LITTLE WOMEN
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne, Trini Alvarado, Christian Bale, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, Samantha Mathis, Susan Sarandon. Screenplay: Robin Swicord. Director: Gillian Armstrong.
It would be a tremendous disservice to think of LITTLE WOMEN as a picture post card with a plot. Sure, it is lovingly photographed, rich in atmosphere and steeped in period detail. But does Louisa May Alcott's saga of 19th century adolescence have anything to say in 1994? Is it really *about* anything? The answer is a resounding yes. It's about family, love, and the struggle of young women to find their voice. As brought to life by a magnificent cast and directed with restraint by Gillian Armstrong, LITTLE WOMEN is sweet, glorious and relevant.
Set in Civil War-era Massachusetts, LITTLE WOMEN is the story of the March family: aspiring writer Jo (Winona Ryder); social Meg (Trini Alvarado); shy, frail Beth (Claire Danes); and romantic Amy (Kirsten Dunst, later Samantha Mathis). Living with their mother (Susan Sarandon) while their father is off fighting the war, the Marches struggle with matters financial and personal. Jo befriends a wealthy young man (Christian Bale), and Meg is courted by a teacher (Eric Stoltz). Eventually, Jo finds herself in New York to pursue her craft, where she meets Friedrick Baehr (Gabriel Byrne), a German scholar who sees potential in her that even she herself is unable to recognize.
Director Armstrong, who addressed the subject of women struggling in a man's world in MY BRILLIANT CAREER, has done a splendid job with this latest version of the oft-filmed story. She never attempts to inject inappropriate action into the narrative, and keeps her actors quiet and naturalistic. She is also assisted by a wonderful technical crew. Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson captures snow-covered landscapes and glowing fall colors with grace, and production designer Jan Roelfs fills the screen with lovely interiors. The crowning touch is Thomas Newman's beautiful score, which perfectly complements the beautiful images Armstrong provides.
The primary reason the screen glows, however, is a remarkable cast which features the most talented young actresses in the business. Jo is the showcase role, and Winona Ryder gives her most complete performance yet in taking it on; she is full of ambition, joy, and self-doubt. Physically, she's quite wrong for the part (it's hard to believe anyone would consider Ryder's hair her "one beauty," even without makeup), but she's so impressive emotionally that her looks can be forgiven. Trini Alvarado is an effervescent Meg, and Kirsten Dunst, fresh from her triumph in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, is the perfect image-conscious Amy. Claire Danes, from TV's critically-praised by largely unwatched "My So-Called Life," may be the best of the bunch. Beth's role is small, but Danes injects phenomenal emotion into every one of her scenes, and her large, sad eyes guarantee that many eyes in the audience will be damp at certain moments. As a group (and including Susan Sarandon as the progressive matriarch), they are so uniformly good that they seem to keep making each other better.
What may be most impressive about this LITTLE WOMEN, adapted by Robin Swicord, is how it seems as though it might have been written yesterday. There is no anachronism in Alcott's Transcendentalist proto-feminism, though upon first glance it might appear so. These little women struggle with all the issues involved in becoming grown women, from the mundane (Meg's concern about the dress she wears to a society function) to the profound (coping with the difficulties of love). Most of all, they struggle to assert themselves as individuals in a world which still questions their motives for wanting to be individuals. Jo is frustrated in her first attempts at publishing her work because she is attempting to something and someone else; her realization that her own experience is valid, and that she can touch others through its expression, is a revelation.
I saw LITTLE WOMEN in a theater where perhaps one third of the audience consisted of girls under sixteen. LITTLE WOMEN may be a story to which they are most attuned, but it is a delight for anyone who appreciates genuine emotion, insight, and beautiful filmmaking.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 little women: 9.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews