Little Big Women

Little Women (2019) is a bit like Emma. for me. It's a recent movie, a sumptuous period piece, made by and about women, from a beloved novel that I haven't read. 

The movie is the story of the March family. particularly the four daughters, and especially Jo (Saoirse Ronan). It starts with her as a young adult in New York, dropping a story off at a crusty publisher. She seems to enjoy living the bohemian life in New York, but gets word that her sister Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is ill, so she rushes back to Concord. Then we go back in time, to when the women were all girls.

The movie jumps around the timeline throughout, in a way that some found confusing. It wasn't a problem for me (hint: watch the hair). The March family is based around Father (Bob Odekirk), mostly away fighting to free the slaves, then to support the free blacks. Mother "Marmee" (Laura Dern) raises the children to be socially conscious - their aged aunt (Meryl Streep) is quite rich, so they have high social standing, but no money. Of the daughters, Jo is the imaginative tomboy, Meg (Emma Watson) is the girly one, Amy (Florence Pugh) is beautiful and accomplished, and Beth, the youngest, the shy, musical one, has scarlet fever.

They have a male friend, Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), who is frivolous and very fond of Jo. Meg goes to a ball and later marries a poor man, and Amy goes to Paris with Aunt March, to be married to someone rich, to provide for the family. This was a trip Jo wanted to take, but her aunt knew she was not marriage material. In fact, when Laurie proposes to her, on a beautiful hill in Concord (with modern buildings digitally removed, I guess), she turns him down. Later, just as she starts to regret her decision, Laurie marries Amy.

And Beth, of course, dies. 

So it's largely about Jo facing problems and carrying on through them. It sort of mixes Jo with Alcott herself, strugglng to make a living as a writer, to be taken seriously, and to make good art out of potboilers and midlist bestsellers. There's even a romantic happy ending tacked on the Jo's story when her editor demands it. 

It does a great job with all that, giving Jo and her sisters, family and friends time and space to show themselves. Laurie was particularly interesting, a free-spirit like Jo, but not so free of her as she is of him. Interesting to contrast him to Knightly (Johnny Flynn) in Emma. Very similar types.

But a lot of the joy of the film is the look, the sets, the costumes. Director Greta Gerwig reproduces Civil War era New England beautifully. I have visited Fruitlands, where Alcott's father had a short lived commune, and the March house in the movie was the spitting image. Of course, the frocks are amazing, not just the fancy ones, but also Jo's odd assortment of blouses, vests and jackets. It turns out that Ronan and Chalamet sometimes exchange pieces of wardrobe, to indicate their closeness and Jo's tomboy nature. 

I enjoyed this a lot, maybe more than Emma., which was very strongly focused on the title character. This movie was more of an ensemble, plus it has the interesting flashback timeline. But both are great, and I'm glad Ms. Spenser doesn't mind watching guy flicks like these, as long as I mix in some ghosts or hotrods.