become fully realized so that the audience completely understands & relates to Jo's decision to return home.  In this effort, Gerwig explores the mid-1860's treatment & expectations of women to a greater extent than director Gillian Armstrong did in her '94 version.  With this & "Lady Bird", Gerwig firmly establishes her place as 1 of cinemas best directors.  Interestingly, her next announced project is a live-action film of "Barbie", co-written by Gerwig & her director-husband Noah Baumbach and starring Margot Robbie as the titular character; it should be interesting.  The film's one fault, in this reviewer's opinion, is the many &, at times, jarring time shifts in the script.  They cause confusion in what is otherwise a very good screenplay.  The cast is excellent throughout.  Ronan, Pugh (who was excellent in last year's "Fighting with my Family"), Scanlen, & Watson as Meg are believable & relatable as sisters who variously struggle with allegiances to family, men in their lives, a society who wants to keep women in the kitchen & bedroom, & what they want their positions in life to be.  Chalamet, in the shadow of 1994's Christian Bale's Laurie, creates his own character that well serves the film.  Old pros Streep, Cooper, & playwright-actor Letts provide 3-dimensional characterizations in supporting roles.  Alexandre Desplat's beautiful & sensitive score nicely provides subtones & underscores for the film's actions & themes.  It is as well composed as his Oscar winning one for 2017's "The Shape of Water".  Yorick Le Saux's cinematography is routine & prosaic; it clashes at times with the emotions on screen.

I give "Little Women" 8 out of 10 nuggets.  This is a very good adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel.  I used to teach the '94 version every year in my Film Studies class as an intelligent, well-produced example of an adaptation of 'page to screen'.  This 2019 version could easily be substituted.  Ladies AND gentlemen, head to your local multiplex for an astute film that is different from much of what is showing this season.