It’s one of the fundamentals of screenwriting that structure
is a vessel for content; the shape of the vessel dictates the structure of the
content and therefore how it is received by the audience. If you can change the
vessel you change the movie which I think goes some way to explaining the
success of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.
Don’t get me wrong, this film is superb, and it deserves
almost all of the praise that has been heaped on it. However, it is not really
the radical reinvention, nor the new, bold post-feminist statement that some
are seeing. In fact, apart from one egregious alteration in the ending, Gerwig has
done very little to change what is already there in Louisa May Allcott’s
classic novel except add some autobiographical details of the author’s life for
context.
What she has done is change the structure and the
results are remarkable; this 19th century memoir feels like it was
written yesterday.
The story of the four March sisters is timeless. While
their father is off fighting for the Union in the Civil War the March girls
keep the home fires burning; dependent on the kindness of strangers which they
often reciprocate like the good-hearted souls they are.
Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is the eldest and an aspiring
writer; it is her version of the March lives that we are watching. Meg (Emma
Watson) is quiet and aspires to teach while Amy (Florence Pugh) is the
ambitious and headstrong one who feels destined for better things in the shape
of a rich husband. The youngest, Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and their mother, Marmee
(Laura Dern) are the axes around which the other three pivot.
By my reckoning this is the eighth screen version of
this story but it is the first to be told in a non-linear way. Here we meet the
Marches first as young women as opposed to the young girls of the more conventional
chronological narrative. The story bounces back and forward between past and
present with some interesting results.
We know very quickly that Jo will not marry Laurie
(Timothee Chalamet) which is the spine of the more conventional telling, and
that makes this version so much more dynamic. It liberates Laurie, for example,
although I still feel he is underused and feels more like a plot device than a
character.
The new structure also hits a major speed bump
when the two dramatic high points of the story occur immediately after each other
which makes for an emotional gut punch but, for me, slightly unbalances the story.
Nonetheless Gerwig’s ear for dialogue and her gift
for characterisation, working from some great source material, makes for a film
that fairly soars at times. The performances are remarkable – it seems unfair
to single anyone out, but Ronan, Pugh and Dern do some of their best work here.
And there is impressive support from the likes of Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper
and Tracy Letts.
The weak spot for me again is Chalamet as Laurie.
He is written as a louche Rimbaud/Verlaine type of figure and there is a sense
that he just doesn’t belong in 19th century New England. It gives
Chalamet lots of opportunities to be idle and decadent, which he does well
enough, but that’s not Laurie.
Nonetheless, even if it doesn’t re-invent the wheel,
this is a bold and ambitious film which at its best absolutely soars and may
come to be seen as the definitive screen Alcott.
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