#mallory bash soundtrack

[fictionadventurer]

Here, have a bunch of scattered thoughts, observations, and opinions about Greta Gerwig’s Little Women:

(Spoilers below, which wouldn’t usually be a big deal for something based on a classic novel, but I will be discussing the ending).

General Thoughts

The colors in this movie are lovely. The cinematography is lovely. This is a movie with so many wonderful things to look at. (Though the lighting was too dark in some scenes).

I loved how tactile this movie was. The things on-screen just feel so real and textured. I don’t know, like, there’s a fence Jo climbs over, and we see the splinters in the fence and it just feels weighty and textured. It made me appreciate the things in this movie’s world and in ours.

The music was great. I want the soundtrack.

I loved, loved, loved all the dancing scenes. Not sedate, not romantic, just so much vibrant joy and life. Jo’s dance in the pub was one of the highlights of her story. Almost as good were her and Laurie’s ridiculous dances at their first meeting–you see how well they get along as friends. The focus on dancing is definitely one of my favorite parts of the movie (and another reason I want the soundtrack). 

A lot of the acting had weird rhythms to it. Especially in group scenes where there was a lot of talking, it felt like people were just rapid-fire reciting lines from the book, rather than saying real things that real people would say. 

The beginning confused me. I couldn’t figure out whether the woman was supposed to be Jo March or Louisa May Alcott (part of the problem is that I wasn’t expecting a blonde Jo). I kind of wish Gerwig had just made a Louisa May Alcott biopic if she wanted to explore Little Women’s publication process, because it just makes this story more confusing.

The flashbacks were less confusing than I was expecting. There were a few times where it took a few seconds to figure out which part of the timeline we were in, but for the most part, I could follow it because I was familiar with the book. I’m not sure I could have followed it if I hadn’t been familiar with the book.

Some of the flashbacks layered together really well.  Other times, it just felt like we were jumping randomly through time. At some points, it didn’t feel like a story. It was just stuff happening, and even if it looked nice, I couldn’t connect to it emotionally.

I kind of like the way they layered Beth’s original bout of illness with her death, but then the story moves on to other storylines and other flashbacks and the death doesn’t really have an impact. Her death is just another thing that happens, rather than an emotional turning point.

The ending is very frustrating. So many of my thoughts about the movie in general are shaped by that ending, so it’s going to get it’s own section (and probably at least two other posts about it).

Character-Focused Thoughts

Laura Dern was a good Marmee. A bit livelier than might be expected, while still being warm and motherly. I can believe this Marmee would struggle with her temper.

(For some reason, I just really like Laura Dern. I don’t know why. Thus, I can’t give a real assessment of her Marmee because I just like that she was in the role).

That conversation between Marmee and Jo about her temper made no sense. Marmee starts out saying that she’s learned to control her temper, and when Jo says she wants to be like that, Marmee responds, “I hope you’ll do better. There are some natures too noble to curb, too lofty to bend.” What? It sounds like she’s saying that Jo doesn’t need to change, which is the exact opposite point this scene should be making. Unless she’s trying to say that she wants Jo to do more than curb her temper, but become someone so strong in her morals that she can stand strong against the temptations in life. But that’s not clear from the scene, and it’s easy to read it as a vague “empowerment” message. It’s another point where conflating Jo with Louisa May Alcott (by giving Marmee a line from one of Alcott’s mother’s letters) made the story more confusing.

To my surprise, I really liked Emma Watson as Meg. Or at least, I liked Meg and was able to forget that she was played by Emma Watson. She was a bit distant, a bit bland, but there was also something compelling about her sedate sweetness. (I loved her purple dress).

Her little subplot with John and the silk was my favorite part of the plot. Just when I was thinking, “This is just like other Little Women adaptations where I can’t connect to the characters”, we get that stunning scene of them discussing the price of the silk and I get teary-eyed over John’s regret that he’s too poor to give his wife what she wants. His compassion warring with his frustration, his love warring with practicality. Exquisite. And the resolution was perfect, with both of them willing to sacrifice for the other’s happiness.

As you can probably guess, I loved James Norton as John Brooke and wish he’d had more to do in the story.

While I kind of wish that we’d seen more of John’s love story with Meg, I also kind of like that we kept the focus on their married life. This movie’s so obsessed with marriage, but this is the only part of the movie where we get to explore what marriage actually looks like, rather than just listening to characters talk about their opinions of it.

Jo was lively and vibrant and I loved how they kept her relationship with Laurie so thoroughly brotherly (until the ending, which I’ll get to later). And I loved the “I’m so lonely” line, but the movie didn’t really do anything with it. There was so much potential for character development, but then she just didn’t develop. It’s the exact opposite of everything that I talked about in my essay about the ‘18 Little Women. The earlier adaptation got a lot wrong, but Jo’s arc was strong and compelling. This movie just assumed that Jo’s already great and didn’t give her an arc at all.

Beth was sweet and adorable and I wish we’d gotten more of her. The scene where she thanks Mr. Laurence for the piano was one of my favorite character moments of the movie. Her barely audible, stammering ‘thank you’ is such Shy Kid Culture.

Florence Pugh played older Amy very well, and highlighting her practicality was an interesting choice. But why didn’t they hire a kid to play younger Amy? She was ridiculous in the role of a twelve-year-old girl. I spent half the movie trying to figure out what young Amy’s voice reminded me of, until I finally realized: It sounds exactly like Mallory from Studio C whenever she plays a little kid in a sketch. I doubt that sketch comedy was what these people were going for in their Oscar-nominated movie.

Amy and Laurie’s romance had very interesting moments to it, and I love how they pushed each other to change. I liked the idea of it (and loved the scenery it took place in). But as two characters who fall in love, I’m not sure that what we saw on-screen was enough to make me really believe in it.

Mr. March was almost a non-character. I really wish that he’d been more present, and I wish they’d highlighted his letter and his role in his daughters’ character development more. (But this movie wasn’t really interested in the virtue-development part of the plot). He was bashed a lot by Aunt March and we didn’t get a chance to see if she was right about him or not.

Aunt March is a delightful old-lady character. I loved a lot about her. I didn’t love how she was a mouthpiece for their most ham-handed ideas about marriage.

Hannah was excellent. Added a nice dose of practical common sense. One of my favorite characters.

Making Mr. Laurence into a Southern gentleman was an interesting choice, especially given how this episode highlighted the Civil War part of the setting. I liked him, especially his relationship with Beth.

I laughed during Laurie’s first appearance, when the camera slowed down and made it into the most cliche romantic-comedy moment possible. Then when he spoke, I understood for the first time in my life why people like Timothee Chalamet. The goodwill toward his character was not to last.

Brotherly Laurie was adorable and likable. One of my favorite scenes was when he first meets the March family, and just stands there silently appreciating their lively, loving, comfortable family atmosphere.

Romantic interest Laurie was a jerk and a creep. The way he kept touching people who didn’t want to be touched, forcing affections on people who didn’t want them. Not cool. And “She calls me ‘my lord’?” Creeeeeepy.

After all the hype over the smock scene, I was expecting a lot more. I was like, “That’s it?” Not that I’m complaining–I was expecting something a lot more overtly sexual and I like that it was restrained.

(The cloak that Amy puts on after the smock scene? Gorgeous. I want it.)

I hate that Jo decides she wants to marry Laurie. After a whole movie spent showing how she’s right that their relationship was brotherly and that Amy’s a better fit for him, suddenly out of nowhere she just wants to attach herself to him because she’s lonely. And then it fails not because Jo has any revelations about herself or life, but because he’s already taken. It was just so bizarre. Especially in light of the ending, but again, I’ll get to it later. (Probably in another post).

Bhaer was a lovely character. I don’t understand why they made him French, but he’s such a steady, sensible, caring presence for Jo, so sweet and intelligent, and the movie completely failed to make use of his character and the arc he could have provided for Jo. 

The Ending

It’s my biggest source of frustration. I’d been fully spoiled for it, knew that it was “ambiguous”, and came fully prepared to do as many mental gymnastics as necessary to allow for the interpretation that Jo and Bhaer’s love story is the “real” ending. I couldn’t do it. There is no way that I can see that chase in the rain as anything other than a “forced” ending to the fictional story in Jo’s book.

When Bhaer visits the March’s, Jo’s not warm. She’s not happy. She’s just stunned and awkward. Frederick saying that he’s taking the job in California is nothing more than the most blatant set-up for a romantic-comedy ending. Even when he leaves, Jo doesn’t seem regretful, he’s just like, “Come and visit me sometime,” and Jo’s only response is, “Yeah, I probably won’t.”

Then, when she turns around, everyone has the most forced, zombie-like smiles on their faces. “You love him,” they all insist, and Jo is just baffled, like she’s in a Twilight Zone episode and struggling to assert her reality against a world that’s warped around her. Then they railroad Jo into a romance plot, setting up everything for the romantic-comedy chase in the rain against all of Jo’s protests that it’s unnecessary. And then the actual declaration of love is so entwined with Jo’s talk to her publisher that I can’t see it as anything other than fiction. The lines are such vague romance stuff that seems unconnected to anything that we’ve seen in Jo and Bhaer’s relationship through the rest of the movie. “I have nothing to give you,” he says, even though there’s never been a mention of him as poor before, no indication that this would have been a problem for their romance.

And then we see the lovely sunlit ending where everyone is happy and living active, fulfilled, love-and-service-filled lives, contrasted with the cold sterility of Jo watching her words get bound into a book. Don’t get me wrong, the binding process was beautiful to watch, but putting it forth as a “better” ending than Jo and Bhaer running a school together was absolutely ridiculous.

At best, I could try to say that the sunlit ending is a happy future brought about by the publication of the book–the royalties fund the school, everyone can be together, and Bhaer works at the school and he and Jo are friends and colleagues even if they don’t get married. But it’s given such an unrealistic gloss, and when the scene fades out and turns into the cover of the book, it seems like the final stamp saying that this is all fiction, and the only real thing about this ending is the book that Jo holds in her hands.

Instead of being surrounded by loving family and friends, she’s alone, holding a book. A book that isn’t even the book she wanted to write, a book that forced her to abandon her artistic principles for the sake of money. And to me, she looks like she’s about to cry (not happy tears), and it’s just such a bleak, sterile ending to a movie with the potential for such vigorous life.

(I do kind of wish I’d seen it without being spoiled for the ending and not knowing Gerwig’s thoughts about the “best” ending for Jo, because I’ll never know if I would have come to the same interpretation of the ending if I’d been coming in completely blind. I kind of feel like I’d have had similar thoughts, but I’ll never know.)

There’s so much more I could say about this ending, but all my thoughts are connected to how it affects the arcs and messages of the rest of the movie, and this post is far too long already. I’ll need at least one significant essay and at least 1-2 other posts to untangle exactly how this ending affects my feelings about this movie.