My Review of Little Women Which No One Asked For

(Author's Note: Christopher Columbus, this post is long! Sorry but I just needed to get my thoughts out somewhere and I don't have a personal journal anymore. Check bottom for TL;DR)

I am a tyrant! You will read my Movie Opinions so help me God!!! ALSO SPOILER WARNING FOR BOTH THE FILM AND THE 150 YEAR OLD BOOK.

So basically I saw Little Women (2019) with my family yesterday and I truly truly loved it. I still think Parasite was the best movie of 2019 that I saw, but Little Women is probably my favorite.

This movie completely hit me in every way I hoped it would. Little Women has been one of my favorite books since I read it in high school, and I've been looking forward to this movie since I heard Greta Gerwig was brought on to direct it in 2018.

I honestly can't even remember why I decided to read the book way back when. It's a hefty one, especially considering it was originally two separate books. I remember that it was during the time when those YouTube adaptations of classic book series were popular. They really took off after the Lizzie Bennet diaries, that webisode version of Pride and Prejudice where it's shot like a vlog channel. Then there was the Carmilla series and a bunch of other spinoffs of popular books, including a Little Women one called "The March Family Letters." I think my sister might have mentioned it to me at some point, so I checked it out. To be honest, I remember not really loving it; I just tried to rewatch some and it's definitely still not my cup of tea and I don't agree with its characterizations of the March sisters. But I think that was my introduction to the book anyway.

I never read Pride and Prejudice or Carmilla or really many other "classics" by the way, so I honestly cannot remember what exactly possessed me to try to tackle this 500 page book when I was maybe 16 or 17. It was summer probably, otherwise I don't think I would have had the time. And I must have been having a rough week or something, because I read the Wikipedia plot summary before reading the book and started crying when it talked about Beth, because I think there was some line about how the family still kept her room nice for her kittens after she passed, and I thought that was real sweet. That's the only time a Wikipedia entry has made me cry I think (hope).

Anyway, I "devoured" the book or whatever other reading fast metaphor you want to use. I completely fell in love with it. I honestly don't know how to describe it. I just loved the characters and everything about it. It was so sweet. Some people think the book is a little overly sentimental, and it certainly is that, but in the exact way that I craved at that time and, honestly, that I'm pretty much always craving.

Now that I think of it, it might be more likely that it was an article from "The Toast" that really inspired me to read it. I read The Toast religiously junior and senior year of high school. It was this incredible online women's humor and literature magazine run by Nicole Cliffe and Daniel M. Ortberg. They had some really funny (and more serious) entries about Little Women that I remember reading - including one pitching ideas for the gritty version of Little Women the CW was allegedly producing a couple years back (as of yet unrealized). Unfortunately the website has since shut down and although the Library of Congress allegedly digitally archived the magazine, the archive seems rather incomplete and disappointing from my digging, so I cannot find the article. I mostly remember one joke about Beth becoming a vigilante hero named "The Scarlet Fever."

Anyway, Gerwig's film. I had high expectations, but I also knew that I was going to love it. I love Greta Gerwig and pretty much every actor in this film - Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh (!!!), Timmy Charmander (I don't know if I typically love Timothee but he's so good in this that I kind of started to), Laura Dern, Meryl Streep. All the excerpts from the screenplay I had come across online had the exact tone I was hoping the movie would. It would take a lot for this film to disappoint me. Maybe I'm not exactly being a disinterested critic here, but I'm okay with that. Sometimes I just want to like something. This movie was so fun and beautiful and full of love. I cried heaps even after I got home yesterday. I couldn't have asked for a better adaptation. (and as a disclaimer, I have never seen the other film versions because I honestly don't really like to watch period films, but after seeing this I might start to delve into some of the older adaptations).

Someone on Letterboxd said that this movie is like if "Ribs" by Lorde were 2 hours and I didn't know what they meant at first but honestly they're right. You know how Lorde's music, especially her first album, has this intense connection to how violent coming of age can feel sometimes? Yeah, that's what this movie was for me. I also listened to an NPR review after watching it where one of the hosts said his face was just "wet" for most of the movie. Same here. We were in a packed theater so we ended up in seats right near the front where you have to tilt your head way up to get a good sight of the screen, so I just had tears streaming all the way down my neck for a good chunk of the runtime.

Ribs by Lorde

Excerpt from the Little Women Script

It's not that the movie is particularly sad. I mean some moments are, sure, but really I think Little Women is about, well, that line from "Ribs": "It feels so scary getting old." Like it's wonderful, too. And it isn't scary for everyone. It's not scary for Meg, at least not at first. Maybe later, when she's married to John and realizes that married life is actually a lot about sacrifice and responsibility and money. But growing up isn't all bad stuff. It's becoming your own person and finding your voice and learning how to tell people you care about them in a way that matters. It's learning how and why to make sacrifices and how and why to be a good person, how to help people who are starting to figure it out after you've figured it out, if and when you do figure it out. But still, it's scary. There's a lot of heartbreak and joy and fear there, and I think Gerwig's film captures that all so perfectly.

This is less of a review than a reflection I guess. I can't really be objective about what I liked and what I didn't. I just loved it. And maybe it's not perfect, but it was pretty perfect for me. I loved how it spun the narrative of the book on its head, cutting back and forth between past and present really seamlessly and using that structure to highlight the development of these characters. It gave so much care and attention to each person. Some people have called it the rehabilitation of Amy March, and honestly I think she was my favorite March in this movie. It's still wack that she burnt Jo's manuscript (my mom said Jo should have let her drown which, I don't know about that, but still) but Florence Pugh played her so funny that every time she was on screen I just grinned like an idiot.

And speaking of how fantastic Pugh's Amy was, I thought Amy's development across the time jump felt the most significant; she seemed so much more mature - and obviously a little disillusioned - years later and she had some of my favorite lines in the movie.

I think there was also an article on "The Toast" about how everyone thinks they're Jo March but they're really not. When I read Little Women back in high school, I respected Jo but I didn't feel like Jo. I wanted to be Beth (there's a lot to unpack there, but for your sake - and mine - I will not), quiet and kind. But I felt I was probably somewhere between a Meg and an Amy - driven by a sense of responsibility and what I'm "supposed to do," a little superficial, a little egotistical. But when I watched Gerwig's movie, I related to Jo harder than I ever have.

I think what really killed me about it is, I never quite felt like Jo because Jo's this independent spirit right? Like Jo's a writer and she doesn't want to get married and she resents not being a boy (which I certainly did as a kid, too). But I always thought, I'm not Jo because I'm not half as independent. I hate being alone. I don't want to light out for the territory, cut my own path in the world, all that. But this movie made me realize for the first time that Jo doesn't really want to do that either. Like, the loneliness of Jo March is something I didn't realize when I read the book (if it's in there, I'm about to reread so maybe I'll interpret her differently this time). But in the movie, it's so out there. Jo says that she'd rather be an "old spinster and paddle her own canoe," but she doesn't want to be alone. Right before she says that, she begs Meg to not get married because "I just hate that you’re leaving me." Jo wants to be around people more than anything. She wants to be loved more than anything, just not married. And she doesn't want the joy and love from her childhood to suddenly disappear.

Being independent doesn't mean being alone. I think this is the first time I really realized that. Anyway, this was also the first time I felt like a Jo March. 20 year old me is probably somewhere between a Jo and an Amy, and I'm okay with that.

I feel like this whole week I've been realizing that I'm 20 over and over again. You know how it takes a few months for it to hit sometimes? Well I feel like I just realized. It's like realizing over and over that I'm not a teenager anymore. And true, 20's not that old and it's not like all of a sudden everyone necessarily expects you to be an adult and the world stops being kind to you (my childhood nightmare). But at the same time, it's just like this visceral revelation that I only get older from here. There's no going back.

Sometimes I feel like I'm mourning the loss of childhood over and over again. I never wanted to grow up, even when I was a kid. My mom talks about it sometimes, when I'm stressing about getting older. How even when I was 10, I didn't want to get any older. Sometimes I feel I'm very reluctantly going through the motions of growing up. I realize that, and I also realize how immature and self-centered that sounds. I know there's not anything I can do about it, but still, sometimes I just feel it all of a sudden. And then I go, wow, I really am 20.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I can't believe childhood is over either, Jo. But I'm grateful for movies like this one, that make me feel a little less alone in figuring out where that leaves me, exactly.

Little Women made me feel a lot of things. There's this line where Beth asks Jo, "Do you miss him?" talking about her childhood best friend, Laurie, who Jo rejected after he tried to propose to her. And Jo responds, "I miss everything." I feel like that a lot. I'd like to end this by saying that Little Women also made me feel hopeful, and there are certainly so many moments of joy in this movie. But I don't really think it did make me feel hopeful. And that's not a bad thing, either. I don't feel dismal or doomed or whatever after watching this movie. I just feel like it gave me a place to feel so many things about childhood and growing up and finding your place in the world, and I'm grateful for that. That means a lot more to me than "everything will be alright" stories. Few movies have made me feel as seen as Greta Gerwig's Little Women. So it's the "pleasure and pain of being seen by someone, of knowing that they know you" I suppose. So it goes.

hot girl summer with the marches

TL;DR: 10/10 Her name is Greta GerWIG for a reason. I cannot wait for this movie to come out on DVD and streaming so I can watch it alone and sob loudly whenever life feels like too much and I'm upset about being an adult. Thank you Greta :3c