Little Women (2019)
This movie was a tedious, overwrought bore. I have no idea what this movie was about: there seemed to be no story to tell or ideas to convey. What there is of a narrative arc was incoherent or irrelevant. The emotions are as fake and trumped up as in a television commercial. I found the time and location jumps as confusing as the motivations of the characters on screen. The director, Greta Gerwig, is for the most part competent but too often clumsy. And while some scenes were beautiful to look at, the artistry of the director is missing rendering much of the art direction pretty postcards. In short, this is no Merchant/Ivory production, not even close. There's also a needless, uncomfortable freneticism to much of the film, with many of the scenes starting with people entering a room manic and incessantly chattering. There are more comings and goings and touching and wailing and kissing and hugging than the story requires. Let's be honest here: this version of Little Women would not likely have enjoyed all the acclaim it has received if it wasn't for the fact that, for Hollywood, this was the year of the woman. So movies about women by women (director and screen writer Greta Gerwig), were cinema's new darling. Regrettably this director serves up endless and boring shots of women clinging to each other, stroking each other's hair, heads resting on laps and heads resting on shoulders, of women longingly looking out the window, tears of supressed joy and love and sadness...ad nauseum. Problem is, if this is supposed to be a modern version, and offer us an empowered way of looking at women in 2019, I'm not sure why it served up a steady two-hour offering of cheap sentiment and stereotypes, a pastiche of a girly movie from yesterday. Most of the characters didn't seem to be in the period the film was set making everything even more awkward to watch. The character played by Laura Dern seemed to belong in some other movie entirely. For me a huge problem with the movie was that the main character, Jo March, as played by Saoirse Ronan, was a total irritant. Her Jo was a bossy, controlling, blowhard you could not warm up to. Oh yes, but her hair was a constant mess presumably showing us how intense Jo was supposed to be. Is this really the new model for modern women? Even with the marvels of Florence Pugh as Amy March, Meryl Streep as Aunt March, and the terrific Louis Garrel as the impossible and come-from-nowhere lover, Little Women was a disappointment.
This movie was a tedious, overwrought bore. I have no idea what this movie was about: there seemed to be no story to tell or ideas to convey. What there is of a narrative arc was incoherent or irrelevant. The emotions are as fake and trumped up as in a television commercial. I found the time and location jumps as confusing as the motivations of the characters on screen. The director, Greta Gerwig, is for the most part competent but too often clumsy. And while some scenes were beautiful to look at, the artistry of the director is missing rendering much of the art direction pretty postcards. In short, this is no Merchant/Ivory production, not even close. There's also a needless, uncomfortable freneticism to much of the film, with many of the scenes starting with people entering a room manic and incessantly chattering. There are more comings and goings and touching and wailing and kissing and hugging than the story requires. Let's be honest here: this version of Little Women would not likely have enjoyed all the acclaim it has received if it wasn't for the fact that, for Hollywood, this was the year of the woman. So movies about women by women (director and screen writer Greta Gerwig), were cinema's new darling. Regrettably this director serves up endless and boring shots of women clinging to each other, stroking each other's hair, heads resting on laps and heads resting on shoulders, of women longingly looking out the window, tears of supressed joy and love and sadness...ad nauseum. Problem is, if this is supposed to be a modern version, and offer us an empowered way of looking at women in 2019, I'm not sure why it served up a steady two-hour offering of cheap sentiment and stereotypes, a pastiche of a girly movie from yesterday. Most of the characters didn't seem to be in the period the film was set making everything even more awkward to watch. The character played by Laura Dern seemed to belong in some other movie entirely. For me a huge problem with the movie was that the main character, Jo March, as played by Saoirse Ronan, was a total irritant. Her Jo was a bossy, controlling, blowhard you could not warm up to. Oh yes, but her hair was a constant mess presumably showing us how intense Jo was supposed to be. Is this really the new model for modern women? Even with the marvels of Florence Pugh as Amy March, Meryl Streep as Aunt March, and the terrific Louis Garrel as the impossible and come-from-nowhere lover, Little Women was a disappointment.