*Spoilers for Little Women ahead* so if you haven’t seen it — go immediately!
Do you know that overwhelming feeling of nostalgia you get when you listen to Lorde’s Pure Heroine album? Well, Little Women in theaters is basically just like listening to a 2-hour long version of Ribs by Lorde. Same coming-of-age energy.
At the beginning of the film, the four March sisters are introduced, each living their own separate lives after leaving home. We see Jo March selling her stories in New York to help hold her family together financially and then we are introduced to Amy in Paris studying art, striving to become the best painter in the world. Meg is also in her married life, which she loves equally as much as her two children and husband John while Beth is living her quiet life at home playing her piano, something which she has always loved to do.
The first thing I noticed while watching the movie is how the four March sisters are written with so much complexity and intricacy and how that comes alive on screen. Also, it is so important films represent women as whole people — not just a side note or a love interest. This is something Little Women does exceptionally well too.
Greta Gerwig has a gift that is being able to write and direct her films to display true intimacy and closeness. She displays in her work, with an extreme attention to detail in every scene, just how much love is within the March family. You discover more and more hidden moments with every watch of this movie because of all the details that Greta adds. One of my favorite small details that Greta adds was in the Megs wedding scene, where there is a small moment when both of Laurie’s hands are in his pockets and Jo puts her hands with his because she wants to be close to him.
A common argument in the book Little Women is centered around Jo and Laurie not ending up together. Greta did a beautiful job of showing the way in which Laurie and Jo were soulmates, but only platonically and how those relationships between men and women don’t have to be romantic, but can be extremely fulfilling. There have been so many films about women that show exclusively romantic love, which is wonderful, but Greta Gerwig has always had a way of showing how powerful other types of love are. The quote written by Greta and added to the movie is said by Jo in one of the pinnacle scenes, “ Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it!” This quote is even shown in the trailers for the movie and it perfectly encapsulates the way women’s stories have been shoved into one, very small box.
Greta Gerwig changes up the final moments as well and leaves us with two possible endings: It’s almost like you get to choose which ending you want to be real. In the end, though, Jo creates a book that carries her her entire youth and this innocent love for her friends and her family throughout the pages. The young Jo she writes in that book doesn’t know pain or loss yet, as she is still living in this perfect bubble of happiness with her sisters. And if that wasn’t enough to send you over the edge good old Greta Gerwig decides to break your heart a little bit more with a flashback of the girls as children. All four of them so young in their attic where they would play, with light shining over them through a window.
This movie has the potential to send you into a great emotional crisis, in the best way possible! Every time you watch it a new hidden moment will jump out to you and make you fall in love with this movie even more than before. Everyone say thank you Greta Gerwig.