Movie Review: Little Women

I had heard about the remake of Little Women for quite some time, but I had not gotten around to seeing it. It was made in 2019 and was directed by Greta Gerwig. I love some of Gerwig’s other films such as Lady Bird and Frances Ha. I found both of these films quite relatable because Lady Bird (played by Saoirse Ronan) is a fierce independent teenager who wants to leave her hometown of Sacramento, California. She wants to be taken seriously, and she has dreams of going to college on the East Coast, but her family cannot afford the tuition. She wants to have sex but her mother doesn’t want her to grow up too quickly. I cannot relate to the sex part but I definitely remember wanting to get out of my hometown when I was in my senior year of high school, so I ended up applying to colleges that were far away from my hometown. However, I got really homesick during my first year because I had this idea about college being this time to just be independent, and it was but it was challenging because it was a new environment and I was away from my family. I also kind of related to Frances, because even though I didn’t have a situation where I was living in New York City and struggling to pay rent (which is what Frances is struggling to do) I really am struggling to figure out my purpose in life. Frances is figuring out her purpose in life and it’s tough, but along the way she learns so much about herself.

I haven’t read Little Women before to be honest. I read many other books in high school but Little Women wasn’t one of the books on the curriculum. I do know it’s a must-read classic though, and so many people I know have read the book, so I found a copy at my local library. I was able to follow the movie though pretty well. I really related to Jo March, who is one of the sisters in the movie, because she is independent, opinionated and wants to be a writer. While her sisters are strong and independent like her, they also want to get married and have families, but Jo doesn’t really want to get married or have a family yet. She wants to focus on her writing career, but she struggles to feel as if her writing is good enough. There is one scene where she is with her friend, Friedrich, and he reads a draft for a novel she is writing and tells her that he doesn’t like her writing and doesn’t think it will sell. She ends their friendship because of what he said and from there on, she struggles to have confidence in her writing. Even when people tell her she is a good writer, she struggles to think so. There is one powerful scene where Jo and her sister, Beth, are sitting at the beach and Beth asks Jo about her writing. Jo dismisses it and says she isn’t working on anything and doesn’t want to write because she doesn’t think anyone will care. Beth tells her to write a story for her, and when Beth passes away, Jo is inspired to take up her writing again. I thought it was beautiful when she takes one of her journals and props it up on her desk and starts writing all of these pages for her novel. She stays up until the wee hours working on this novel and she finally submits it to a publisher. The publisher is reluctant at first when he reads about the character in the book because he thinks readers aren’t going to like that the character defies a lot of the societal expectations such as getting married and falling in love, and Jo also has to negotiate the royalties and how much of a cut she will receive for publishing the book.

It kind of reminds me of Begin Again, because Gretta produces her first album, but she doesn’t know much about how the music industry works. She works on the album with Dan, who is a record executive struggling in his career, and they visit the record label he works for, and Dan’s business partner Saul explains to her about record sales and how much musicians make from selling the records after they are distributed. Even though she makes negotiations with Saul about getting a share of the sales and getting Dan his job back, the reality is that the label wouldn’t give her a lot of freedom that she has being an independent artist. She saw how Dave, her ex-boyfriend, became commercially successful but he went on tour a lot and got lonely and success changed him, especially when he reveals to Gretta that he had an affair with his production assistant, Mim, while away for business. Instead of releasing the album, Gretta decides to distribute it online for $1, and it ends up being a huge hit with people.

After watching Jo spend a lot of time working on her writing, I feel encouraged to keep writing. I have struggled with writer’s block, perfectionism, feeling like my writing isn’t good enough unless it is in a certain voice or style, but seeing Jo triumph in her struggle to follow her own path in life encouraged me a lot. This movie showed me that it’s important to follow your own path and your own dreams, whatever happens or how much people around you change. Meg later on in life tells Jo she is getting married and wants to start a family, and Jo breaks down and cries because she thought Meg wanted to be a successful actress, so she tries to convince Meg that she doesn’t have to marry and can instead become the successful actress she always wanted to be. But Meg tells her that even though their dreams are different from each other, it doesn’t mean her dreams of starting a family and getting married are less important. I am at this stage in my life where I am figuring things out, like whether to get married, have kids, go to graduate school, live on my own, when to retire, what kind of career I should have. And I’ve learned you are going to hear a lot of different opinions about what you should do. Some people will support your career path, like Jo’s sisters and mom supported her writing ambitions. And others won’t. But seeing Jo navigate those ups and downs while remaining true to herself inspired me a lot. I realized I can’t be happy for others if I’m not happy for myself. I would see on social media photos of my friends’ weddings, their newborn babies and toddlers, their graduate school acceptance posts, and I would think, “I’m happy for you” but then I would wonder “Am I behind?” I would go to friends’ baby showers and weddings and at first I was happy with my dreams of playing at Carnegie Hall and moving to New York City, but a couple of years ago I started to feel lonely and wondered whether I should do these things, like getting married and having children, so that I wouldn’t feel far behind in life. I understand now that plenty of women have great careers and also manage to have families and get married, and they understand that love doesn’t need to overshadow all other things in life, but honestly it’s hard to feel happy for others when you are unhappy. I think that’s what I love about Buddhism, is because it encourages me to not limit myself to only a few dreams but to dream big. Dreams can be marrying, raising kids, having a successful career, retiring well, becoming happy. I often chant now to have a successful life because I want to think about the long term. Thinking in the short term only made me miserable because I was only focused on my own needs in the here and now without thinking about what I wanted in the future.

Timothee Chalamet’s character, Laurie, was interesting. He kept falling in love with Jo and then he also fell in love with Amy. Amy though was already happily engaged to a wealthy man, but Laurie, drunk at a party one time, digs on her for marrying into wealth, embarrassing Amy in front of her fiancée, Fred Vaughn. Amy is also an incredible artist, but like Jo, she struggles with rejection and feeling like her work is good enough. Laurie tells her to not marry Fred and Amy feels incredibly disrespected that he would tell her that, and to not speak to her again. However, they reunite and they get married and have a family together. I think this was a very difficult moment for Jo because earlier in the movie Jo and Laurie are dancing together and acting silly, and they are really great friends. But when it comes to having a more serious relationship, Jo turns him down and says that if they marry, neither of them will be happy in the marriage. Laurie tells Jo he has loved her all this time, but Jo tells him she can’t marry him. Laurie is hurt and tells her she is going to want to marry one day. Then, later, Jo is feeling lonely and confesses to her mom that while she is happy for her sisters moving out and getting married, she feels lonely and that she wants love but doesn’t want to do it out of a need to fulfill society’s expectations of women. Her mom asks her if she genuinely loves Laurie and Jo finds it hard to make up her mind about whether she loves him. She decides to mail Laurie a letter declaring her love for him and that she changed her mind, but when they meet he accidentally lets it slip that Amy is his wife now. Jo is pained because she thought Laurie would still be available for her and wait on her to change her mind, but by then it is too late because Laurie’s priority is finding a partner and because Jo wasn’t ready he moved on. Laurie asks if they can still be friends, and while Jo says yes, I felt so much pain for her. Someone had fallen in love with me in college and I wasn’t interested in being in any relationships but I missed the signs, but because my feelings for this person were so on-and-off I didn’t know how much I loved him until a couple of years ago when we reconnected. I thought he was still available, but by the time I did he informed me he was with someone else. I think I mainly did this out of loneliness and I also struggled with low self-worth at the time. I think I just had the idea of this person in my head and wanted to relive those sweet moments of attraction we shared even though I never really acted on it, but I learned that people change and I had also changed. I had come out of a relationship a few years ago and it was sad but I eventually moved on. Part of me wonders if I want to date because everyone else is, or because I genuinely want to find someone to be with. Although I was encouraged that Jo ended up reuniting with Friedrich, who she had an amazing relationship with, because Friedrich wanted to follow Jo in her dreams and respected her independence. I am hopeful that whether I end up with the guy of my dreams or not, I can still respect my life and continue following my own path in life.

It’s really cool that Timothee and Saoirse got to work on this movie together again because they got to work together in Lady Bird. In Lady Bird Timothee plays a guy named Kyle, who is rich and is the main attraction of Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan). Lady Bird experiences similar heartbreak to Jo because she and Kyle sleep together and when they are cuddling up, Lady Bird assumes he lost his virginity to her, but then he looks at her funny and admits he didn’t lose his virginity to her and has had sex with women many times in the past. Lady Bird is disappointed and crushed that this fact killed the magical moment of them having sex, especially because it’s her first time having sex, but Kyle tells her that she is going to have so much un-special sex in her life. Lady Bird cries and I felt for her because it seemed that Kyle didn’t actually want to get to know her or respect her as a person, and that he just only wanted her for sex.

I want to write more about the movie, but I am still figuring more of my thoughts out. But I definitely recommend you watch it because it’s a really beautiful film.