"Women have minds and souls as well as just hearts, and they've got ambition and talent as well as just beauty. And I'm sick of people saying love is all a woman is good for. I'm so sick of it!! But I'm... I'm so lonely."
A confession: I've never read Little Women, and this is the first adaptation I've seen of the classic novel, though I've had a general idea of the story thanks to cultural osmosis and that one Friends episode. This is both a sheepish indictment of my reluctance to read slice-of-life stories and no guarantee that this film would speak to the die-hard fans of the literary version.
I enjoyed it a great deal, however. The cast did a stunning job, to my eyes, and though Saorise Ronan as Jo March was an undeniable stage stealer there was lots to love about each of them. The narrative also walked a good middle ground between being coherent and pleasing to newcomers while offering a new pathway through a familiar garden to the old guard. A movie can never capture all the depth of a novel, but it did seem to capture its heart. The audience I sat in laughed, and gasped, and of course wept - someone over to my upper right had a proper bawl, in fact. I hope it was the catharsis they needed.
The film refrained from being preachy, but it didn't shy from the obvious themes. Character-heavy storytelling at its best: there are many people, perspectives, and opinions, and some points are well made, and some personal realities may hit home. Certainly some hit me. As a woman; and as a woman who sometimes writes; and as a woman who is uncertain she loves... well. I am no Jo, but I am not any of them in whole, and that's the fun of it; to sometimes see myself reflected, and other times marvel at how different humans can be.
I liked the approach they took to the ending. It worked for me.
On the whole, warmly recommended and a good use of an afternoon.
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