Art, love and life according to Greta Gerwig

Film review: Little Women

MANILA, Philippines — Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, the seventh adaptation of the 1868 novel of the same title, has a light engrossing feel to it you don’t realize it is based on a 150-year-old work of American author, Louisa May Alcott.

The work is largely autobiographical and thus you can believe that it is based on the story of four sisters of varied inclinations.

Little Women (1868) came to be on the same decade Jose Rizal was born (1861). It is the time of the American civil war, the election of Abraham Lincoln and American women have far less rights like their counterparts all over the world.

As the story is told in the Alcott novel, director Gerwig focuses on a March family in New England with four sisters and an overbearing aunt (Meryl Streep). Meg March, the eldest of the siblings, is played by Emma Watson. Also in the family are an aspiring writer (Saoirse Ronan as Jo March), an aspiring pianist (Eliza Scanlen as Beth March) and an aspiring painter (Florence Pugh as Amy March).

The eyes of the three sisters are on former neighbor Laurie played on many interesting levels by Timothee Chalamet.

Gerwig focused on the three strong women (the author, pianist and painter) and as their story goes, you get to see chapters on love, life and art as lived in this part of Massachusetts in the late 1800.

This is the time of the women’s era when you have to marry someone well-off to get some social status.

 So what else is new?

Witness this conversation between Aunt March (played with brilliance by Streep) and the aspiring author niece:

Aunt March: You mind yourself, dearie. Someday you’ll need me, and you’ll wish you had behaved better.

Jo March: Thank you, Aunt March, for your employment, and your many kindnesses, but I intend to make my own way in the world.

Aunt March: No one makes their own way, not really, least of all a woman. You’ll need to marry well.

Jo March: But you are not married, Aunt March.

Aunt March: No, that’s because I’m rich. And I made sure to keep all of my money, unlike your father.

The wonder of it is that the 1860s social scenario in Little Women feels very much like the present generation. There are strong women and the weak ones and it is the determined ones who overcome the uneven social prejudice.

For the music lovers, Little Women is virtually a setting of live classical favorites from Chopin’s Nocturne No. 5 to Brahms Waltz in A Flat Major and that finale of the German professor playing the Adagio Cantabile (from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata) in one of the last house gatherings. It was a fitting music for the writer coming to terms with her true love.

But in many parts, the film is weighed down by music and indeed you wish for moments of silence in some scenes and dialogues.

True, the musical scorer — Alexandre Desplat — applies music all over the place when silence could have been a better alternative.

To be sure, the actors playing the four sisters have individual moments of brilliance. One reserves extra praise for the sister who played the author (Ronan) and the aspiring painter (Pugh).

Again as Aunt March, Streep made something truly remarkable of her role as the practical aunt. Her sensibility calls to mind an overbearing mother wreaking havoc on her daughter’s wedding.

There is so much one can absorb in Little Women.

The plights of aspiring authors portrayed in Little Women in the late 1800s is still true today. I still hear stories of authors face to face with a publisher’s agent who looks down on works in an attempt to get lower royalties and more lucrative terms for the publishing big boss.

At this time when period films no longer make sense, Little Women is a big exception.

The ensemble acting is highly commendable, the direction full of life and sensitivity and the use of music jibes with the inner core of the story.

In one small, big film, Gerwig portrayed love, art and life in New England in the late 1800s.

Surprisingly, the film resonates very well with present society and its never fading characters.

Little Women is still showing in Robinsons Galleria (Ortigas) as of this writing.