Little Women – 2019 – PG
My mom wasn’t much of a reader but her favorite book was Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I grew up a voracious reader and never read it. Go figure. Over the 150 years since it’s 1868/9 publication, Little Women has been made into multiple movies, stage plays, television series and even an opera. How can this uber familiar story possibly be told again? We all know the plot, the characters and the raison d’être. Little Women was this year’s choice for our family’s going-to-a-movie-every-Christmas-Day tradition. Entertain me. Educate me. Encourage me. Please.
And it did! The scenery gorgeous, characters delightful, story irresistible. I can understand why Little Women offered a now tame, but in the day a groundbreaking invitation for young ladies to envision and expand their life possibilities. At the same time, a woman’s traditional, domestic lifestyle, challenged by feisty, brilliant Jo was preserved by beautiful, bright Meg. The revolutionary notion introduced by Alcott is choice.
The film follows the March family –conventional Meg (Emma Watson), writer Jo (Saoirse Ronan), pianist Beth (Eliza Scanlen), artist Amy (Florence Pugh) and doting mother Marmee (Laura Dern) as they come to maturity during and after the Civil War. Rounding out the central figures are lad Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) a wealthy, orphaned neighbor who becomes a de facto family member and prosperous, spinster Aunt March (Meryl Streep), the self-appointed guardian of social pedigree, looking for at least one niece who will marry well, salvage the family name and keep the “Family March” afloat.
The flashback, nonlinear way the story is told caused me some confusion but I finally came up with my own cues to alert me to time shifts and guide my tracking. It’s no fun to be left behind, stuck in the past when the action jumps to the future. Hey, where’d everybody go! The film is full of romance, unrequited and realized, tragedy and comedy, poignant moments and outrageous indiscretions. Little Women was the perfect Christmas Day movie. For the record, the theater was sold out and sitting next to me was an elderly Jewish woman with whom I enjoyed a festive chat waiting for the movie to start. As the lights went down I wished her a Happy Holiday and she wished me a Merry Christmas. And it truly was.
