It's rural New England during the Civil War time, and a mother is trying to raise four teen daughters while a father does the fighting. What could possibly go wrong? For starters, the girls might be girls and start falling in love here and there. But that's not the worst part: some of them might start having ideas about their lives!
A jerky timeline and a speedy chitchat might create an early prejudice towards this film, making it look like yet another soppy costume drama. However, as the story unfolds and the pieces start coming together, you realize that Greta Gerwig took on this adaptation for a reason. This may not be the first Victorian age coming of age story, nor even the first one with a feminist undertone. But boy, can it touch, even if you're a middle-aged man in 2020!
Considering that this is not the first work of Gerwig/Ronan duo, I can't help but compare Little Women with Lady Bird. The environments of both stories could not be more different, but the whole notion of an adolescent woman looking for her purpose in life is still there. And if the former story is as realistic for its era as the latter, then there's one equally funny and sad conclusion to be made: the century and a half that passed since those times have turned us into big babies, overprovided and whining and clueless.
Having four Greek muses for daughters is already impossible to imagine in our time, when children have so much to consume in terms of things and entertainment that they hardly feel compelled to evolve themselves. But the beauty of Little Women is that it doesn't try to sell you morals or preach at you. No, the characters are still clumsy and flawed, they make mistakes and break things. But it's the reactions of the daughters and their mother to those sisterly conflicts that makes it painfully obvious that, as the society evolves and progresses, our personal maturity degrades.
All the analysis aside, this movie is simply a pure joy to watch. Not in the least thanks for the male part of the cast. Timothée Chalamet was forgettable in Lady Bird and annoyingly decadent in Call Me by Your Name, but here he is essential. By not drawing attention to himself but instead being the contrasting counterpart for Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh who steal the spotlight in turns. Although the male characters here work mostly as a backdrop for a largely pro-femme narrative, it never allows a single hint at misandry, instead reinforcing the idea that a woman's pursuit of meaningfulness in life is not opposed to having warm and harmonious interaction with men, something that radical feminists often tend to renounce these days.
All these little but important qualities combined with an artfully ambiguous ending make Little Women a beautiful and truly inspiring story. Which doesn't just reiterate the obvious fact that both parenting and growing up is hard, but actually gives us hope that we can be better at both.
A jerky timeline and a speedy chitchat might create an early prejudice towards this film, making it look like yet another soppy costume drama. However, as the story unfolds and the pieces start coming together, you realize that Greta Gerwig took on this adaptation for a reason. This may not be the first Victorian age coming of age story, nor even the first one with a feminist undertone. But boy, can it touch, even if you're a middle-aged man in 2020!
Considering that this is not the first work of Gerwig/Ronan duo, I can't help but compare Little Women with Lady Bird. The environments of both stories could not be more different, but the whole notion of an adolescent woman looking for her purpose in life is still there. And if the former story is as realistic for its era as the latter, then there's one equally funny and sad conclusion to be made: the century and a half that passed since those times have turned us into big babies, overprovided and whining and clueless.
Having four Greek muses for daughters is already impossible to imagine in our time, when children have so much to consume in terms of things and entertainment that they hardly feel compelled to evolve themselves. But the beauty of Little Women is that it doesn't try to sell you morals or preach at you. No, the characters are still clumsy and flawed, they make mistakes and break things. But it's the reactions of the daughters and their mother to those sisterly conflicts that makes it painfully obvious that, as the society evolves and progresses, our personal maturity degrades.
All the analysis aside, this movie is simply a pure joy to watch. Not in the least thanks for the male part of the cast. Timothée Chalamet was forgettable in Lady Bird and annoyingly decadent in Call Me by Your Name, but here he is essential. By not drawing attention to himself but instead being the contrasting counterpart for Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh who steal the spotlight in turns. Although the male characters here work mostly as a backdrop for a largely pro-femme narrative, it never allows a single hint at misandry, instead reinforcing the idea that a woman's pursuit of meaningfulness in life is not opposed to having warm and harmonious interaction with men, something that radical feminists often tend to renounce these days.
All these little but important qualities combined with an artfully ambiguous ending make Little Women a beautiful and truly inspiring story. Which doesn't just reiterate the obvious fact that both parenting and growing up is hard, but actually gives us hope that we can be better at both.