The very title summons up preconceptions of treacly do-gooders in a smarmy children's story, and some of the early shots in "Little Women" do little to discourage them: In one of the first frames, the four little women and their mother manage to arrange their heads within the frame with all of the spontaneity of a Kodak ad.
But this is movie is not smarmy, not dogooding, and only a little treacly; before long I was beginning to remember, from many years ago, that Louisa May Alcott's Little Women was a really good novel -- one that I read with great attention.
Of course, I was 11 or 12 then, but the novel seems to have grown up in the meantime -- or maybe director Gillian Armstrong finds the serious themes and refuses to simplify the story into a "family" formula. "Little Women" may be marketed for children and teenagers, but my hunch is it will be best appreciated by their parents. It's a film about how all of life seems to stretch ahead of us when we're young, and how, through a series of choices, we narrow our destiny.
The story is set in Concord, Mass., and begins in 1862, in a winter when all news is dominated by the Civil War. The March family is on its own; their father has gone off to war. Times are hard, although it's hard not to smile when we find out how hard: "Firewood and lamp oil were scarce," we hear, while seeing the Marches living in what passes for poverty: a three-story colonial, decorated for a Currier and Ives print, with the cheerful family cook in the kitchen and the Marches sitting around the fire, knitting sweaters and rolling bandages.
The movie doesn't go the usual route of supplying broad, obvious "establishing" scenes for each of the girls; instead, we gradually get to know them, we sense their personalities, and we see how they relate to one another. The most forcible personality in the family is the tomboy daughter Jo, played in a strong and sunny performance by Winona Ryder. She wants to be a writer, and stages family theatricals in which everyone -- even the long-suffering cat -- is expected to play a role.
The others include wise Meg (Trini Alvarado) as the oldest; winsome Amy (Kirsten Dunst) as the youngest, and Beth, poor little Beth (Claire Danes), as the sickly one who survives a medical crisis but is much weakened ("Fetch some vinegar water and rags! We'll draw the fever down from her head!"). There isn't a lot of overt action in their lives, but then that's typical of the 19th century novel about women, which essentially shows them sitting endlessly in parlors, holding deep conversations about their hopes, their beliefs, their dreams and, mostly, their marriage destinies.
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