Little Women (Collector's Series)
by Gillian Armstrong
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Actor: Claire Danes, Gabriel Byrne, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Winona RyderDirector: Gillian Armstrong
Brand: Sony
Cinematographer: Geoffrey Simpson
Editor: Nicholas Beauman
Producer: Denise Di Novi
Producer: Robin Swicord
Writer: Robin Swicord
Producer: Warren Carr
Writer: Louisa May Alcott
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Georgian (Subtitled); Chinese (Subtitled); Thai (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-04-25
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Little Women (Collector's Series)
DVD Review: A Spoilery Rant!
Summary: 3 Stars
Gillian Anderson's LITTLE WOMEN attempts not so much to capture the essense of Louisa May Alcott's original story as to use it as a springboard. It might have been better if she had transferred the story to a different time, or otherwise re-framed it so as to give herself more liberty to change things around. I myself would not have minded a version of LITTLE WOMEN where Laurie and Jo DO run away, Beth sneakily brings in much needed cash as dance hall pianist, and Professor Bhaer finally learns to mind his own business. But instead, screenwriter Robin Swicord drains the drama and momentum from the original by pointless alteration, but is still required to hit major plot points, and so cannot create anything new and satisfactory.
What made Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN, despite the moralizing, something children have wanted to read for one and a half centures now was its vivid portrait of passionate adolescence: Jo's famous temper, Laurie's rebelliousness, Amy's spite, Meg's longings - even what lurked beneath Beth's shyness. Anderson jettisons this anger and passion for a genteel and straight-laced Art-House flick about ladylike little feminists. Alcott famously disparaged her books for children as "moral pap for the young", but LITTLE WOMEN had honesty and substance. Anderson ignores the substance in favor of "moral pap" - albeit politically correct and feminist pap - washed down with tony sentimentality. The only notes of truth are struck by the performances.
The girls are just not the same girls, with mixed results. Kirsten Dunst - fresh from INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE - is a superb child-Amy, but is written as a sly vixen with designs on Laurie, which ruins the honest connection between them that was so important later. Adult Samantha Mathis plays Amy as a dense zombie. Trini Alvarado brings tremendous grace and womanliness to Meg, which is really nice actually, except that Meg is supposed to be an unsure adolescent. Winona Ryder's Jo is interestingly different, which is to say she isn't a rebellious tomboy with a wild temper and a burning literary passion, but a thoughtful-if-pouty wannabe Liberal Arts Major. Beth is supposed to be a frail girl struggling mightily with her timidity: Claire Daines gives us a sturdy lass placidly devoid of inner conflict. Thus we must lurch through the plot of LITTLE WOMEN, without getting the Little Women themselves as compensation.
Christian Bale, as boy-next-door Laurie, does a good job of suggesting caged wildness, and makes the most of the few poignant lines which are all that is left of Laurie's tempestuous relationship with his grandfather. But he is just a little too old, too smug, and too smarmy. Alcott's lonely, emotionally-deprived teenager is barely hinted at. Rather, he has become a representative of "Men", which you know is just not good. In the book, Laurie's reaction to seeing Meg dolled up like a sexpot was sudden bashfulness and defensive rudeness. Here he is a suave sexist oaf who sees Meg's new finery as the opportunity for a spot of sexual harassment. Ew! Why? The point of Laurie and Jo's dance, in the book, was to convey the pleasure of meeting a soulmate one could show one's real self to without worrying about being "presentable" or "proper". Here, their dance is rendered somewhat awkward by the fact that Jo only knows how to lead. This alters the whole meaning of the scene, implying Anderson sees it as a power struggle rather than a moment of connection. And it's so dismally cliché. "Oh, they are both too strong-willed so . . .." You know something? Being weak-willed and knowing how to dance backwards have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with one another.
In the directors's commentary, Anderson describes Alcott's Marmee as the "perfect" mother. She was not! Anderson obviously doesn't think the March parents were perfect either, as her version replaced Marmee with Susan B. Anthony, and shuts Father up completely. But instead of admitting it and portraying Marmee as a flawed human being, she simply replaces her own PC notion of perfection for that supposedly offered by Alcott. Susan Sarandon does as amazing a job as one could possibly wish, considering that she's being asked to play a marble statue instead of a woman. Some have suggested that Saradon's portrayal would have been more convincing in another era, but I disagree. Her Marmee says nothing feminists didn't say at the time - in essays and speeches. Alcott's trashy adventure-potboiler A LONG FATAL LOVE CHASE has quite a few feminist speeches, and as ALFLC is scarcely attempting naturalistic realism, they fit in just fine. No, it is Marmee's cardboard-cutout supermom-hood which rings false - in any era.
There is inherent feminism to be found in Alcott's work, to those interested in Alcott's work. But those people do not include Anderson and Swicord. Scene after scene is rewritten to ignore and replace the actual story rather than intepret or illuminate it. John Brooke takes Meg to the theatre, only to spout stock rubbish about how sinful, immodest and unladylike actresses are. Writer Jo faces sexist discrimination from New York publishers, and discusses female sufferage with Herr Professor. Meg and Sally Moffat argue over child silk laborers. The doctor throws in a line about bleeding, and throws in the towel on a patient who is promptly saved by Super-Marmee. Amy's doting schoolmaster who very reluctantly struck her for disobedience is now The Sexist Educational Establishment, and is given that line comparing female students to female cats which is scarcely what a poor man who earned his living educating young ladies would say. Thus generic Victorian clichés gleaned from speed-reading a few history books replace the situations created by a woman who was actually THERE, and incidents borrowed from Alcott's life are thrown in without context or point. I'm surprised nobody found a runaway slave in the oven. Or did I blink?
The script is so ham-handed that on the occasion we do get something of Alcott's, it no longer makes sense. Take the skating accident. In the book, Jo is so furious with Amy that she refuses to speak to her, even to warn her of thin ice. Then she freezes in shock when Amy falls through, leaving the rescue to Laurie. The line "How could I be so horrible? Thank God for Laurie!" would therefore make perfect sense. In the FILM, Jo knows nothing about rotten ice, is blameless for Amy's accident, and is as quick to the rescue as Laurie. But Swicord includes the now-senseless line anyway. This book chapter ended with Jo's realization that "perfect" Marmee had as fiery a temper as Jo herself. This liberated Jo from her self-loathing and despair, permited her to forgive both herself and Amy, and the chapter ended on a kiss. The subtextual message is that we manage our darker feelings better when we acknowledge them, that we strangle our ability for love when we don't acknowledge our anger, and that there is no such thing as the perfect woman or mother who lacks the full range of human feelings. That is more feminist and timeless than whining about corsets, and even has something to do with the plot and characters. So of course it's not included.
Another chapter that would have rewarded feminist interest was when unfashionable Meg allows herself to get nicely dolled up at Moffat's, only to find she has ruined herself in the eyes of conservative acquaintances. But in the film, Meg looks EXACTLY like all the other girls present, and never hears any censure for crossing an invisible line of modesty. She merely seems dressed for the occasion. Yet she allows herself to be thoroughly shamed by Laurie, and (in an even creepier scene) cries repentantly while taking off her makeup. What could easily have been a commentary on the eternal feminine double-bind instead comes across as a Puritanical slam against femininity itself. Marmee's advice on modesty, in the BOOK, addressed Meg's need to protect her self-respect and the integrity of her relationships with men in the face of the "marriage market" mentality, but she specifically defended Meg's desire for prettiness and admiration as right and harmless. Anderson's message amounts to "Men are Beasts, girls! So COVER UP!" which doesn't seem terribly progressive somehow. Still, the scene where Meg, Jo, and Marmee discuss the incident is among those where the actresses transcend their material.
This movie is not BAD, mind. It is at it's best showing the girl's at play, doing the Pickwick Club, or putting on amateur theatricals written by Jo. But some scenes are too stupid for words. Bale and Mathis deserve awards for professionalism for enacting the lamest screen courtship ever allowed to succeed. I don't expect Mr. March to get any LINES, but an award winning director should make the actor look line a man in his own home, rather than an Alzheimer's patient who wandered onto the set. A character in England reads a letter from America, throws it aside UNFINISHED when he gets to the dramatic part, and rushes out the door to catch a boat to Vienna. Meg doesn't tell her own sister she's pregnant in private letter because "One doesn't speak of such things". Amy doesn't burn Jo's novel in the heat of anger, then grow fearful and repentant by the time Jo comes home. She burns the novel AND acts fearful and repentant all in the same 60 second period. Then there is the skating scene, wherein the "rotten ice" is clearly ROCK SOLID as though the hole were sawed out by a cartoon character, and which bears the weight of two fully grown rescuers who suicidally throw themselves down side-by-side next to the edge. They then wave a oar around just because there was an oar in the book, and not because they are using it to any purpose. If Anderson ever directs an action film, I'm not seeing it.
Last but not least, "strong-minded" Jo doesn't come up with the idea for Plumfield on her own. She does it because Super-Marmee TOLD her to. We are dealing with the sort of twisted minds who read LITTLE WOMEN and thought: "Gee, that wasn't bad, but Marmee should have put HER oar in a bit more often."
Description of Little Women (Collector's Series)
Winona Ryder (in an Oscar(r) nominated role) and Academy Award(r) winner Susan Sarandon (1995 Best Actress, Dead Man Walking) star in this "affectionate, superbly acted" (Los Angeles Times) family favorite. With her husband off at war, Marmee (Sarandon) is left alone to raise their four daughters, her Little Women. There is the spirited Jo (Ryder); conservative Meg (Trini Alvarado, Paulie); fragile Beth (Claire Danes, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet); and romantic Amy (played at different ages by Kristen Dunst, Wag the Dog and Samantha Mathis, Broken Arrow). As the years pass, the sisters share some of the most cherished and painful memories of self-discovery, as Marmee and Aunt March (Mary Wickes, The Man Who Came to Dinner) guide them through issues of independence, romance and virtue. Gabriel Byrne (End of Days), Eric Stoltz (TV's Chicago Hope) and Christian Bale (The Portrait of a Lady) co-star in this "handcrafted valentine" (Newsweek) of a film.The flaws are easily forgiven in this beautiful version of Louisa May Alcott's novel. A stirring look at life in New England during the Civil War, Little Women is a triumph for all involved. We follow one family as they split into the world, ending up with the most independent, the outspoken Jo (Winona Ryder). This time around, the dramatics and conclusions fall into place a little too well, instead of finding life's little accidents along the way. Everyone now looks a bit too cute and oh, so nice. As the matron, Marmee, Susan Sarandon kicks the film into a modern tone, creating a movie alive with a great feminine sprit. Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire) has another showy role. The young ensemble cast cannot be faulted, with Ryder beginning the movie in a role akin to light comedy and crescendoing to a triumphant end worthy of an Oscar. --Doug Thomas
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