Part of Little Women
Friday, February 14, 2020, 7:15 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Bartos

Dir. Greta Gerwig. 2019, 135 mins. 35mm. With Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Letts, and Bob Odenkirk. Fresh off her remarkably assured directorial debut (Lady Bird), Greta Gerwig aims high with this unblushingly bold, richly appointed adaptation of Louisa May Alcott'scherished classic. Punctuating her script with revelatory confessions from Alcott's own diaries, Gerwig exhumes the novel's hiddenmost currents of anger, longing, and finally revolutionary uplift. If Saoirse Ronan's Jo March rivals Katharine Hepburn's iconic rendition for sheer tomboyish pluck, the film she inhabits pushes farther by finally allowing her ownership, literally, of her own story. A visually delectable film with European flavoring provided by French cinematographer Yorick Le Saux and British costume designer Jacqueline Durran. Nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture. "Generous, sincere, full of critical intelligence and honest sentiment, self-aware without the slightest hint of cynicism, grounded in the particulars of life and accessible to everyone. Don’t let the diminutive title fool you. Little Women is major.” -A.O. Scott, New York Times