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sophia_sol) wrote2020-01-01 08:51 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-01-01 08:51 pm
Little Women movie! and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott! More about the movie though tbh
Ever since I heard about the new Little Women movie that was coming out I was very excited about it, because it looked like it was going to do interesting things with the adaptation.
So I decided I needed to reread the book in preparation for going to see it, since it's been a few years since I've read it. I grew up on Little Women and its sequels and love them all dearly (in full recognition of their various imperfections), but my memory is not good and I wanted to be sure that I would be able to catch what the movie was doing with respect with its choices about what to maintain/alter/remove in its adaptation.
Little Women the book is a challenging one to make a movie of, because it's so long and so many things happen in it, without there really being a single overarching plot that it can be distilled down to because it's so episodic, and I think the movie made a lot of great choices in how to make that jump from page to screen.
The thing is. The thing is! I grew up with this book, right, so of course there are very specific things that I imprinted hard on emotionally, and a movie that interprets those things differently from me is never going to work 100% for me as a viewer.
Which honestly kind of disappoints me? Because like, a) a lot of ways the movie adapts the book are SO GOOD and I was delighted by these things, and b) the thing I'm maddest about is one that, in isolation, is a narrative choice that would very much make me happy if it was about different characters than the ones I grew up with.
OKAY let's get to the spoilers!
So. My biggest problem with this movie is that I am, at heart, a Jo/Bhaer shipper. Which I realise is deeply unusual! In fact I even came across a review of this movie that talked about how the Jo/Bhaer ship is obviously inherently a problem with the book that any adaptation has to decide how to handle - which let me tell you, got me a little steamy about the ears. I'm okay with the idea that different people can ship different things, but for the prevailing cultural opinion to be that nobody could possibly actually be into my (canon!) ship is...a little wearing tbh.
And the movie definitely sees the Jo/Bhaer ship as a problem that needs addressing. There seem to be multiple interpretations of exactly what the movie is doing with the ship (the ending is literary and ambiguous), but regardless of how you interpret it it's clear that the movie isn't willing to just play it straight, as it were.
And. Like. In any other context I would LOVE how the movie is working so hard to make the point that a woman's happy ending can involve NO RELATIONSHIP WITH A MAN AT ALL. But I really truly sincerely think that Jo and Bhaer as they're depicted in the trilogy of novels are an amazing ship who are really well suited and wonderful together and so I don't actually WANT Jo to be the character through whom this point about singleness is made!
(also, if the movie is wanting to make a point about singleness, then why does it add in a whole bit about Jo changing her mind and wanting to marry Laurie after all but being too late for it?? That whole part was weird and felt wrong.)
And like. I do in fact read Jo as aromantic? But to me that's why the Jo/Bhaer ship works so well - it doesn't read to me as being romantic at all, no, and that's maybe at least in part why a lot of people aren't on board. But it's about two people who love each other dearly and have a great deal in common deciding they'd be happiest sharing their lives together, and that doesn't have to be romantic. And I think that's beautiful.
(And speaking of Jo's queerness, oh my god in the book Jo reads to me as SO EXTREMELY GENDERQUEER and younger me never noticed! But WOW. And the movie managed to incorporate a few bits of this aspect of Jo, which I really appreciated.)
Anyway, aside from my disappointment in literally everything about how Bhaer is handled in the movie, I really loved so much. Like, the way that the March family dynamics are portrayed is incredible. And I loved that the particular closeness between Jo and Beth got some focus, and the significant looks of understanding between Jo and Marmee in moments when Jo is working hard to keep her temper. And the connection between Beth and old Mr Laurence! I do have a real fondness for that. And I was glad that the difficulties between John and Meg over money are included, showing how even when you genuinely love someone and are happy to have made the choice to join your lives together in full knowledge of what it means, that it can still be hard.
The movie faced the challenge that any movie adaptation would, of how to portray characters who start the book children and end as adults. For example, Amy is 12 when the book opens and, if I'm doing my math right, is in the neighbourhood of 22 by the end. And Jo is 15/25. Having one actor play the character throughout makes it feel super weird when the actor is playing too far outside their age range - like, the actor playing Amy in this movie was acting her heart out to try to seem like a 12 year old but SHE LOOKS LIKE AN ADULT. But it's also weird to recast the characters, because honestly the book doesn't have that much in the way of a time-skip, like there's a three year skip between Part The First and Part The Second but the vast majority of the growing up happens on page, so at what point do you switch actors? So this movie did the best it could with the situation it found itself in, and I don't think it could have done it better than it did, it was just....noticeable.
I also didn't like the way the movie rearranged some of the timeline and events of what happens in Europe between Amy and Laurie, as I thought it made that romance come across rather less well. Although honestly maybe that was the point it was trying to make???? That Amy was trading out one mercenary practical marriage option for another? I would believe that of this movie. Except that it did seem to be trying to say that they really did love each other, even though it showed none of that happening, and only really dwelt on the part where Laurie was moping about in dissipation and Amy being frustrated with him. IDK.
Anyway. I guess that anytime the movie was about the March family alone, with no other characters involved, I was 100% there for what it was doing, it was just with some of the things involving outside characters that I had more questions. And most of the movie IS about the March family, so mostly I truly adored the movie! Most of my complaints (other than about Bhaer) are honestly pretty minor ones. And if I weren't an inveterate Jo/Bhaer shipper from childhood I think I would love this movie.
Sigh.
The version of the book I read through this time, by the way, was an annotated version, which also included a lengthy introduction and prequel giving historical context from Louisa May Alcott's own life. Which was really interesting! I feel like the quality of the annotations was merely fine - I've read better annotated books, but I've also read worse, and some of the annotations were genuinely helpful and interesting but others I have complaints about. But the intro/preface were really helpful in better understanding the place from which Alcott wrote the novel.
Which is relevant for the movie, actually, because the characters in the book are in large part based on Alcott's own family, and in a number of ways the movie added extra stuff from Alcott's real life that she hadn't put into the book. I don't remember all of the specifics anymore, unfortunately, but the complexities around the conclusion are definitely drawing from these extra-textual sources.
Louisa May Alcott based the character of Jo on herself, and Alcott actually never married. And was a strong proponent of the idea that marriage is not the only valuable thing a woman can do with her life! And Alcott was against the idea of Jo and Laurie ever marrying in the world of the story, despite all of her fans being into that ship, after the first half of Little Women was published.
When the first half sold well enough to merit writing a second half, Alcott originally wanted Jo to end a spinster, but her publisher told her that she'd better have all the girls marry. And Alcott was all about the mercenary interests of publishing because she had grown up very poor and wanted to keep her family from having to experience that kind of financial instability again. So she came up with Bhaer in order to fulfill what was necessary for Jo without having to bow to popular opinion on Jo/Laurie.
So you can see why the creators of the movie thought that adding ambiguity and doubt to the Jo/Bhaer relationship was justified! Even if I disagree with the choice.
Alcott kept writing about these characters after the second half of Little Women; their story doesn't just end there. And the sequels (Little Men and Jo's Boys) are all about the school that Jo and Bhaer run, so there's loads more canon about their relationship, and if the movie creators were willing to draw on material beyond the text of Little Women itself, as they so clearly were when they drew from Alcott's life, why couldn't they have also looked to the sequels? Where it's so clear that Jo and Bhaer have a healthy and happy relationship!
But even if they didn't look to the sequels, if you look at just what's on the pages of Little Women itself, I still think that Jo/Bhaer is a valid and reasonable ship to be into. And I am into it, and the movie is not, and so the movie and I cannot be as good friends as I hoped we would be.
So it goes.
So I decided I needed to reread the book in preparation for going to see it, since it's been a few years since I've read it. I grew up on Little Women and its sequels and love them all dearly (in full recognition of their various imperfections), but my memory is not good and I wanted to be sure that I would be able to catch what the movie was doing with respect with its choices about what to maintain/alter/remove in its adaptation.
Little Women the book is a challenging one to make a movie of, because it's so long and so many things happen in it, without there really being a single overarching plot that it can be distilled down to because it's so episodic, and I think the movie made a lot of great choices in how to make that jump from page to screen.
The thing is. The thing is! I grew up with this book, right, so of course there are very specific things that I imprinted hard on emotionally, and a movie that interprets those things differently from me is never going to work 100% for me as a viewer.
Which honestly kind of disappoints me? Because like, a) a lot of ways the movie adapts the book are SO GOOD and I was delighted by these things, and b) the thing I'm maddest about is one that, in isolation, is a narrative choice that would very much make me happy if it was about different characters than the ones I grew up with.
OKAY let's get to the spoilers!
So. My biggest problem with this movie is that I am, at heart, a Jo/Bhaer shipper. Which I realise is deeply unusual! In fact I even came across a review of this movie that talked about how the Jo/Bhaer ship is obviously inherently a problem with the book that any adaptation has to decide how to handle - which let me tell you, got me a little steamy about the ears. I'm okay with the idea that different people can ship different things, but for the prevailing cultural opinion to be that nobody could possibly actually be into my (canon!) ship is...a little wearing tbh.
And the movie definitely sees the Jo/Bhaer ship as a problem that needs addressing. There seem to be multiple interpretations of exactly what the movie is doing with the ship (the ending is literary and ambiguous), but regardless of how you interpret it it's clear that the movie isn't willing to just play it straight, as it were.
And. Like. In any other context I would LOVE how the movie is working so hard to make the point that a woman's happy ending can involve NO RELATIONSHIP WITH A MAN AT ALL. But I really truly sincerely think that Jo and Bhaer as they're depicted in the trilogy of novels are an amazing ship who are really well suited and wonderful together and so I don't actually WANT Jo to be the character through whom this point about singleness is made!
(also, if the movie is wanting to make a point about singleness, then why does it add in a whole bit about Jo changing her mind and wanting to marry Laurie after all but being too late for it?? That whole part was weird and felt wrong.)
And like. I do in fact read Jo as aromantic? But to me that's why the Jo/Bhaer ship works so well - it doesn't read to me as being romantic at all, no, and that's maybe at least in part why a lot of people aren't on board. But it's about two people who love each other dearly and have a great deal in common deciding they'd be happiest sharing their lives together, and that doesn't have to be romantic. And I think that's beautiful.
(And speaking of Jo's queerness, oh my god in the book Jo reads to me as SO EXTREMELY GENDERQUEER and younger me never noticed! But WOW. And the movie managed to incorporate a few bits of this aspect of Jo, which I really appreciated.)
Anyway, aside from my disappointment in literally everything about how Bhaer is handled in the movie, I really loved so much. Like, the way that the March family dynamics are portrayed is incredible. And I loved that the particular closeness between Jo and Beth got some focus, and the significant looks of understanding between Jo and Marmee in moments when Jo is working hard to keep her temper. And the connection between Beth and old Mr Laurence! I do have a real fondness for that. And I was glad that the difficulties between John and Meg over money are included, showing how even when you genuinely love someone and are happy to have made the choice to join your lives together in full knowledge of what it means, that it can still be hard.
The movie faced the challenge that any movie adaptation would, of how to portray characters who start the book children and end as adults. For example, Amy is 12 when the book opens and, if I'm doing my math right, is in the neighbourhood of 22 by the end. And Jo is 15/25. Having one actor play the character throughout makes it feel super weird when the actor is playing too far outside their age range - like, the actor playing Amy in this movie was acting her heart out to try to seem like a 12 year old but SHE LOOKS LIKE AN ADULT. But it's also weird to recast the characters, because honestly the book doesn't have that much in the way of a time-skip, like there's a three year skip between Part The First and Part The Second but the vast majority of the growing up happens on page, so at what point do you switch actors? So this movie did the best it could with the situation it found itself in, and I don't think it could have done it better than it did, it was just....noticeable.
I also didn't like the way the movie rearranged some of the timeline and events of what happens in Europe between Amy and Laurie, as I thought it made that romance come across rather less well. Although honestly maybe that was the point it was trying to make???? That Amy was trading out one mercenary practical marriage option for another? I would believe that of this movie. Except that it did seem to be trying to say that they really did love each other, even though it showed none of that happening, and only really dwelt on the part where Laurie was moping about in dissipation and Amy being frustrated with him. IDK.
Anyway. I guess that anytime the movie was about the March family alone, with no other characters involved, I was 100% there for what it was doing, it was just with some of the things involving outside characters that I had more questions. And most of the movie IS about the March family, so mostly I truly adored the movie! Most of my complaints (other than about Bhaer) are honestly pretty minor ones. And if I weren't an inveterate Jo/Bhaer shipper from childhood I think I would love this movie.
Sigh.
The version of the book I read through this time, by the way, was an annotated version, which also included a lengthy introduction and prequel giving historical context from Louisa May Alcott's own life. Which was really interesting! I feel like the quality of the annotations was merely fine - I've read better annotated books, but I've also read worse, and some of the annotations were genuinely helpful and interesting but others I have complaints about. But the intro/preface were really helpful in better understanding the place from which Alcott wrote the novel.
Which is relevant for the movie, actually, because the characters in the book are in large part based on Alcott's own family, and in a number of ways the movie added extra stuff from Alcott's real life that she hadn't put into the book. I don't remember all of the specifics anymore, unfortunately, but the complexities around the conclusion are definitely drawing from these extra-textual sources.
Louisa May Alcott based the character of Jo on herself, and Alcott actually never married. And was a strong proponent of the idea that marriage is not the only valuable thing a woman can do with her life! And Alcott was against the idea of Jo and Laurie ever marrying in the world of the story, despite all of her fans being into that ship, after the first half of Little Women was published.
When the first half sold well enough to merit writing a second half, Alcott originally wanted Jo to end a spinster, but her publisher told her that she'd better have all the girls marry. And Alcott was all about the mercenary interests of publishing because she had grown up very poor and wanted to keep her family from having to experience that kind of financial instability again. So she came up with Bhaer in order to fulfill what was necessary for Jo without having to bow to popular opinion on Jo/Laurie.
So you can see why the creators of the movie thought that adding ambiguity and doubt to the Jo/Bhaer relationship was justified! Even if I disagree with the choice.
Alcott kept writing about these characters after the second half of Little Women; their story doesn't just end there. And the sequels (Little Men and Jo's Boys) are all about the school that Jo and Bhaer run, so there's loads more canon about their relationship, and if the movie creators were willing to draw on material beyond the text of Little Women itself, as they so clearly were when they drew from Alcott's life, why couldn't they have also looked to the sequels? Where it's so clear that Jo and Bhaer have a healthy and happy relationship!
But even if they didn't look to the sequels, if you look at just what's on the pages of Little Women itself, I still think that Jo/Bhaer is a valid and reasonable ship to be into. And I am into it, and the movie is not, and so the movie and I cannot be as good friends as I hoped we would be.
So it goes.
no subject
The obvious solution is to film it over the course of many years. You don't need to take a full decade - start when the actors are ~ 2 years older than their youngest appearance, end when they're ~ 2 years younger than their oldest appearance. That's about six years, or five if you cadge it a little more.
no subject