30 for 30 — 2019: "Little Women"
"There are some natures too noble to curb and too lofty to bend."
What’s this all about? I turned 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m watching one movie a day for 30 days and spending 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2019. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
“Little Women” was one of the last movies I saw in 2020 before COVID-19 shut movie theaters down. I didn’t expect to be so moved by it when I popped in for a Tuesday matinee before work almost two years ago.
I’ve spent a lot of time on this series talking about film adaptations of books (not counting this entry, 12 others are adaptations of some sort, and the final entry in this series is also an adaptation). “Little Women” has been adapted at least 22 times in various formats. The story of the March sisters — Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth — and how their lives unfold in Massachusetts as the Civil War unfolds is a timeless coming-of-age tale, as each sister experiences a harrowing event in their lives while they occupy the liminal between older adolescence and adulthood.
Writer-director Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version takes Louisa May Alcott’s semi-autobiographical text and updates it for the 21st century without changing any of the source material. Instead, Gerwig, cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, and editor Nick Houy use a clever scrambled editing technique and two separate color palettes to bring a fresh set of eyes to the literary classic. The present-day is tinged with grey and cool blue, while the flashbacks are warm, glowing and sepia-toned, highlighting the warm memories we associate with nostalgia, even as our present-day may be unhappy.
This language of color, combined with Alexandre Desplat’s beautiful score full of pianos and strings, highlights what Gerwig so often brings to the forefront in her script: joy, goodness, mercy, quiet acts of love, and the virtues of trying to live a noble life amid crisis and change.
But it also doesn’t shy away from the harsh reality of living your life constantly in service of others. As March matriarch Marmee, Laura Dern’s “I’m angry nearly every day of my life” scene is amazing, especially viewed within the context of the whole character, who seems to exist solely to help other people. The 2019 movie version is the only one that gives Marmee any sort of agency. That exchange of dialogue, given as she comforts a repentant Jo after she watched Amy fall into the ice a few days after Amy burned Jo’s beloved novel, highlights the ways we can learn to be better stewards to others, even as it may take a toll on us:
Jo March: If she had died it would've been my fault.
Marmee March: She will be fine, the doctor said he didn't even think she'd catch cold.
Jo: What is wrong with me? I've made so many resolutions and written sad notes and cried over my sins, but it just doesn't seem to help. When I get in a passion I get so savage I could hurt anyone and I'd enjoy it.
Marmee: You remind me of myself.
Jo: But you're never angry.
Marmee: I'm angry nearly every day of my life.
Jo: You are?
Marmee: I'm not patient by nature, but with nearly forty years of effort I'm learning to not let it get the better of me.
Jo: I'll do the same, then.
Marmee: I hope you'll do a great deal better than me. There are some natures too noble to curb and too lofty to bend.
But Marmee isn’t the main cahracter here, it’s her daughters. Independent Jo wishes to become a writer, Amy is an artist who wants to be loved (probably more than any other character, and this version of the story is much more sympathetic to her than others), responsible Meg wishes to marry, and Beth is quietly virtuous as she deals with illness. The whole movie is about how all four of them deal with what life has to offer them, situations that were relevant then and still relevant now. Love, life, class, money, art, commerce — all important theemse and topics.
Much like “Boyhood” or “The Sandlot,” two other movies in this series, “Little Women” is very much a series of lose vignettes stitched together using one framing device. There’s a hangout quality to this movie that I enjoy a lot.
And when Bob Odenkirk’s Mr. March returns from war on Christmas leave to tell his family how much he’s missed his “little women”? That’s cinema, baybee!
Up next: 2020’s beautiful exploration of the American Dream: “Minari.”
Letter of Recommendation
The first version of “Little Women” I ever saw as the 1994 version, and it’s got a stacked ‘90s cast: Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Christian Bale
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