It’s not a competition: Little Women

copyright 2019 Columbia Pictures

I should probably explain this title right out of the gate. For me, for the past 25 years, Gillian Armstrong’s masterpiece has been my standard for adaptations of the novel for a variety of reasons. The performances were and remain impeccable, the fidelity to the source material impressive and how it conveyed the issues that women faced in the mid-19^th century United States was, at the time, as solid as it gets without devolving into arch polemic or scuttling the whole to make a point.

Armstrong’s cast had a lot to with that (duh). Winona Ryder was at the peak of her powers as Jo and Susan Sarandon as Marmee conveyed both Marmee’s warmth and compassion and her toughness, adding to her and avoiding what could have been a caricature/cypher/symbol. The humanism inherent Alcott’s book permeates that film.

Claire Danes as Beth, Trini Alvarado as Meg, and Samantha Mathis as Amy provided fully realized people as the other older March children. Kirsten Dunst stood out as the younger Amy and if this cast wasn't remarkable enough, Christian Bale's Laurie may be as definitive as Ryder's Jo.

But I may have to append, "up till now." In Greta Gerwig's 2019 release, Louisa May Alcott's classic has breathed deep a new life. If Armstrong's was notable at the time for bringing into focus the remarkable modern elements of the novel, Gerwig's film unspools hers with a post-modern technique that should counter the warmth and heart of the story but actually enhances it.

It's in the opening of the film with Jo in New York, sitting before Tracy Letts' Mr. Dashwood, selling "her friend's" first story that you realize that we're in somewhat meta territory. The non-linear approach to telling the tale isn't just a clever conceit; it's a masterstroke of narrative construction. Gerwig has said as much in interviews that one of her intentions was to drive home the economics of being a woman in the Civil War era (and for that matter, from Reconstruction through at least the first few decades of the twentieth century.)

What's astounding is that, at no point does the film reduce itself to a tract on the economic realities facing women during that time. It's integral in that it forms the context and subtext of that reality, but the film is richer for it. The March women are aware of their financial situation while Mr. March is away volunteering at the front; but there's no descent in overworked tragedy or pathos. For one thing, that wouldn't be true to Alcott's voice, but for another, given the performances at hand, it would be impossible.

Saorise Ronan hits a career high in an oeuvre replete with them as Jo. She is luminous and every bit as fiery as Ryder but with a slower burn. Sure, she might belt Timothee Chalamet's Laurie but it's how she deals with the quotidian reality of pursuing a writer's life in the midst of family obligations and responsibilities that inform her navigation of growing into womanhood.

Laura Dern's Marmee is a similar revelation. Dern is a national treasure and it's doubtful that over her thirty-plus career, there's a bad performance and very often a great one. From her work with David Lynch to "The Last Jedi" to this, Dern can anchor an ensemble like no one else. Jo has always struck me as the intellect and Marmee the heart of the leads in the different adaptations, but there's much more going on here and you see it in Florence Pugh's Amy, the “realist” who recognizes – with Aunt March – the necessity for marrying well in order to provide for her sisters and father.

Meryl Streep’s dowager is far more nuanced than any other rendering of a character that is often sketched in as the voice of limitation and the crusher of dreams. She and Amy both articulate the social reality that marriage is an economic affair. If Aunt March is often portrayed as a brittle, disappointed (and not a little mean-spirited), Streep paints her as a woman who has lived a life that’s seen it all and more than in other portrayals, there’s a sense that she wants the best for Marmee and her brood. She’s tough, but it’s arguable that her toughness isn’t matched by Jo’s independent spirit; it’s matched and given fuller voice by Amy.

Amy has more screen time than the other sisters (yes, even Jo); she is the clearest sighted of the clan and not given to what Aunt March might see as sentiment (Meg marrying Laurie’s tutor and persisting in poverty) or determined independence (Jo, need I even say that?). Pugh brings a steely reserve to her performance but doesn’t lose sight of the genuine love that binds the family. Her Meg is equally a force of nature as Jo, to some degree, but not how we are often led to think of it.

Amy is the artist, the painter who pairs with Jo’s writer; this is Alcott’s twinning, and Gerwig employs a similar strategy throughout the film that I’ll return to. In the meantime, it is apparent that Amy’s real strength is in pursuing a future for herself and her family. Marrying Fred Vaughn makes sense and seems on track until Laurie shows up, dissolute and lost. As we see it dawn on Laurie that he and Amy should be together, she drops some very serious science on him:

"I'm just a woman. And as a woman, there’s no way for me to make my own money. Not enough to earn a living or to support my family, and if I had my own money, which I don’t, that money would belong to my husband the moment we got married. And if we had children, they would be his, not mine. They would be his property, so don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition, because it is. It may not be for you, but it most certainly is for me."

It's a statement that reads as a portrait of every woman throughout time until relatively recently in human history. It is nothing less than a shot fired across the bow at every “Love conquers all” simpleton. But in a remarkable twist, Alcott/Jo/Gerwig/Laurie subvert that hard-nosed realism.

Jo needs to be mentioned here since this is her novel as much as Alcott’s. It’s her film as much as Gerwig’s. The metatextual element comes into play later in the movie when Mr. Dashwood is telling Jo that she has to marry, well, Jo herself, off. Otherwise, sales will be dismal. The market forces that dictate Amy’s monologue are still there in publishing Jo’s manuscript.

As it is, one of the beauties of this adaptation is that Jo isn’t just cast off as comic relief or as a mere foil for Jo. It’s truer to the novel in that Jo recognizes Amy’s pragmatism and even though Amy denies it, her wisdom. Amy had said she didn’t think she was wise, but she was observant. And to know that takes a certain amount of wisdom.

I haven’t said anything about Beth or Meg. On the one hand, Meg always seems to get short shrift. She’s not as talented as Jo or Amy, but she’s as loving and caring and of a much more mild temperament which is a challenge for any actor portraying her and Emma Watson brings a rootedness to the role that gives her a deeper dimension than we often see (Trini Alvarado was fine, by the way; no knocks on her!) But of the three surviving sisters, Meg is in danger of being too faded.

This leaves Beth. Okay. I can’t write about her without tearing up. Beth is one of the greatest foreordained tragedies in literature. You know she’s not going to make it but she’s not vapid, she doesn’t want pity, and she is automatically given a depth beyond the others through her suffering and acceptance of death. In some ways, she may be the most difficult or challenging character of the sisters because she matters. I know that sounds inane; of course, she matters – she’s the sister that dies! That’s only part of what I mean.

In the scheme of things, both in the novel and the various film adaptations, it would be too easy to make Beth the very thing she didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to be coddled or looked upon as lesser. But her presence and her absence drive the sisters’ journeys in a way that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

It's possible that her absence is one of the most felt in literature, but often seems as almost a plot device in adapting it to the screen. However, this why any performances of “Little Women” requires strong acting. I mean, goddamn; Claire Danes and Eliza Scanlen didn’t just portray a “tragic figure”, they made Beth someone you wanted to get to know. Danes’ 1994 performance is remarkable and Scanlen’s no less so. As with everything else in this movie, it’s a matter of degree and emphasis.

The scenes at the shore where Jo takes Beth to recuperate call to mind Samuel Carr but with Cassatt’s sensibility. It’s a beautiful, rich coming together before the parting and a perfectly rendered mise-en-scène. Due to the choice of shooting the story out of sequence, Beth’s absence is felt even before she appears on screen. (I know, I know; you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know the story, but if you do know it, then you feel her passing from the beginning.)

The narrative thrust of the tale in the film is driven by Jo and Amy primarily. Marmee remains the moral guidepost and the confidence she shares with Jo about anger and managing the disappointments of the world may be one of the greatest mother-daughter scenes in fiction. On screen, Dern and Ronan meet as equals. Sure, one’s come to the other for understanding and love, but Marmee’s sharing is something that not many would understand unless they’d lived her interiority. I think in her own way, Jo had.

Jo’s fiery disposition and tempestuous/impetuous nature is fuelled to some degree by an anger at the unfairness of it all; the status of being female in the world of the time, Beth’s dying, and the absence of her father from the scene. With this last, it might be time to take a look at the men of “Little Women.”

It's been said that, Laurie aside, there’s not much to the guys. I don’t think this is true. Armstrong found plenty to mine in Friedrich and Gerwig has fleshed out Dashwood beyond expectation. Mr. March, on the other hand, has always been a presence more talked about than seen and an absence felt as much as Beth’s but when he shows up (Chris Cooper here), he is Marmee’s match for goodness and loving compassion. You get the bond, the history. It’s still a marginal role, but pivotal, in any case.

Friedrich is an altogether other proposition. In Armstrong’s version, Gabriel Byrne brought an imposing personality and a movie star’s looks to the part. His conversations with Jo carry weight and you sense that Ryder is going to write more pot-boilers not despite his approbation but because of it. Louis Garrel’s Friedrich Bhaer is a different proposition. He’s more human scale, a good bit younger than Byrne was when he played him (Byrne was 44; Garrel is 36) and the difference is telling in terms of performance. His Friedrich is discovering as much of New York as Jo and there’s less a mentor air about him than someone who is immediately smitten by the young American writer in the boarding house.

There’s a vulnerability to Garrel’s Friedrich that is more of a piece than in Armstrong’s; much of this, I think, comes with Friedrich being the first “man”, the first adult male in Jo’s experience. This brings us to the other male in her life other than her father.

God, poor Teddy. I was taken almost as taken aback by Jo’s rebuttal to Laurie’s proposal in this version as he was. But it only seemed so striking because Chalamet’s reading seemed so out of the blue. We don’t have the sense of that shared electricity that we had in Bale’s approach. It’s a matter of degree and kind here (not nuance). Bale’s is an imposing presence, not so different from Byrne’s but far more charged with sexuality and desire. Ryder’s Jo responds to this but keeps a measure of space between them so that when Bale’s Laurie proposes, you get why she says no and you still feel the pain of that rejection.

In 2019, the tale is told from Jo’s perspective so much that I don’t think she ever saw Laurie as anything but her friend. Ronan and Chalamet are both ridiculously beautiful people, but an imposing presence he is not and against the incandescence of Ronan’s Jo, his Laurie is bound to pale a little bit.

Because the narrative is steered to a greater degree by Jo throughout Gerwig’s staging, Laurie is seemingly more easily dismissed but his plunge into dissolution is far more jarring and tragic, so that when he shows up in Paris, it’s no surprise Amy finds him repulsive. (I remember thinking when I first saw Bale’s Laurie in the Paris sequence that, yeah, this guy can party…but his dissolution read more as an problem he’d eventually outgrow than as Chalamet’s, where I really could palpably feel his hangovers and sense of a lack of direction.)

Chalamet’s Laurie grows. The danger that I still feel in all versions is that Amy is going to turn him down and he’s simply going to fuck right off (and lose himself to syphilis). But we see his evolution to a grown-up before our eyes both with Bale and with Chalamet, but more so with Chalamet. His slight frame seems to carry itself differently as he recognizes his determination to marry Amy. It’s nothing huge; he doesn’t bulk up, he doesn’t swagger, but how he moves shifts a bit and his line readings reflect the depth of the character. It’s a remarkable performance in a movie filled with them.

The back and forth chronology moves the film forward briskly. We are given a sense that everything is going to be fine but how? Sure, Jo is able to sell her stories but we sense the surrender in her whole being after Beth dies. Even though we know she will return to writing (because we’ve read the book/seen other adaptations), there’s an acceptance of adulthood Jo’s been avoiding since the story began. Aunt March’s bequeathing of her mansion to Jo was no less surprising than her dismissal of Laurie but her inspiration to turn it into a school is full of infectious energy.

Amy’s return with Laurie and his rapprochement with Jo comprise the true denouement of Gerwig’s version. We think we know where things are going when Jo takes pen to paper once more to begin writing the novel of which she’s the protagonist; but the last scene in New York, the cut to Mr. Dashwood’s office holds a surprise in store even for those of us who think we know the story.

Throughout the film, Gerwig has dealt with pairs of relationships and themes, some that are in the book, some hinted at but not necessarily pronounced. We have pairs of absences and presences, gains and losses. We have Jo/Amy as the twin narratives that run like side channels in parallel and we have the rises and falls of fortunes repeatedly. We also have a kind of moral/ethical pairing in Beth going forth to help the Hummel’s mirroring Marmee’s marshalling the girls to do so earlier. The first time, the whole family goes, the second time, it’s Beth alone and this is her descent into illness that eventually brings her down.

In this version, we don’t meet the Hummels. The March clan enters the house and sets about sharing their food on Christmas Day, but the Hummels act, truly, as a symbol as much as genuine objects of Marmee’s philanthropy. When Beth goes solo, it’s equally unselfish, but there’s a darkness around it when we discover the Hummel infant has died and Beth has contracted scarlet fever. The one visit could be construed as a genuinely Christian act and the other, likewise so, but also an eventual descent into the underworld in order to return to the world to transcend it.

There is more to be said on these pairings but I’m sure there’s plenty out there. What I wasn’t quite ready for was the return to a meta moment when Dashwood tells Jo the heroine has to marry the Friedrich. The startling direction that the movie takes of simply letting Friedrich go out the door and then the cut to the New York publisher’s office and Jo’s acquiescence is a masterwork of editing. It was presaged by Dashwood’s daughters reading the manuscript (his test audience) but the payoff comes in two beats.

One is where Jo demands ownership of her work. She could have held out for a larger, more immediate payday. But she intuited that holding the copyright “might be something [she] should do.” The second beat is the montage showing book production circa New York in the 1860s and a framing of Saoirse Ronan’s face through the window as she watches.

That Gerwig snagged one of my favorite cinematographers in Yorick La Saux is icing on the cake. His work on Ozon’s “Swimming Pool”, Assayas’s  “The Clouds of Sils-Maria” and “Personal Shopper” and Claire Denis’s “High Life” are all career highs, and what he’s done here is more of a piece with those films than one might think. It’s not just lovely to look at but it’s how the exteriors reflect and sometimes amplify the characters’ interior spaces.

In addition to Ronan, Gerwig also brought over her editor from “Lady Bird”, Nick Houy. The seamlessness and skill with which the film moves along owes its all to the editor and director working as a team. I think you could make a case that this version of “Little Women” could be used as a classroom example of what happens with the right editor.