The pleasant surprise of the year for me is Greta Gerwig's second directorial outing, a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I liked Lady Bird, her debut film, well enough to recognize a rising auteur with wit, talent, and gumption. But her newest film demonstrates exceptional brilliance in both adapting the story and telling it -- yet again, as if we really needed it -- with stunning relevance and ingenuity. Even knowing the story and characters well won't stop you from enjoying this iteration as if it were all brand new.
Gerwig's depth of knowledge about the source material allows her to do some truly amazing work here, cutting up the narrative and dividing it into parallel acts that run concurrently. As we flip back and forth in time, brilliant new insights and ironies burst into bloom before us that were always there in the novel but never as clear. Gerwig's control informs the tone as well: her lived-in familiarity with the material allows her to play with strong senses of memory and nostalgia and hope and anxiety that are simply not as potent in the traditional linear narrative. Specifically, early sequences that juxtapose Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) and the sisters growing up with scenes of Laurie in his post-Jo European adventures showcase the dynamic ways these characters change over only seven (?) years. Later, in the film's climax, we get the two bouts of Beth's illness, bringing questions of fate into thematic discussion.
These kinds of moves make this Little Women feel rejuvenated while also keenly aware of its lasting, timeless impact as a core cultural work of art. It becomes at once accessible to newcomers while reviving interest and fascination in old fans. It helps, too, that the performers are all eminently likable and give stunning performances, perhaps nowhere more than in Florence Pugh's stunning delivery of Amy, whose dramatic shifts can sometimes appear shrewish but here feel grounded and powerful as a force of willful, profoundly human womanhood -- a force of nature, in fact. Saoirse Ronan brings her typical brilliance and fury to Jo but underscores it with potent unspoken desire. Laura Dern plays Marmee perhaps the best I've seen, though the film favors her character less than the four daughters. And then there's the costumes, which are uniformly breathtaking, works of pristine and visionary art.
The finale, though, is Gerwig's crowning glory in making this adaptation relevant and important. The ending here lies solely with Ronan's Jo, flustered and winded but absolutely triumphant as she watches her novel being printed. Once the finished copy is in her hands, I totally lost my composure. Having refused to compromise her worth -- though she does subtly compromise her artistic vision -- Jo is usually seen as a stand-in for Alcott herself, who was forced to change the ending of her novel into one that has its female protagonist married by the end. Throughout Gerwig's vision, we're never quite sure how in love Jo is with her intellectual equal and romantic gentleman caller, but by the end Jo is quite on her own. Sure, Friedrich is with her in the final scene, but they are not identified as partners in any way except as facilitators of Jo's new school, opened in Aunt March's house. It's an inspiring ending that smacks of artistic and historic integrity in ways we simply haven't seen yet from this story.
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