![]() March, once a wealthy man but now a chaplain, appears to make no decisions in his house but that’s because once he returns, it revolves around him. He steps up for Jo at a family dinner, instead of Mr. He publicly derides Amy for “wanting” to marry a wealthy man. He chastises Meg for dancing at a debutante ball and drinking a glass of champagne. He escorts them to the theater and concerts. Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), a childhood friend and default chaperone, is the outside force that keeps those March girls in line. The men in the film are peripheral characters but manage to wield a lot of power. Jo doesn’t pursue the man she loves until she undergoes a surprise change in circumstances. Amy is too aware of what a marriage will do for her and chooses accordingly. Meg reconciles herself to her choice of a poor yet genteel man. Her aunt replies that she was able to do that because she was rich. Jo shares with her grumpy and savvy Aunt March (Meryl Streep) that she wants to make her own way like her aunt. The few respectable career paths for women of their class don’t pay a living wage and the viable careers are so far outside their social class, they will lose their family and friends. If Gerwig is a bit heavy handed with the “marriage is an economic proposition” theme it’s because, for the March sisters, marriage is an economic proposition, the only one open to them. But given her circumstances and the times does she have any other choice? She expresses discontent at her lot but then retreats when the conversation gets hard. She enters into her future aware that it won’t be easy. Watson plays Meg with an emotional depth and fluency that, at times, lifts her out of the obedient and domestic sphere and into the fully realized. There’s so little of Beth in the film, though, that this critic cannot give an informed opinion. Perhaps there’s an argument for Beth showing us the virtue of goodness and sacrifice over the pursuit of worldly success. Gerwig’s Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Meg (Emma Watson), tepid and uninteresting in the source material, suffer that same fate in the film. Her growth as an artist from resignation to a gleeful tenaciousness that carries the day is a delight. Writing penny dreadfuls is what sells and Jo, who shares Amy’s clarity about the world, frankly states that it’s her job to support her family until Amy marries someone wealthy. Jo curtails her writing in favor of adapting the her current market. This critic wondered whether she chose the devil she knows over one she did not. When she realizes, objectively, that her paintings are not “genius,” she vows to stop, and polish other aspects of herself and be an ornament to a wealthy husband. “I will be great or nothing,” Amy famously says. ![]() Their arts, writing, and painting, respectively, drive them beyond narrow cultural expectations. ![]() We see this frustration through Jo (Saoirse Ronan) and Amy (Florence Pugh). These, and other, brief but key scenes, tell us the Marches find their culture and social mores (1860s America) stifling and frustrating. Marmee (Laura Dern), like Alcott’s parents, volunteers for the underground railroad, aids the needy in her community and acts as a liaison for Civil War veterans in need. Nevertheless, the March sisters are well-educated and accomplished in their arts. This film version doesn’t shirk from showing the genteel poverty and its frustrations – their once beautiful house is now shabby and worn, the house is too cold in winter, and they only have one servant. Other adaptations glorify waking up to no Christmas presents. Gerwig (writer/director Ladybird, 2017 ) delivers a film that hits the emotional highs and lows of this beloved novel while showing us the narrow culture that stifled the March women economically and personally. Does the world need one more adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women ? After viewing Greta Gerwig’s cover version, the answer is a loud Hell Yes.
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