Thematically, it's at once very political and of-the-moment, and also faithful to the core message of Alcott's novel. By not explicitly mentioning their Christianity, Gerwig allows viewers to focus more on the March's actions instead of their motivations - namely, putting empathy into practice to help those worse off than themselves, and welcoming those who are often excluded as the "other". This is particularly important in their charity towards the Hummels, an impoverished immigrant family whom they frequently visit and help. However, the main way Christianity features in the novel is through the March's commitment to living out Protestant ideals of charity and kindness. In the novel, the book Pilgrim's Progress makes consistent appearances, and the March girls' father, played in the film by Bob Odenkirk, is a reverend. The March's Christian faith plays a large role in the original novel, but isn't nearly as prominent in Little Women 2019. Related: Little Women 2019 Ending Explained: Why The Big Change Is Awesome The Role of Faith The emotional storytelling her is so clear due in part to this restructuring, and Gerwig trusts viewers to come on the journey with her.
In the beginning of Gerwig's film, Jo is an uncertain artist who doesn't yet know her worth, or that of her words. The end result is a clear emotional arc, even if the events do not happen as written. A scene will move to the next through a thread of emotion and association, stringing together a compelling narrative that feels like watching Jo's memory. Little Women proceeds to jump back and forth, tracing the growth of the March sisters along character beats instead of in linear time.
While the novel opens with Christmas during the war, with the March girls all still in their teens, the movie opens with 25-year-old Jo March in a publisher's office in New York City. Little Women 2019 makes another major change to the structure of Alcott's novel the events are reordered. Although some Little Women purists may find this distracting, Gerwig layers in Alcott's story so deftly that it only enhances the overall message of the film without sacrificing that of the novel. It is fascinating to watch Gerwig mesh the two. Although Jo does get married while Alcott remained unmarried, their stories are very similar both in content and spirit. This meta-narrative is totally absent from Alcott's novel however, the story parallels Alcott's life. In the end, she has the first three chapters of what will become Little Women, the story that viewers are watching unfold. In a particularly effective montage, Gerwig shows Jo doing the hard work: her hands are covered in ink, she burns down countless candles, and her entire attic fills with carefully ordered pages, laid in neat rows one after another.
Over the course of the film, Jo matures as a person and as an artist, and learns how to do the painstaking work of crafting a story with care. Jo, played by Saoirse Ronan, is a writer, and at the beginning of the movie, she is not the best one, despite having innate talent. While Gerwig tells this story faithfully, she nonetheless alters the structure in major ways. One of the most obvious changes is the addition of a meta-narrative. The original Little Women is a straightforward story that tracks the lives of the four March sister - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - as they grow into young adults and tackle the specific challenges of being poor women in Civil War-era America. But that doesn't mean liberties weren't taken with the story and its ending.
Little Women 2019 is a raw and personal adaptation compared to the more rosy versions that have released before, and in doing so, it remains accurate to the source material. Related: Little Women: Every Adaptation Ranked (Including The 2019 Movie) The 1994 Little Women movie has been one of the more acclaimed adaptations, especially considering its cast, but Gerwig's 2019 Little Women movie attempted to modernize the story. Considering that it's one of the most cherished stories in American literature, it's frequently revisited. Little Women is an iconic story that has been adapted time and time again on film, television, and the stage, as well as in other forms of media. Some of these changes help with the flow of the story, while others work on a more thematic level, allowing the director to examine Little Women from new angles that feel distinctly modern. Greta Gerwig's Little Women movie is a fresh take on Louisa May Alcott's novel, which means there are some notable differences between the movie and book. Gerwig makes the classic story her own in several key ways.