First Hit: I liked the theme of women being strong and independent and disliked the jarring time shifts.
I’ve made no bones about Saoirse Ronan is one of the very best actors in her generation and in film today. Here as Jo March, the oldest of the four sisters, she is the focus of this story and therefore, we see this story through her eyes.
She has three sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Each of the sisters has talent. Meg is an actress and in early scenes, she and her sisters are shown making a play together and Meg has the lead role. Amy is a painter and she aspires to be the best and ultimate painter alive. Beth is the youngest, is shy and more unassuming, but plays piano like she was born with one in her soul.
The girls are being raised by their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern). She’s alone as her husband, and the girl’s dad is away fighting the civil war. They live in a large home but because the father is away and cannot provide for them, money is tight which is part of the drive for some of the girls, especially Jo, to provide for themselves as they get older. They don’t want to be dependent on men.
As a strong independent young woman, Jo wants to make her living and livelihood from the stories she writes. She thinks the way women are treated and the limits put on women to be independent is absurd. There are numerous scenes where this plays out. One such scene is when she’s attempting to sell a story and the publisher/editor tells her the girl in the story has to marry and be happy in the end; that’s the only way people will accept the story. This infuriates Jo.
Jo is also stubborn, as shown in a couple of brief scenes. One such scene is when she is in New York to make her living as a writer, meets a handsome writing professor, and asks him to honestly critique her work. He thoughtfully does this, and the criticism stings, so she calls him inept and storms out of the room, blaming him for lack of thoughtfulness.
There are many acts where her feminism and stubbornness play out, and they are wonderfully done.
Meg is different in that she wants to marry. She wants to create a household with children. This is a source of disappointment for Jo; however, it also is a way for Jo to see and accept that people are different from her.
Amy is like Jo in many ways in that she wants to be the best and known for being the best. However, in a scene of self-actualization, she realizes that her perfectionist painting technique is outstanding, but she doesn’t create anything unique and probably will never be the painter she envisioned herself to be. I really liked this about Amy because the actualization was subtle yet very clear and it came through in her expression.
Beth was quiet and meekest of the sisters; however, her piano playing was extraordinary. Her weakness was that she didn’t like playing in front of anyone. She was also the weakest of the sisters physically and we watch her demise through catching scarlet fever.
All this to say, I loved each of the sister’s stories. I thought each of them was superbly acted as well. What hurt this film was the sometimes-jarring way we segued into other time frames. Watching a particular segment of a sister’s story and then boom, we find ourselves with that person in some different storyline. Sometimes it made sense and other times it was too obscure at the time to be an addition to the story or the particular sister. With the type of time jumps this film presents it is difficult to tell if they were future or past events because the actors never looked older or younger in the scenes. I just don’t think the audience needs to be trying to figure out when the previous scene happened in the overall storyline.
One particular scene when Jo cut her hair for money for the family, we see her in subsequent stages with long or short hair but the storyline at one point meant that she should have had short hair but it was long and bunched up in the back.
It also appeared that men were only used as place holders and role players to propel the sister’s stories, and this isn’t a bad thing and it came across as a bit too obvious.
Ronan was powerful as Jo. The fault I found with the film was the time jumps that diminished the storyline and had nothing to do with her performance. Watson was wonderfully elegant yet showed a side of fun and enthusiasm as well. The scene where part of her hair gets burnt off and later the vulnerable elegance of her coming down the stairs in a coming-out event showed the breadth of her abilities in this role. Pugh was the surprising actor for me. She was sublime in this role, and when she was on the screen, her look alone commanded you watch her. The moment that Amy realizes she won’t be a famous painter was genuinely inspirational. Scanlen was beautiful as the meekest of the sisters although she harbored some of the biggest talents in the family. Dern was terrific as the mother who’s compassion for others rang throughout the movie. I loved her scene with Jo when discussing patience and anger. Timothee Chalamet as Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence was sharp. As the rich boy neighbor who had fallen in love with Jo because of her strength and independence, he was sufficiently arrogant, boisterous, and kind. Chris Cooper as Laurie’s father Mr. Laurence, was excellent. His thoughtful kindness as the rich neighbor was well placed throughout the film. Meryl Street gave an outstanding and funny performance as the arrogant, very wealthy Aunt to the sisters. Her well placed and pointed jabs at women having careers were perfect. Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this film. I didn’t like her choice to make time jumps without giving the audience clues about the past and future. The actors never really looked different in these time sequences and that was bothersome. Otherwise, she got excellent performances from the actors and the sets and scenes were beautifully filmed.
Overall: A terrific film interrupted by time jumps that caused confusion.