Little Women is an exquisite exploration of family, growing up

Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet in Little Women. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Little Women is simply extraordinary. It's riveting and enchanting, sweet and bittersweet, buoyed by an incredible level of brilliance in nearly every facet. The film is far too good to be described as simple comfort film – it's much too intricate for that – yet it is comforting to watch a film as exquisite and charming as this. 

Based on the eponymous novel by Louisa May Alcott, Little Women centers on the March sisters over the course of seven years in the 1860s. Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is an aspiring writer living in a tiny apartment in New York City. Oldest sister Meg (Emma Watson) is a married mother of two with dreams of wealth and comfort. Amy (Florence Pugh) lives with Aunt March (Meryl Streep) in Paris and wants to marry into wealth to support her family. Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is at home in Concord, Massachusetts with matriarch Marmee (Laura Dern), living a quiet life while fighting against an unspecified condition. The March sisters find a friend in their whimsical neighbor Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) and a patron in Laurie's grandfather (Chris Cooper) as they grow up through times hard and good.

Little Women is a fundamentally excellent film; everything in this film works, and it works to a brilliant degree. There are no glaring flaws with the writing, directing, acting, cinematography, editing, or soundtrack. Every emotional beat is struck with the perfect amount of force to wring out the desired effect. Writer/director Greta Gerwig has created a film that is legitimately outstanding, building upon the existing material to create a lovely, relatable story of family and growing up. 

   

The main drama in Little Women is rooted in the difficulties of both, shown through quotidian anecdotes from the March sisters' childhoods. A day at the beach is nearly as memorable as Amy burning Jo's novel or Meg's wedding to the kind John Brooke (James Norton), with each moment adding more layers to the March family dynamic. All of these small moments in the March women's lives build up to a remarkable portrait of sisters navigating into the confusing world of adulthood, reconsidering their youthful ambitions. The March sisters all have dreams of becoming an artist – whether it be a writer, musician, actor, or painter – that either fall apart or come close to doing so. The film isn't about settling for something short of your dreams; rather, the characters look within themselves to find what matters to them and who they want to be. Amy, Jo, and Meg all go through this process of self reflection and come out of it knowing their course as they establish themselves as adults. 

There's nothing overly complex about the film's storytelling, but Gerwig does something quite clever by jumping between the past and the film's present without clear demarcations. Little Women might start a story in Paris and quickly jump back to Concord to link that specific moment with a memory. Aside from linking the past and present directly, this adds a little verisimilitude to the storytelling. Memories can pop out of nowhere with little provocation, so the film doing the same feels true to life and serves as a subtle method of drawing a closer connection with the March sisters. The audience is living life through the eyes of the family, adding to the weight of the hard times and the joy of the good times. If done poorly, this could alienate the audience by confusing them, but Gerwig handles this beautifully. She shows a talent for guiding multiple narratives and has faith in her storytelling to keep the audience invested despite the frequent time skips.

What's most endearing about Little Women is the decency coursing through this film. There is so much kindness and caring shown by the main characters its impossible to avoid investment in the lives of the March family. Every character has a few flaws to keep them human, yet the flaws never overshadow how much everyone cares for one another. Gerwig doesn't force her characters to do the right things at all times, yet they care enough to feel contrition for their actions and use that to grow into more mature, kinder people. Jo and Amy have the most turbulent relationship of the four sisters, but the film ends with them respecting each other for their wisdom and talents, along with forgiveness for transgressions fueled by immaturity. Adulthood can have that affect on families – the squabbles of the past become less and less important as siblings grow up and find perspective – and Little Women shows how captivating growing up can be.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 134 minutes

Genre: Drama

tl;dr

What Worked: Writing, Directing, Acting, Storytelling

What Fell Short: A bit of drag in the third act

What To Watch As Well: Atonement, Frances Ha

Last Jedi an unpredictable adventure

Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Image courtesy Disney.

Star Wars as a franchise has always worked best when hope is challenged by impending darkness. Hope without challenge is meaningless; hope needs to be earned through tribulation to be worth a damn, the bleakness countered by faith in one's friends, allies, and one's cause. Star Wars: The Last Jedi favors that ambiguity, putting its heroes in a desperate situation, with only their hope and faith in one another and their cause to lean on. The film rarely provides assurances that the hope they have is justified, that it will result in a happy ending for all involved. It's also why this movie is the first Star Wars entry in three decades to feel unpredictable.
This is a very good thing. The new Star Wars needs to separate itself from 40 years of cinematic history to be worth anything going forward. The only way to continue producing interesting stories is to take risks, through a few curveballs into the very well-established formula and keep the audience guessing on how the fate of the Star Wars galaxy will go. The nostalgia that carried The Force Awakens (which earns justifiable criticism for aping A New Hope) and influences Rogue One won't last forever; younger audiences need their own characters to like. Instead of recreating what worked before, writer/director Rian Johnson takes a few chances with Last Jedi to take some ownership of the material and ensure this isn't a carbon copy of Empire Strikes Back.
Last Jedi shares a few traits with Empire Strikes Back, notably by showing the rebels in their darkest moment. Hope is really the only thing Resistance members Leia (Carrie Fisher, RIP), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega), Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) have as they try to escape the evil First Order led by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Hope is what pushes Rey (Daisy Ridley) to the ends of the galaxy to recruit the bitter Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to the Resistance cause. Hope comes despite the Resistance being hopelessly outgunned by an impending force of destruction and despite little evidence that the soul of Kylo Ren can be saved from the dark side.
As the film makes clear, hope is a tough thing to hold onto. As the Resistance gets closer and closer to its destruction, its members have to be reminded frequently to maintain their hope and faith, to not succumb to the daunting odds mounting against them. Last Jedi is the rare Star Wars film to not adhere blindly to that sense of hope though; even for characters from a galaxy far, far away that aren’t technically human, it remains natural and vital even to question one's faith. Hope is put on trial, the characters weigh the faith they have in themselves, their friends, and their cause, and the process to a verdict is painful and dangerous.
Johnson does a lot of house cleaning in the two and a half hours of Star Wars time he has to work with. The puzzle box concept J.J. Abrams crammed into The Force Awakens is stripped away, to the great benefit of the franchise and for audiences frustrated by the that movie’s unnecessary ambiguity. The key mystery in that movie is granted a simple resolution that serves as a reminder of how greatness can come from even the humblest of beginnings. The victories earned by the Resistance are always Pyrrhic, good enough to render hope from but still damaging for a cause that can't afford to lose that much. The Last Jedi fights against the supposed goodness of the Jedi as well, doing more to question the wisdom of the Jedi Order than the prequels did in three movies. The Last Jedi makes a very convincing argument for ending the Jedi line; it's only Rey's hope in what the Jedi could accomplish that makes the Jedi Order possibly worth redeeming.
There remains some value in the old ways for Rey and the Star Wars franchise. Last Jedi posits a need for legends and heroes to inspire faith and hope to spur a rebellion against an unrelenting evil. The past is there to serve as a guiding light for the present, to give the new characters a path forward in the darkness as they find their own way toward salvation. As it is for the franchise too, which slowly but surely will separate itself from the past and find some hope of its own.

Review: Four out of Five Stars



Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13
Run time: 153 minutes
Genre: Science Fiction

Ask Away

Target audience: The legions upon legions of Star Wars fans who will make Disney a whole ton of money this month.

Take the whole family?: Families will bring their kids regardless because Star Wars, but this could bother some of the really young kids. The length might also turn them away.

Theater or Netflix?: The effects are more than good enough to deserve a cinema trip. Whether it's worth paying for the 3D and IMAX is up for debate.

Where does this rank on the Star Wars pantheon?: Last Jedi still doesn't hit the mark of either Empire Strikes Back or A New Hope. I do put it ahead of the prequels, The Force Awakens, and the very good Rogue One, and as an adult I find Last Jedi to be more interesting and complex than Return of the Jedi.

Watch this as well?: Enough of the Star Wars franchise is good enough to merit another watch, especially Empire Strikes Back. Also check out a couple of writer/director Rian Johnson's previous works, Brick and Looper.