Greta Gerwig: "Little Women"

"Little Women" has a Marmee problem.

The character is tedious and gratingly pious; she is a non-entity. She is an absence on the screen--an absence, with dialogue.

Gerwig tried to solve this problem by adding in the interesting speech where Marmee admits she is angry every day of her life--but I see no evidence of anger-suppression in Laura Dern's performance. Not even in a little puff of mild anger wheezing in a distant corner. Dern's Marmee seems cheery as a pig in shit. Cheery inside and out. So that's baffling.

(Someone needs to coach Laura Dern through her interviews. In a recent Times piece, where she tried to explain her "approach" to Marmee, she sounded like someone Kristen Wiig would satirize on SNL. Dern's comments on "Big Little Lies" were similarly celestial and goopy and strangely non-sensical.)

"Little Women"'s Marmee problem isn't just limited to Marmee. Beth and Meg--especially Meg--are insufferably boring. Emma Stone had signed on to be Meg, at one point, and she cited schedule issues when she dropped out, but I wonder if the thinness of Meg's character is the thing that irked. (And substituting Watson for Stone is maybe not a wise move. We're not talking about comparable levels of talent here.)

Louisa May Alcott seemed to have a split personality: Half was capable of dreaming up the drippy cartoon saints I've described above, and the other half could paint in bold strokes. The other half gave us Jo, Auntie March, Amy--each riveting in her own way.

So--though I've complained, here--I did like a fair amount of the drama in the movie. And I admired Gerwig's intellectual rigor. And I appreciate her (covert) observation: There is maybe more that Hollywood can offer than another slice of male-on-male violence?

See this film.

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