Little Women

[peanutfoldover]

Did anyone else watch this gorgeous film today? I absolutely bloody loved it and it had stayed with me all day. I have never read the book I must admit so cannot remark on that, but blimey what a fabulous story.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/little-women-and-the-marmee-problem/amp

Maybe the script was at fault.

I loved it too, especially the scenes in New York, though I agree with the criticisms of Laurie being too lightweight (both literally and figuratively). I didn’t find the flashbacks easy to follow at all, despite knowing the story well.

Laura Dern wasn’t too youthful, to me, but too modern-looking. By the way, on the subject of anachronisms, there’s a great thread on Twitter by Hilary Davidson @FourRedShoes about the costumes and hair.

Loved it - perfect film to watch over the Xmas hols with MiL.

Liked the back and forth timing, set it apart from other adaptations.

Saoirse and Florence were outstanding.
Hats off to Eliza Scanlon for playing the polar opposite of her character in Sharp Objects (any actor who can pull that off can act....).
Emma Watson, poor dear, she was always going to be out-acted.

And good to see Laura Dern out of her type cast ball breaker role (though she was fab in Marriage Story).

Awards ceremonies will be all over The Irishman etc but will ignore LW.

I loved it - it looked fantastic and was great fun.

I agree with others that is the first version I have seen that makes sense of Jo not marrying Laurie - indeed in many ways it handled it better than the book. They obviously had to make the Professor a hottie for Hollywood, but in reality Alcott was gay, so would definately not think marrying a young virile man was a happy ending. Professor Baehr was based on a very good Polish friend of hers - she was obviously giving Jo a marriage of intellectual companionship and not passion, which makes sense when you know Alcott's sexuality.

The actress playing Amy was excellent. Interestingly, as a young reader I loved Jo & Beth and despised Amy, but both my daughters related most to Amy in both the book and the film. They were not impressed by virtuous self sacrifice and liked Amy's rebelliousness that is disapproved of as shallow in the books.

I went with DD(13) tonight and there were less than 10 of us in the cinema. We loved it although she struggled with the 2 timescales to begin with.

Here they changed the ending. Which I dn,t like the idea of there doesn,t seem to be any need other then the producers own stance on feminism. 9Going by her interview on TV.)

I saw it at the weekend with a group of friends. On the whole we all liked it but we all.felt that Amy didn't look right. The actress playing her was fab but she wasnt how .I've always imagined Amy to look.

One of our group hadn't read the book and couldn't understand why Laurie went from loving Jo to loving Amy.

I loved the costumes and the cinematography.

Louisa May Alcott did not a marry navigator. This does not mean she was gay. She may well have been but this isn't a matter of fact!

june I am not sure you should pass comment on a film you haven't seen! But when you say change the ending you'd need to see the film. It doesn't change the ending as such, but discusses the ending. I am not sure why a female film maker shouldn't express views on feminism, given what a male centred world the film industry is! (or any filmmaker, for that matter).
Compared to recent TV adaptations of ,say , A Christmas Carol, this was a remarkably loyal, reverent and devout adaptation of the original material. Louisa May Alcott's life was , in many ways, more remarkable than the rather wishy washy semi autobiographical text she produced.

Given the producer/ director’s overlooking and casting of Marmee I’m not sure the film had much of a feminist message. Also not sure it has deserved the cries for rewards. It was ok but not amazing.

Love that New Yorker article. Thanks for sharing it.

Wh0leCl0ves that is a very interesting article, and explains my frustration with the film.

Like TheTigersBride I found the film boring, and despite the clunky speeches of Jo, thoroughly unsatisfactory as the feminist interpretation I was expecting.

It was saccharine sweet, frock-heavy, and politically disingenuous because the raging beating heart of the book, the mother’s frustration and anger, is too well hidden under those very frocks.

She even delivered those lines as a soppy platitude, rather than finally letting her daughter see the pressure cooker if her life.

How dare that man come back and call them Little Women? And we were all supposed to melt.

I was bored and frustrated throughout the film.

Blouse you summed up exactly how I feel about it.

And don’t get me started on the racial politics. The unnamed black woman gets one line that is supposed to be the conscience of post slavery, and a carefully staged scene in which Jo is very polite to a black ticket inspector. At that exact time, the time span of Little Women, Harriet Tubman was risking her life.

I’m torn. I liked many things - I thought the casting of the sisters was good - Florence Pugh was absolutely outstanding as Amy, if far too old to play her at 12. I really liked James Norton as John Brooke - it made it so easy to see why she’d fallen in love with him. I liked the hot take on Prof. Bhaer, but I don’t feel like their relationship in NYC was established enough for their romantic ending to be meaningful.

I didn’t think the time jumps worked and found them really distracting. Also Little Women is a coming of age story, so it makes absolute sense for it to be linear because that’s the whole point - it’s the story of linear development of 4 girls into women. I really didn’t like TC as Laurie. He seemed far, far too young and devoid of the charm that makes the Marches take him in in the first place. I also, and this is going to sound controversial, didn’t like Meryl Streep as Aunt March - she lacked the wit and cantankerousness that part needed and just seemed a bit soulless and spiteful. Also didn’t like Mr March - he’s barely in it so needs to have a sense of warmth and gravitas to make it work, and he just seemed a bit patronising and dull. FP was far too old to be Amy at 11/12, and ES far too healthy as Beth - you never really believed she was dying because she looked more like she’d just done a Zumba class than had a terminal illness.

Loved it!

One of our group hadn't read the book and couldn't understand why Laurie went from loving Jo to loving Amy.

I've read the book and never really understood that! I really dislike Amy's character.

@Piggywaspushed I think it is generally accepted that Alcott was gay - considering she is on record as saying:

"I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body. … because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

Being gay isn't some modern phenomenon.

That makes sense Navigator. I did wonder that during Jo’s rebuttal of Laurie, not because she said ‘no’ to him but her assertion that she would never marry.

Which made the ultimate ‘happy ending’ even more frustrating. She did sell out: not because she went for the high-sales popular ending, but because of a deeper denial of her /Jo’s nature.

The film interpretation was at least interesting in the suggestion of the happy ending in marriage sell out.

The publisher said at the beginning, heroines must end up dead or married. Was it P Highsmith who said of Carol that she wanted to write a novel about a Lesbian heroine who did not end up dead?

Nor did I say it was navigator!

But you can't out someone after their own lifetime if they were not out themselves...

If you do a simple google you will find it is not 'generally accepted'. But, anyway, don't want an argument. I do, however, feel that we shouldn't say a woman would only reject marriage if she were gay.

Especially since in the first half of her sentence she appears to suggest other reasons why a woman might be in love with another woman... which I am sure the feminist boards would have a field day with!

She was from a very devout background. Transcendentalists, I believe. A fascinating woman.

blouse, to be fair, I think (without rewriting the whole of LW and GW) that was Gerwig's nod to the Alcott family's views on race. they were heavily involved in the fight against slavery and concealed at least on runaway in their house during LM's childhood : I suspect Gerwig wanted to nod to that?

But you are right, in the film, it appeared rather token.

I don't get what is wrong with the casting of Marmee. Laura Dern is the right age and is no Hollywood starlet (now, Nicole Kidman would have been wrong!). She also is quite 'natural' , not known for glamour, and was not wearing (visibly) any make up.

For context:
n 1847, she and her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, when they housed a fugitive slave for one week and had discussions with Frederick Douglass.] Alcott read and admired the "Declaration of Sentiments", published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, advocating for women's suffrage and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election.[

She looked too Hollywood( her hair,build, make up although not her fault), no depth( although could have been scripts fault), really underacted the stress somebody with a husband at war, supposedly poor and an ill/ dead daughter was feeling and her repressed anger.

'poor' was all relative in those days! Many genteel families were regarded as 'poor' when really rather affluent.

I agree her part is underwhelming but I don't agree she was too attractive for the role.

I actually thought the scene at that table when Beth actually had died was very affecting. Marmee held the family together so had to show propriety and repress her anxieties and fears.