Little Women

I knew within thirty minutes that this film would have my heart forever: it was a familiar feeling, with Gerwig and Ronan’s previous feature, Ladybird, having to make room for Little Women in my personal treasure box of movie memories.

there are so many threads running through the film, pulled tight by various characters in competing and cooperative timelines, and yet each person in the film has weight: their lives feel lived in. Never is this more clear than the moments in which the family is together. I felt like I was privy to a few of what must of have been thousands of delightful conversations.

I love that Gerwig managed to differentiate the timelines by using the warmth or coldness of the lighting, in addition to other small signifiers. I’m sure the kids in my college film class who hated 8 1/2 because they didn’t know which timeline was occurring – reality or fantasy – would have loved Gerwig’s simple yet refined handling of a similar issue; if only Fellini filmed it in color (this is the part where I went unconscious because my eyes rolled so hard that I knocked myself out from the sheer force of it all).

Every role in Little Women is cast perfectly, and Florence Pugh deserves much of the attention here for giving Amy the chance to genuinely grow – she could have been snotty and prudish, but Pugh imbues her with a sense of purpose and love of family that overrides such simple descriptors. Also, Laura Dern needs bigger roles because she is always fantastic – her moment in the hall before she steps into the house to greet the girls is a fantastic mini-study of her character: the scene reveals all the viewer needs to know about Marmy within ten seconds.

The ending of the film subverts expectations or lives up to to tradition, depending on how one views it, and that perfect ambiguity sums up everything that Gerwig wants to say about the character of Jo March and perhaps about herself as a strong woman artist and creator.

What a great film to watch at Christmas and with the New Year around the corner. If only we could all be as brave as the Little Women.