(Caution: I was disappointed by the movie, which I really expected to love. I do not give the plot or ending away, but I do discuss both. If you don’t wish to read my lonely point of view here, bail out now.)
I’ve decided not to write a full and conventional review of Little Women, the new and much-anticipated movie by Greta Gerwig, based on the iconic novel of the same name, written in the mid-1800s.
I’ll speak my mind and bail.
Gerwig took great care to embue the character of Jo Marsh with details from author Louisa Mae Alcott’s life. But to be honest, Jo’s life ended up being nothing like Alcott’s and her choices utterly different from hers.
This is a Hollywood movie all the way, not a literary or historical movie in any sense of the world. Hollywood marketers, like old New York publishers, know that movies about women must end if they are to make money.
The movie presents itself as an homage to feminism. It is not. It’s an homage to Almost Feminism.
The March family of the movie has no bearing or relationship to any family I’ve ever seen or met or known, and I found the ending almost classic Hollywood/Disney sappy sellout.
Alcott said she found her famous novel to be “sap,” I’m glad she didn’t live to see the movie.
I am a minority in being disappointed by Little Women, I should say that most of the reviews have been wildly enthusiastic raves, so, by all means, go see it and make up your own mind. I’m out of sync on this one, or perhaps just wrong.
I will say Maria shared my disappointment, we both felt the movie was one part fantasy, one part stereotype, and very small parts reality. And yes, a lot of sap.
The great movies I have seen recently – Roma, Pain, And Glory – are not afraid to show real-life and real-life outcomes.
Families are respected and cherished but not fantasized beyond all reality, as Hollywood seems to require. Sometimes, endings are ambivalent, even unhappy. Like life..
I am a bit uneasy as a male reviewing a movie very much about women, and their long and wrenching struggles for an equal shot at success and freedom.
This would be a perfect time for Alcott’s fierce and uncompromising feminism to come forth and roar on the big screen. Alcott always admitted that her book was a commercial sellout, and the movie is very true to that compromise, for all the beautiful shots, wonderful acting, and innovative structure.
In the novel, everybody ultimately did what they were expected to do.
For all of its marketing pretentions, this is not the movie of the Me Too Era, but of the All Women Truly Really Want To Get Married And Settle Down Era, no matter what the trailers suggest.
Alcott belittles her book as insipid, she said that she wrote it when she needed money and constructed the plot with that in mind. This new movie is anything but insipid, but still…
Alcott told interviewers that her protagonist Jo “should have remained a literary spinster,” but her fans and publishers insisted, as a publisher says at the very beginning of the film, that if she wants to write a novel about women, the main character must end up either married or dead.
I found it sad, not inspiring, that this still holds true in 2019.
Lots of giggling, shrieking, loving girl scenes, the narrative was sometimes hard to find. All the sisters lean and gorgeous and full of life. The parents loving and empathetic. Nobody was overweight by a pound or even had a pimple.
Alcott was a feminist and abolitionist, she never married and said she had fallen in love over the course of her life with many pretty girls but never once “the least bit with a man.”
The movie is absolutely gorgeous and the cast – Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet – dazzling.
I want to be honest, mine is a minority view, at least so far. The New York Times wrote that “the movie version of Louisa May Alcott’s novel comes as an absolute gift.”
Another reviewer wrote that Gerwig has crafted work about love and family with devotion and empathy that is moving without being manipulative. “This is a Little Women for the ages.”
I hope not. This is an homage to the gilded and fabled and very wealthy town of Concord, Mass in the 1800s when women had few choices but to find a man with money.
I’d love to see a movie about Alcott. Her real family was poverty-stricken but committed to social justice. Her father went off to join the Union Army to fight slavery.
She was educated by some of the great minds of early American history – Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne – all friends of the family but absent from the film. It’s interesting to see what parts of Alcott’s life were included, and which were left out (Alcott was a lesbian.)
To tell her lively and juicy stories, Alcott began publishing thrillers under the pen name A.M. Barnard.
At every critical turn of her life, she made the very courageous choice to live her life honestly and bravely. At almost every critical juncture of the movie, Jo March made a different choice, ending up as exactly the kind of woman Alcott didn’t wish to be and fought hard to ensure other women didn’t have to be.
The message of this movie is radically different. I felt a bit betrayed.
Gerwig slyly evokes Alcott’s life all through the movie, suggesting she is the central, brilliant and headstrong character Jo March. To me, that was a card trick, and a manipulative one, too much for me.
I was surprised to find the movie boring at times, it circled back on itself. I wasn’t sure what it was trying to say.
I think this is an important, even fascinating movie on many levels. Go see it, I’d love to know what you think.
Jon, I saw the movie last night, and I have none of the background you do—never read the book and know nothing about Alcott. I agree with you and Maria. It was boring and even confusing at times. My biggest complaint is that I didn’t love or care about most of the characters. Moreover, I found the young men unappealing and not a bit masculine. I did like the Mother’s character and a few others, but not most of the main characters. I can’t say I was disappointed because I had no expectations. My husband agrees with me, by the way. We’d give it a B minus.
I love your reviews, Jon.
Thanks Doris, the young men seemed overwhelmed by the sisters…B – seems right to me..
Thank you for your honest review. I probably won’t see it, but I’m very interested to hear your thoughts on Where the Crawdads Sing, if you have read it. It’s getting rave reviews also. It was an okay read for me but forgetable, so I don’t understand the accolades.
Thanks Kathy, Maria read the Crawdads book which is selling like crazy…I’ll put it on the list..
Thank you for this honest review. Personally I’m weary of another version of this story and I was suspicious that something like you saw was what the movie was all about. BTW I highly recommend Knives Out.
Thanks Marty, I’m eager to go see Knives Out…
Saw it last night. The back and forth made it see that Beth was dying for over half the movie. I get what you are saying about the author vs the character of Jo, but the film was a take on the book not Alcott. I hate when a take on an old book or movie is altered for modern times. Leave it alone or write a new work. Maybe it should have been made a biography of the author. In the book Jo marries a middle aged man, not a young hunk god.
Thanks Jody, I appreciate your thoughts. Normally, it wouldn’t matter to me if the movie varied from the book, that’s their prerogative. But the movie goes to great lengths to tie Jo to Alcott, she says some of the same things, wears some of the same things. The movie suggests it is a feminist story in the Alcott way, and this is where I thought it stumbled. In tying the Jo character so closely and literally and Alcott they were almost demanding comparisons I thought..
I think you may have missed the point of the end of the movie—the meta twist with the publisher completely subverted and winked at the corny Hollowood ending. It was feminist to its core.
Thanks Ella, I got the wink, I just wasn’t wild about the movie..the movie was full of winks, but it felt manipulative to me..and to Maria too…I remember thinking, “this is why Alcott hated the book..”
I thought the cinematography, costuming, and music were superb. The acting very good, brilliant in parts but not consistent. I read (or heard) recently that Alcott did actually negotiate her fee for the book, to her advantage, but I can’t prove it! (It might have been when the director was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR.) I was disappointed in how Jo’s choice of a husband was handled and, yes, some of ‘winking’ was heavy-lidded. I’d give it a solid B … or three stars out of five … or whatever. Not a bad way to spend a holiday-week afternoon.
I think you’re on the bottom, Sheila, Alcott did negotiate a fee with her publisher, for that book and others. She was a very tough negotiator for herself and didn’t put up with any patronizing or sexist behavior…I don’t think the movie was obliged to paint a literally accurate portrait of her life, but Jo’s decisions at the end of the movie (and the silvan disneyfied school were just too much for me. When all was said and done, the message was pretty clear..if you don’t marry and marry well, you’ll be lonely and unfulfilled and that was precisely what Alcott didn’t like about her own book and what I didn’t like about the movie..her decision was no wink..
I agree totally with all the comments about the film Little Women filmed in my area. A disappointment for me. I found myself not totally connected or caring about the characters.
But after seeing Pain and Glory I couldn’t get the film out of my head. Such superb acting. Also Two Popes was with seeing as well as Knives Out.
I agree with Ella–you’re missing the point of the film, which is to explore the tension between art and commerce, with Hollywood romantic tropes as a big part of that. Both the kissing-in-the-rain scene and the school scene were obviously meant to be idealized versions that give readers/viewers the typical ending that the entertainment industry believes that they want (look how the school scene is shot with soft lighting and compare it to the negotiations with the publisher lighting). They’re a “happy ending,” but they’re certainly not meant to reflect what Gerwig believes to be a happy ending (she has said that in interviews over and over), or what Alcott would have believed. The real happy ending of the movie was the publication of the book–it’s not a girl gets boy story, it’s a girl gets book. If you’re not seeing that, you’re not reading the movie text carefully enough.
Thanks Katherine, interesting post, and thank you. I think I got the point of the movie very well, I even wrote exactly what you said in my review. I just think it was a bit of a Hollywood sellout. Sorry, it doesn’t make me clueless or ignorant, we just saw it differently, and I am a man who loved the book. I see that whenever a man doesn’t love the movie he “doesn’t get it.” I did get it, and I liked it, I just didn’t love it, and it wasn’t perfect, nor was it a great feminist statement in my mind. The ending, however tongue-in-cheek was a marketing move, just like the publisher said. I have no idea what Gerwig feels is a happy ending, I’m not sure it’s relevant to my response. From the responses I’ve read, it breaks down this way. Women who loved the book loved the movie. Many women who haven’t read the book not so much. I read that few men are going to see the movie, which is interesting, and unfortunate.
A good friend of mine is a well known feminist and author and here is her idea about why whe won’t go to see “Little Women:”
Marmee” alone makes me gag.
“From the beginning I had the sense that the film wasn’t going to deal with anything truly gritty, succumbing to the temptation to make things light, beautiful, and feathery, with struggles neatly packaged and beribboned in the end. Granted, I hadn’t seen the film so it was all pre-judgment, but it arose from the reviews themselves. As soon as I read all that adoration, I knew this was not for me.”
I liked many things about the movie but I think my friend captured what ended up bothering me, despite all the mega-hype…
Jon,
I’ve never read any of Alcott’s books. Now that I’ve read your review, I think I’ll leave that story untouched. I wasn’t very interested in the movie to begin with. Knives Out was a fun movie to watch. Enjoyed it very much. I look forward to reading your review of that movie.
I haven’t seen this film but from your description it sounds like a glorified Hallmark Christmas movie for television. I did see one this week that was simply outstanding, in my opinion. If you get a chance go see JOJO RABBIT. To me, this is what’s right about film.
I haven’t seen the movie yet. I have read the book numerous times…whenever I was sick in bed, I’d reread it, along with Alice ‘s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. First off, I have seen several previous versions of the movie. I particularly hated that petite, lovely Wynona Ryder played Jo….and they kept the line “Oh Jo! Your hair, your one beauty.” That still drives me nuts. I’m sorry to hear Professor Bhaer is “a hunk.” He was not at all a hunk in the book. Bearded, overweight, crazy rumpled hair. Why does everybody have to be good looking? I disliked all the movies for their bad casting. As for the rain scene and the school, those are in the book. Sorry to hear they were sappy. My husband and I went to see it today, but the line was out the door, so we went home. I imagine I’ll have plenty to criticize with this version as well, although I didn’t think there would be any great feminist uprising. I still view the book from my childhood enjoyment of it….so not as critical about all that.
Highly disappointed in this adaptation and that is saying something. I like almost all adaptation of Alcott’s book. I didn’t like the decision to take a new spin on the book by telling a non linear story line. The movie starts 3/4 way through the book, backs up to the middle of the book, backs up to closer to the start of the book, then goes forward to the middle and flip flops all through the movie like this..I would imagine, some people, not familiar with the books, may be a bit confused by it all..esp since the actors changed very little over the course of the decade they were showing. Oh..it showed once “7 years earlier” to set up the jumping timelines..but if you blinked and missed it and were not familiar with the story..it’d be confusing.
I also didn’t believe the close relationships between siblings, I didn’t feel the “sisterhood” nor the closeness of the family
Laurie (who looked like a Eruo-trash model)and esp Professor Baehr came off as shallow characters, whom they tacked on to the story, much like Alcott did to the book. At least Alcott fleshed them out more and made them likeable. In this movie, I didn’t find any of the men fleshed, they were just sketches…and because of that lack of character, non of them were appealing in the slightest.
Instead of giving her excellent writing it’s due, they made the decision to break the fourth wall (more or less) and let the author’s opinion, not the writing come out on the screen.
I think the people who wanted this film to be more Alcott and less Jo would have done a better and much more interesting film, with a story of Alcott’s life and her work on Little Women…much like The Man Who Invented Christmas did for Dickens.
Other than the costumes and the cinematography there is nothing I liked about this version…sorry for my own long take of this film. Went in to love the newest version of LW…came out loathing it.
Thank Lynia, thoughtful and interesting….I enjoyed reading it, you know your stuff…