Little Women by Greta Gerwig

[triggercut]

Just watched this tonight with Barbie-loving family members. And before the movie started, since my twin grand-nieces (who are whip-smart, but also 12) were watching, I gave them a little help with the timelines. Which:

@Juan_Raigada

I found the color correction differences between past and present very obvious and a little on the nose, but i worked as a colorist in another life, so its probably professional deformation.

YES.

This movie has two timelines, essentially. One is shot warm and golden and glowy. That’s the past timeline. The dance. Christmas morning, etc. Should you be watching and wondering which timeline you’re in, the color filters are your guide.

The other is shot cold and blue-gray. That’s the present, or rather, REAL timeline.

It may also help to know that Little Women was originally TWO separate volumes, one published in 1868, the other a year later in 1869. The first volume is the happy book. It’s Christmas morning, the girls as adolescents, it’s dances, it’s fun. The second book opens with Meg getting married. It’s very serious, and at times very much of a downer. The second volume, though roughly equal in length to the first volume, is typically extremely truncated in movie adaptations. It’s a whole lot more real and a whole lot less nostalgic and fun.

And Greta Gerwig knows those things.

Because not only does this movie have two timelines, but ONE of those timelines is an unreliable narrator. The first timeline is not really the past. It’s the past that Jo/Louisa May Alcott wrote as the first volume of Little Women. Everything we see in that “past”, golden-light timeline in the movie is kind of real. Real-ish. But also maybe shot through with an unreliable narrator’s sense of nostalgia, too.

And then note: when Jo goes after Bhaer and they marry and have their happy ever after ending…it’s shot in the gold, warm tones of the unreliable timeline. It’s not real. It’s a visualization of the book that Jo/LMA has written to make her publisher happy. I think – but I might be wrong (EDIT: I am, I think; Meg’s wedding/the rejected proposal are all shot in golden filter, and I think both are part of the second volume of the book) – that it is the only part of the second volume of the book shot in golden filters. The final, final scene we see is Jo watching her book come off the printing press and holding it. That is shot in the cold tones of the present, REAL timeline. That’s Jo, the “literary spinster” as Louisa May Alcott in the flesh. No marriage. No kids.

I don’t want to go so far as to say it “fixes” the ending of the book. The end of the book is fine, I guess, though it feels like the end of the book runs abruptly against everything we think we have learned about Jo up until then. This new version contextualizes that ending, and I think ties it up very, very satisfyingly.

[rrmorton]

Yeah, it’s a beautiful ending. I love how fictional Jo gets to have a crowd-pleasing, romantic ending inside the book while the happy ending that real-world Jo gets is the book itself. What’s so mesmerizing (in Little Women as well as Barbie) is the way those two separate worlds start to blur and cross over into one another late in the film.

The moment where that comes across strongest for me is at Beth’s funeral when Jo is left alone at her graveside. Watch how the color change doesn’t happen on the cut, it slowly glows in the trees behind her as we drop to silence and then match-cut to a close-up of Jo in the past. She’s still gazing down at Beth, only now she’s down in the garden, like a resurrected angel.

Little Women - I can't believe childhood is over.

That match-cut just kills me… it almost reads like she’s remembering the future.

This segues into Jo pleading with Meg on her wedding day and sharing her internal conflict about marriage. All of this will come to a head at the end of the film during the argument with Mr. Dashwood over the romantic fate of her heroine. Why choose between love and art when we can have both… and what’s the difference, anyway?

[Enidigm]

That’s great commentary guys, thanks. I picked up the meta commentary, but not really the color grading relationship. I want to go rewatch this again now.

It was (imo), clearly the best Little Women adaptation ever made, and possibly ever will be made. My only criticism of it was that it was so layered and ‘meta’ that i felt the audience really had to be familiar with the material beforehand. I wouldn’t recommend this one to someone who had never read or seen any version of Little Women before. That’s not a knock on it though - sometimes a film can and should expect more from an audience than being a blank slate.

[rrmorton]

I agree, this adaptation would be hard to top!

One of the neat comparisons you can find in Little Women and Barbie is the way it dramatizes the fate of our hero as an unresolved question inside the story itself. There’s a really strong parallel between Jo arguing with Mr. Dashwood over the ending of her book and this moment in Barbie when Sasha asks…

[rrmorton]

Oh, hey, also… after 12 years and two children, wedding bells have rung at City Hall for Greta G and Noah B! Many happy returns!!