LITTLE WOMEN: Blu-ray (Columbia, 2019) Sony Home Entertainment

Imposing her own bespoke strain of feminism, Greta Gerwig has taken one of the most beloved literary classics of all time, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (2019) and mashed it into cinematic gumbo, typically teeming with this director’s self-righteous importance as a martyr and a mouthpiece for the ‘Me Too’ movement. For over a century, Little Women has endured as a subtle critique of the enterprising March sisters who, by virtue of their forthrightness, found ways of aspiring to make it in a man’s world. But even the most ambitiously free-willed of these, Josephine, was never above recognition that to be truly independent she had to at least play from within the patriarchal society rather than without. Gerwig’s take here is that a woman can do anything/be anything she wants, and, damn anyone who gets in the way of that aspiration. Okay, I’ll bite. A woman of today, can do and be anything she wants. Bravo! But a woman at the dawn of the 20th century, when she had yet to be considered as anything more or better than 'decorous' and ‘property’? Please! The latest cinematic retread of Little Women is too progressive for its own good. Where prior actresses from Katharine Hepburn, to June Allyson to Winona Ryder, endeavoring to play Jo March, all approached the part from the perspective and understanding they were playing a woman – forthright, yes, but never as naïve to misrepresent her own importance in the world - Saoirse Ronan, who assumes the mantel of quality in Gerwig's reincarnation, attacks Josephine March with tear-stained, embittered resolve, as though to have been stubbornly bound and brainwashed by the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst and Margaret Sanger.

Every movie version that has gone before Gerwig’s – and there have been many between 1917 and 1994 – has aimed to exercise its own dramatic bent and novelty on the material, a feat most awkwardly achieved herein precisely because too much has been applied. Little Women is not a story of teenage and twenty-something can-do suffragettes on the march, though Ronan’s Jo is decidedly ready to storm her own private citadel, pitchfork angrily in hand. And further to, Gerwig’s screenplay makes such points at the expense of compromising not only the story’s innate entertainment value but also its historically soundness as a time capsule. If not for the fact most everyone on the planet has either read the novel or seen at least one of the many screen incarnations somewhere along the way, then Gerwig’s retelling only serves to obfuscate, confuse and muddy both the intent and trajectory of Alcott’s masterpiece. The other grave miscalculation on Gerwig’s part is her inability to establish the March siblings as meaningful offspring with a genuine sisterly bond, unbreakable, even in trying times and with the passage of time, circumstance or any of the various mis-perceived roadblocks Gerwig believes men deliberately - and rather disruptively - create for women, simply by existing.

Saoirse Ronan, the ostensible heroine of this piece, goes through the motions and rigors of adoring her family. She is devoted to her aspiring authorship and, at least in youth, makes the most of her interaction with her three sisters, Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). She finds a modicum of amusement as kindred comfort in next-door neighbor, Theodore ‘Laurie’ Lawrence (a rather prepubescent and ineffectual, Timothée Chalamet who whimpers more than he emotes), and is most readily aligned in her hopeful promise for the future with her mother, Marmee (Laura Dern), while persistently challenging her starchy Aunt (Meryl Streep). As before, maturing into adulthood takes some effort. There is more interaction here between Jo and newspaper publisher, Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Lett) who represents everything that is wrong and restricting about the patriarchy, and, with the reserved, and herein thoroughly emasculated suitor, Professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), who barely exists in this version, except to tie up one loose end. The grave difficulty Gerwig has with Little Women is that it has all been done before. She would like to explore another story entirely, while riffing off the vapors of its pre-sold title, and, more oft than not, is denied exploring her most exotic liberation by Alcott’s genteel prose, which has always afforded us more understanding and compassion from both sides of the equation, much later in history resumed as ‘the battle of the sexes’. In the novel, as in the many movies before this one, the point to be made was that Jo, defiant and proud, eventually comes into her own while recognizing her misgivings about falling in love are largely unwarranted, assuming she has found the proper squire to fire her heart. But the relationship between Jo and Prof. Bhaer herein just seems needlessly strained, while the rest of Jo’s alliances teeter on the mechanical and thought-numbing flat and undernourished. Gerwig gives us a thumbnail sketch of who and what these characters are, but never bothers to go beyond the Cole’s Notes version.

I absolutely detest the way Gerwig throws her audience into a scene of conflict to kick-start this movie, using the James Bond-ish pre-title mentality to distinctly color our perceptions of Bhaer’s influence on the love-fated Jo. We are smack in the middle of a lover’s quarrel; Bhaer, re-cast as the oppressive villain, whom we will not see again until the end of the picture – token testosterone - and therefore defenseless to reassert his motivations. The lover’s squabble is familiar to anyone who has either read Alcott’s book or seen at least the more competently – and conventionally – re-made 94’ version, directed by Gillian Armstrong; Bhaer, chastising Jo for her lurid stories’ shameless lack of sincerity. A pity Gerwig cannot see she is proving the point to Bhaer’s snap critique, that it should apply rather uncannily to her own picture-making prowess herein…or lack thereof.  And unlike the book or the earlier film versions, we never get to see how or why Jo gradually comes to respect Bhaer’s valid critiques or influence on her writing style. As though to prove another point – that she is not diminished by the other figures who populated Alcott’s novel, Gerwig makes short shrift of Jo’s sisterly bonds as well. In lieu of any genuine emoting, there is a lot of cattiness between these girls, some physical roughhousing, and even more disingenuous sibling rivalry. Alas, removed from the tender moments that bookended these high-spirited antics, the March sisters come across as militant and artificial.  Where is the genuine love between such sisters - "sisters...there were never such devoted sisters..." But, I digress.

The other rather idiotic deviation made by Gerwig derives from the central ‘romance’ between Jo and Laurie – dealt succinctly in both the novel and virtually every movie version gone before this one, but belabored to the point of abject tedium by Gerwig herein, and, at the expense of developing the other, more meaningful moments that used to make up this ensemble storytelling. But no – Gerwig’s entire middle act is devoted to Jo’s needless consternation. Having rejected Laurie’s ardor and refused his proposal of marriage, she suddenly retreats into a woeful contemplation, a consult with mama, and then a letter-writing campaign to win him back, unaware his affections have already shifted to her sister, Amy. More angst. More regrets. More nonsensical hurt feelings. For a picture, otherwise rather slavishly devoted to that more radical strain of embittered post-second-wave feminism, to do more than insist that no woman of the any age ‘needs’ a man for anything, our Jo spends an inordinate amount of time lamenting the fact she cast the only one who seemingly wants anything to do with her, right into the arms of her more superficially motivated sister.  Rather pointlessly, this prolonged lamentation deprives the Jo/Bhaer romance of its fundamental core values, even to the point of suggesting Laurie, at least for Jo, is truly the one that got away.

As badly evolved is Amy’s attraction to Laurie who, by the time of their reunion in France, has slipped in her estimation as something of a loose-moral debaucher, more interested in strong drink and carousing than his profession. In her youth, Amy’s undiluted affections for Laurie manifested themselves in her desire to sketch him. While, her acute case of puppy love merits consideration, Amy’s genuine lack of adult motivation to rekindle that daydream anew with a man whose actions as an adult have clearly let her down, are never fully brought into focus. Arguably, the arc of development in Amy’s character has always been of paramount interest. When first introduced, she is a green girl of thirteen, whose prepubescent fancies are gradually matured into an inspired woman of twenty. Florence Pugh does an amiable job of handling the adult Amy, but miserably fails to conjure, either in mind or spirit, the little girl. And Gerwig further exacerbates the disparity in age between Pugh and the character she is playing in one particular scene, where Amy is goaded by classmates to sketch a caricature of their stern instructor, surrounding Pugh (who is actually 24 – and looks it) with real children, whom we are meant to infer are the same age as her.  Rather laughably, Pugh instead appears as though the mentally-stunted pupil, repeatedly held back in her studies, long enough to be considered the real runt of the group.

With all of its misfires, this version of Little Women does have a few bright spots to recommend it; chiefly, Yorick La Saux’s wonderful cinematography, which captures a more free-flowing essence of the period in both earthy and pastel hues. Alexandre Desplat’s score lacks the memorable themes of Thomas Newman’s efforts for the 1994 movie, but manages to bottle the essential ingredients of this vintage at hand. No nauseating pop-rap-infused nonsense a la the bastardized versions of Marie Antoinette (2006) or The Great Gatsby (2013) here. Desplat’s compositions, interpolated with genuine classical music, augments Little Women’s visuals, and, when Gerwig’s efforts frequently fail to elicit an emotional response, at least gingerly coaxes the art of sentiment from the peripheries of the screen.  The climax of Little Women is fittingly evolved, more so by Desplat’s orchestrations than Gerwig’s mangled use of the flashback. In Gerwig’s re-envisioning, she finds it necessary to interrupt Jo’s pursuit of Bhaer, to prevent him from walking out of her life forever, with a reflection of the moment when Jo, having submitted her manuscript for ‘Little Women’ to the publisher for consideration, is informed by her editor that the heroine must either find happiness in the arms of a man or tragically die alone; a concept insulting to Jo’s more forthright sensibilities regarding a woman’s options in life. For a few brief seconds, Gerwig leaves the audience dangling with the flawed suggestion Jo may indeed wind up with option two, only to reluctantly revert to the book’s ‘happily ever after’ dénouement; Jo, locked in Bhaer’s grateful embrace at the train depot as luminescent tracks of gentle rain begins to fall. 

To be clear, no movie – even a remake as needless as this one – ought to be judged on the merits of the versions gone before it: good, bad or indifferent. And while parallels have been made between Gerwig’s re-imagining and Gillian Armstrong’s superior 1994 version, the reality of Gerwig’s ambitious take, meant to ‘improve’ upon such time-honored and hallowed material, has, on its own merits, miserably stumbled to reveal the pitfalls and passions of its director – driving forces to have successfully eclipsed the virtues, while exaggerating the vices in this source material. Playing fast and loose with the narrative timeline is a gimmick at best, and one not altogether successfully carried off. The lack of character development and emotional insincerity from these little women, further marred by Gerwig’s pursuit of a more prominently situated feminist mantra to be extolled within a story, unaccustomed to its precepts and prejudices, leaves this re-imagining in a queer disconnect, both from Alcott’s novel and the more truthful reality in which the story is set. I would have had more respect for Gerwig’s movie, had she chosen the ultimate daring – to set her Little Women in a truly contemporary milieu and then unleash all her passionate wallowing for true female independence, come what may. Ensconced within Alcott’s time, the venture instead is grotesquely out of sorts and distinctly out of place.

The charm of Alcott’s warm-hearted prose has been usurped. Lest we forget, Alcott’s book also contained several distinct moments to startle her readership, particularly as she and Marmee discuss her future; Jo, lamenting her hot temper and Marmee, clearly recognizing the parallel of her entrenched determination, compared to her own, since mellowed, or perhaps, withered with time. “You remind me of myself,” Dern’s Marmee quietly tells her daughter. “But you’re never angry,” Jo suggests, to which Marmee replies, “I’m angry nearly every day of my life.” What shock waves such an exchange must have sent through the hearts and minds of readers of Alcott’s novel then. But Gerwig’s re-imagining here serves not as a quiet reminder of a woman’s shuttered indignation in polite society, but a cause célèbre for the rousing, warrior-like stance Gerwig herself has taken in an embittered post-Harvey Weinstein era, unbalanced by putting the focus of the story on women’s rights.  Wrong!  To have re-imagined Little Women for the movies is, I suppose inevitable. After all, did we really need another movie of Little Women? But Gerwig’s own moral indignation here has muddled and politicized the story's clarity and completely deprived it of any innate entertainment value it possessed. Gerwig's quartet of sisters repeatedly gets sacrificed at the expense of proving the director's points. What is absent - the vulnerable moments, internalized and intimate, that made the March girls so perennially appealing and alive to us in the first place.  Instead, we are presented with a singular, conflicted crusader  – Ronan’s Jo, a tower built upon a rather faulty premise, atop which Alcott’s once brightly lit beacon of promise for the future of women has now dimly flickered with an apology for not only the way things used to be, but for things yet to come. 

In a rather awkward decision on Sony’s part, they have elected to release Little Women on digital first, today – March 10, but delayed the official Blu-ray release until April 7. They have also overlooked a native 4K release in favor of a Blu-ray only. Colors are ripe and shadow detail is superb. Contrast is excellent. Details are exquisitely realized with naturally reoccurring grain. Several shots appear to have been rendered via green-screen, the strangely out-of-focus backgrounds adopting a cut and paste quality with the actors set before them. The audio is DTS 5.1 audio, minus the Atmos theatrical sound mix. Dialogue is crystal clear. Ambient sounds at the beach, or the noise of hustling/bustling on the streets of New York is recreated with remarkable subtlety, while Alexander Desplat’s score surges forward with dramatic efficiency. Extras are of your basic ‘garden variety’ filler, with only snippets and sound bites that never entirely satisfy. These include several featurettes, including A New Generation of Little Women, Making a Modern Classic, a puff piece on Gerwig’s self-professed importance as a woman writer/director, hair and make-up tests, and two very brief junkets made while the movie was in production to promote it theatrically. Ho-hum. Bottom line: Gerwig's Little Women is decidedly a picture of its generation, instead of the exaltation of a timeless tale made even more immortal on celluloid. For that, we return to Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation. Despite its lengthier run time, Gerwig is just skipping through the book’s highlights, jumbling everything about to make it appear more cleverly assembled and introspective. Appearances, alas, can be quite deceiving. This Little Women lacks substance and charm, and this inevitably prevents it from transcending politically motivated move-lore of the moment, to truly be considered a masterwork for generations. The novel is timeless. This movie is merely stuck in a time-warp of today and destined to be considered a relic from days gone by, in years yet to come.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5

EXTRAS

2