'Little Women' Is a Delightful and Worthwhile Film Adaptation

I already mentioned before in this blog on a few occasions that I’m a Little Women fan boy. I’ve re-read the original novel and its sequels countless of times over, and I’ve seen almost all of its screen adaptations.  Thus, I was definitely not going to miss Greta Gerwig’s film adaptation of it.  And I might be biased here, but I thought it was pretty good.

Now, it isn’t a masterpiece.  It staggers into some of the same pitfalls that many of the adaptations that came before it fell into.  The overt Christian elements are scrapped.  A 20-something actor laughably tries – and fails – to convince the audience that she’s a 12-year-old (on the other hand, casting another actor to play a young Amy would ruin continuity). Much of the nuances inherit to the source material are lost in translation.  Tweaks have to be made with the narrative so that it may fit into the movie’s runtime, compromising some depth.  However, since these are true to its predecessors, these are something I’ve come to expect – and accept – about this new film adaptation from the very start.

I like this Little Women film in general.  So, I guess I’ll mention first what I didn’t like – to get it out of the way.  I didn’t like Laurie’s arc – particularly, how he transitioned from loving Jo to loving Amy.  The movie fails to touch on his redemption, and how he has made himself worthy of Amy’s love.  In relation to this, Timothée Chalamet, big star that he is, feels shockingly miscast.  His performance was underwhelming.

Meanwhile, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen are terrific as the March Sisters.  As expected, Ronan – playing the main character Jo – had the most noteworthy performance.  Second best would probably be from Pugh.  She had to play the youngest, Amy, although she looked like the most mature among them at times.  But this wasn’t her fault.  As far as her acting is concerned, she was aptly compelling.

One thing I initially feared for this film – considering the people behind it – was it going full SJW.  Thankfully, it didn’t.  It’s mostly wholesome.  I was especially amused to see die-hard feminist Emma Watson earnestly portraying Meg, a character who delights in being a loving, submissive wife to her husband.  It’s a character that Watson probably would think is outdated or pro-patriarchy.  I had to chuckle during some of Meg’s most emotional moments because it was so weird to hear the things she was saying coming out of Emma Watson’s mouth.

However, there are definitely parts where it seems the movie was raring to go “woke” mode.  Though it doesn’t go overboard, its subtle attempts to insert the Hollywood Leftist worldview aren’t so subtle.  There were two scenes that nearly made me cringe and roll my eyes for being so forced and blatantly political.  First was when Marmee (played by Laura Dern) was talking with a black woman about being ashamed of America.  Second was when it mentioned California being a welcoming place for immigrants.  Fortunately, they were brief and negligible, that they didn’t impair the overall entertainment value.

Like the previous screen adaptations that came before it, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women also had to resort to mixing things up a bit so that it can have an efficient and distinct narrative.  A noticeable effect of this is a couple of key events from the book being re-arranged of their order and being spliced together within or placed around the same time period.  Another are slight changes in character attitudes during particular moments.  Moreover, a notable storytelling technique that Gerwig opted for is utilizing two timelines, making the narrative jump back and forth between the past and the present.  She actually did a competent job with how this flowed, but it can still get confusing to those who aren’t familiar with the source material.  However, if there’s one genuinely striking spin that Gerwig put on the story, it would be on the events of the “Under the Umbrella” chapter.

In the end, I prefer a few of the older adaptations over it.  But as a fan of the property, I find this 2019 version of Little Women quite delightful and worthwhile nonetheless.