LITTLE WOMEN is the Movie About Writing I Needed When I Was Young

Rating: 📕📕📕📕📕📕📕

When I was in high school, I thought I was going to be a novelist. With Stephen King’s On Writing tucked under my arm, my love of nearly every kind of book, and my tons of short stories and half-started ideas in my notebooks, I was determined to spend my life writing stories. It’s surprising then (most of all, to me) that my first encounter with Jo March, a character who’s no doubt inspired generations of women who want to be writers, was in Greta Gerwig’s latest movie, Little Women. I immediately fell in love with her.

From the jump, I knew I would be on Jo’s side, and I mean how can you not when the radiant Saoirse Ronan is playing her? But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. In case you, like me before watching this movie, aren’t familiar with the plot of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved book, allow me to explain. The story follows the four March sisters from a childhood during the Civil War into young adulthood -- with all of the complications of that transition manifesting for each of the sisters in their own way. There’s Jo, of course, who wants nothing more than to be a serious, famous author, and Amy March (Florence Pugh, excellent) who wants to be the best artist in the world, Meg (Emma Watson, lovely as always), who has a talent for the stage but finds herself falling in love, and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) who is a gifted musician. Looking after the four sisters is their mother, known by all as Marmee (played with depth and warmth by my queen and yours, Laura Dern). 

The girls and Marmee move through life with one rule seemingly in mind: helping others as much as they can. This includes acts of kindness such as giving up their Christmas breakfast to a family in need. Next door to the girls sits the Laurence house, where Theodore “Laurie” Laurence (Timothée Chalamet, charming and infuriating at turns), his tutor John Brooke (James Norton) and his grandfather (Chris Cooper) live. The two families' lives become entangled, with Laurie becoming fast friends with all the girls, but especially Jo. Switching between timelines (one from childhood and another with the girls as young adults), the story unfolds beautifully, showcasing the bond between the girls and the complications that happen when adulthood creeps into the idyllic landscape of childhood. To say much more about the plot would spoil things (I understand this is a spoiler warning for a novel that is well over 100 years old, but hey, why ruin the magic?), but trust me when I say that it is a warm, effervescent, and near-magical experience. It’s a feat that Gerwig has managed to take a story so well-loved and make it feel lived in and familiar for someone completely unfamiliar with the source material (or other adaptations). Little Women has the rare quality of feeling like a movie I’ve spent my whole life watching, even if it’s brand new.

However, the thing that stayed with me the most, that moved me the most, perhaps, was how empathetic and understanding the film is about the plight of being a young woman. Maybe more specifically, because it captured a very familiar feeling I had when I was an intrepid writer in high school: the feverish process and urge to create something, anything, to secure my place in the world. Jo wants the world to recognize her, to cement her place in something bigger than herself, and she wants to be loved. Her raw determination, strength, and power is something that my high school self would have loved to see, and that plenty of high school girls now will see and (hopefully) carry with them into their own work. Hell, I still hope I’m half as brave and smart as Jo during her conversations with her editor. 

All of this is to say thank you, Greta Gerwig, for this comforting gift of a film. Thank you for reminding us to assign importance to the seemingly smaller things in life, and that even when we’re feeling vulnerable, it’s okay to dive into our talents. Little Women is an excellent example of what an adaptation can be like when a director takes their appreciation and affection for the source material and shines a deeper, closer light on it.