My breakdown of this version, Little Women (2019), is going to be very strange. If the filmmaker decides to take an extremely well-known story and change its ending, chaos can ensue. In this case facts about Louisa May Alcott are incorporated into the climax. I didn’t know any of these details and found the end confusing and infuriating.
It felt Author’s Message to me, and in a way it was. No matter how interesting real life information is, if you go against audience expectations, especially ones so deeply ingrained as they are for this story, you have to be crystalline. LW2019 doesn’t cross that bar.
It makes for a very interesting Enneagram pattern.
ONE
The girls are adults. The beginning of the movie starts near the end of the characters’ arcs. Okay, fresh and interesting. Jo sells a story, Amy is in Paris, Meg spends money recklessly, and Beth plays the piano. Professor Bhaer is introduced; he and Jo see each other at a pub and dance together.
I don’t understand why this scene exists. (The movie, at two and a half hours, needed trimming.) It’s Four-ish stuff put in the middle of the opening. That’s the danger of leading with your ending, it seems.
Jump to Seven Years Earlier. Meg’s hair is burnt by the curling iron and Jo’s dress is burnt by her carelessness. Classic scene. Laurie comes to the dance and the March family meets their neighbor. Meg twists her ankle, Laurie’s carriage takes them home, and here’s Marmee, Hannah, and the bustle of Orchard House.
You see the problem here, right? This is all Four stuff! Where is our anchor to begin the story? No scene is edited to stand out.
Except one.
TWO
As Laurie is introduced around the family the camera lingers for a strong beat on Amy. Looking directly and boldly at him, she says, “I’m Amy.” Let me say immediately that, in a pantheon of great Amy actresses, Florence Pugh is my favorite. Her work shines with layers and intention. All that she puts into those two words is magical.
And then we’re back to Jo, Bhaer, and New York City. If you haven’t yet guessed, I’m jettisoning Jo as the driver of this story. None of her character moments nails the beats. It’s all Amy for me. Let’s see how it stacks up.
Also, please remember that this non-linear storytelling is what opens up a different possible Enneagram. Only Jo can lead a linear version.
THREE
After grown Jo we return to grown Amy in Paris. At a formal dance Laurie arrives drunk and disheveled. Amy upbraids him and somehow the ring Jo gave him, which he wears, comes up. It symbolizes that he won’t let go of Jo, of dealing with her marriage refusal, when Amy is ready for him to move on. She rejects the ring and what it stands for.
FOUR
Back and forth in time. Christmas breakfast goes to the Hummels. Amy needs limes for school. Laurie is admitted into the March acting troupe. Intercut with these story elements we remember well, this movie brings Jo home for Beth’s final illness. Amy burns Jo’s book and falls through the ice while skating.
I honestly have a hard time finding a Switch in all this. What is the through line?
SWITCH
Look at the moment when Amy, painting in Paris, states that she’s a failure. Laurie says she’s a good artist. Amy replies, talent is not genius. This seems like a clear moment for her. Learning about painting is now over. If she’s not going to excel she won’t pursue it anymore. Laurie protests, but Amy has a very honest speech. Marriage, for a woman of this era, is an economic proposal. Fred Vaughn is on the table. Her job is to marry well.
This will light a fire under Laurie, although that’s not why Amy says it.
FIVE
We’re back with the rambling time jumps. Marmee has a scene assisting war refugees that seems to have no purpose beyond her saying she’s ashamed of her country. (Was Alcott’s Marmee ashamed? This scene, which feels like it may be injecting modern thoughts and sensibilities, pops me out of the narrative.) It does introduce the telegram about father’s illness, although that would come to her wherever she was. Jo cuts her hair.
Back in Paris, Laurie tells Amy not to marry Fred. Amy goes off. Her anger builds until she admits she’s loved Laurie her whole life. That moment at the Two when she says “I’m Amy” suddenly has even more meaning. Watch the beat again and you’ll see her play that intention under all the other ones.
Shifting earlier again, when Marmee is away nursing Father, Meg reads a letter from Mr. Brooke and Beth embroiders slippers for Mr. Lawrence. Amy, oddly, is making a plaster cast of her foot “for Laurie”. Her foot gets stuck in the bucket, as we knew it would, so the scene gets a laugh. However, it also follows the revealing scene above. Amy has a sweet openness that becomes clearer now.
Beth catches scarlet fever from the Hummels. This is intercut with the later time when Beth is dying. Jo’s hairdo is a clue as to which shift we’re in, but it gets overly confusing.
Meanwhile, Amy (in the earlier time frame) has been sent to stay with Aunt March. This is the beginning of their relationship.
SIX
As Aunt March is examining Amy’s quiet industry at painting and her calm obedience in the house, she offers Amy the promise of her ring. Is this an acceptable Three/Six mirror? I didn’t see it at first, certainly.
Wait until the end of the movie, though. Jo, depending on which variation of the two resolutions you prefer, doesn’t marry. Like Alcott, she stays a spinster. (The other ending has her with Bhaer.) Aunt March is a spinster. A mean, bitter, lonely piece of business. Jo throughout is a fairly mean, bitter, lonely person. Did the filmmakers intend a parallel between Aunt March and Jo? I doubt it. The shots aren’t really there to connect that. But here in the Three and Six positions are women giving rings that don’t mean anything. Laurie doesn’t see that Jo’s ring means nothing; he wears it forever. Amy seems to know exactly what Aunt March’s ring means. Wealth is good, no matter how you get to it. Actually Aunt March is quite overt in explaining it all, but Amy has no blinders.
SEVEN
The next scene, in the Paris time, has Amy refusing Fred’s offer. In a long shot we see him on one knee. The proposal is a real thing and Amy makes a definite choice.
Or, that’s not the Seven because a whole avalanche of scenes come after and they are not the Eight.
Beth dies. Her cure from the scarlet fever is intercut with her dying time. It is so confusing and neither event gets the proper focus. These are events that change Jo’s life and her trajectory, yet we don’t see that in the beats. Tragedy, yes, but story propulsion, no. Why are these moments intercut? What does it tell us about Jo? She thinks she can will Beth into health. She doesn’t. What impact does that have on Jo?
Meg is married and Amy is invited to Europe. Jo is left behind. When Laurie proposes she turns him down. Is this a Seven? It’s hard to see it so because in linear time it happens so early. The non-linear telling puts it near a Seven position, but does that make sense?
Maybe. Time jump to after Beth’s death and Jo is doubting her decision. Now, if asked again, she would say yes. Marmee asks if she loves him. No, but Jo’s lonely. An independent woman has more than a heart to give — a mind, a soul — but she wants to be loved.
Marmee’s face says it all. This is not a Jo we recognize. In retrospect, knowing the two endings this movie presents, Jo’s indecision takes on a fuller meaning. However, that pipe hasn’t been laid at this point and Jo feels wrong.
EIGHT
If Jo’s refusal of Laurie is part of the Seven, then the above regret is part of the Eight. Laurie moved on and fell in love with Amy while Jo was feeling sad. In a way, the Three moment of Jo giving him the ring which was only a trinket and a lark to her has reached its fulfillment here. I doubt Aunt March ever offered Jo the bribery ring, either.
In Paris, Laurie meets up with Amy to accompany her home. She tells him she refused Fred and that he’s under no obligation. He kisses her. They are a couple, which is the climax of all of Amy’s story. She knew what she wanted and she achieved it. Laurie loves her, and he’s rich. Happy ending for our girl.
And then Jo moons for a while. She writes Laurie a declaration letter which she has to later destroy when she learns he married her sister. She destroys her own writing, burning it as Amy once did.
She starts writing again. Why? What is the inspiration?
Aunt March wills Plumfield to her. Professor Bhaer visits. Jo’s ready to let him leave, headed for California, when Amy says, “You love him!”. They chase him to the train station where he and Jo reunite.
Or do they? Now we see Jo negotiating with her publisher. He wants her heroine to marry at the end of the book. He insists. The office is well-lit with a cold blue quality. I don’t know if we were supposed to see this scene as an example of sterility or good business. As it intercut with the Bhaer romance it cheapened both storylines.
I’m sure you can tell how much I hated this ending. If you want to undercut the romance trope by having Jo behave more like Alcott did, you must do a better job of preparing the audience throughout the earlier beats. This gobsmacked me and just made me mad.
NINE
The Plumfield School, family, flowers and children everywhere, is intercut with Jo watching her book become published. The last shot is Jo’s face as she holds her bound novel. Certainly she’s proud, but there’s more and I’m not sure what it is. Regret? Sorrow? A large middle finger to all of societal norms? Neither version of the world satisfies.
CRITICAL NOTES
I watched this movie once and didn’t enjoy it enough to want to watch it again. From a review perspective, my writing suffers from only one viewing. I could clarify some of my points if I offered more clear examples, but the film’s revisions of a known (almost overworked) property disappointed me. It’s wrong to take something that’s been produced more than many other stories and upend it without being extremely precise and focused. This version has a dicey structure, and it really needed to hit this mark. If you want to juxtapose the storybook Jo with the real-life Lou, you need to begin that comparison at the first beat. Don’t let me think I’m watching a conventional retelling with updated actors. What we have, the crosscut timelines, only feels sloppy, not intentional. I can see what Gerwig was trying to do, but the whole project needed more pre-production.