Directed by: Greta Gerwig
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, Laura Dern
Rated PG, 135 minutes
In her essay “On Self-Respect,” the great Joan Didion defines the titular quality as “knowing the cost of things”—that is, to have self-respect is to know, ahead of time, the consequences of your actions. Didion’s fellow Sacramento native Greta Gerwig, only two movies into her directorial career, has already created a host of rich characters in search of self-respect, characters seeking a sense of self that won’t fail them. Her semi-autobiographical 2017 debut “Lady Bird” excelled as a coming-of-age story not just for its heroine, but also for its entire ensemble of characters, each with their own troubles and desires for self-fulfillment. While “Little Women” follows in her debut’s footsteps thematically, here Gerwig broadens her lens, exploring the same ideas with greater clarity and a greater sense of purpose.
She also goes back in time, adapting Louisa May Alcott’s classic mid-19th century novel about the March sisters. Young women of humble beginnings making their way through a world made for wealthy men, the sisters notably take an interest in the arts, though in different forms: the oldest, Meg, prefers to act, while Jo (Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”) stays up all night writing stories and plays; Amy (Florence Pugh, “Midsommar”) travels to France to study painting, while the youngest, Beth, stays home to play the piano. Engaged in different media and with varying levels of commitment to their artistic endeavors, the four sisters are still like-minded in their desire to be taken seriously, their radical desire to have the freedom to desire.
Told largely through flashbacks as the sisters reconvene at their house to visit Beth, who has fallen ill, the movie proceeds with a fluidity that speaks to how time changes everybody and heals all wounds, but also renders some things permanent. Characters come in and out of their lives, from their rich and aimless neighbor Laurie (Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me By Your Name”), with whom both Jo and Amy fall in love, to their wealthy and strict Aunt March (Meryl Streep, “The Post”). And while the movie’s nonlinear structure means individual scenes stand in for entire years of their lives, Gerwig excels at illustrating big pictures with small fragments. She also guides her cast to make bold choices within their roles, so that even those characters who appear briefly still contribute in meaningful ways to the narrative.
No supporting character is as important to the sisters, though, as is their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern, “Marriage Story”). Quietly the movie’s moral center, Marmee is possessed of the patience of a saint, constantly exhorting her children to do right by themselves and by others. As we learn, though, her moral compass is driven as much by a sense of right and wrong as it is by an awareness of her own bad habits. In a telling moment, the ever-rebellious and quick-tempered Jo wonders aloud that her mother can resist anger in the face of all life’s injustices—not just the common unfairnesses, the failed loves and missed opportunities, but also those foisted upon them, poor as they are, female as they are. Marmee’s response, that in fact she is constantly angry, is disarming, especially given Laura Dern’s comforting earnestness. “With nearly forty years of effort, I have learned to not let it get the better of me,” she says, and we believe her. Later, when Jo discovers that Amy and Laurie have gotten married, we watch, in real time, as Jo takes after her mother: this headstrong, impulsive character choosing, for the first time, to reserve her anger for something more productive.
Moments like this abound, so that we genuinely feel the long-term natural progressions, and ultimately the possibilities, of living. This is no accident; Gerwig knows how to get the most out of each scene, how to build a story upwards and outwards into a unified and irreducible whole. She is above all an efficient director, and “Little Women” comes perfectly assembled, its runtime a testament to its breadth and depth rather than to its sprawl. Old stories can be made new again without pandering or manufacturing fanfare, Gerwig proves, just like how old towns—towns like Harvard, where the movie was partly filmed—can be made modern without paving over their charm.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 1/10/20.