This Film Not a Little Movie

Emma Watson as Meg March; Saoirse Ronan as Jo March; Florence Pugh as Amy March; and Eliza Scanlen as Beth March. Image from movie web site: www.littlewomen.movie, as are other images.

OK, it’s not an original play on words—the New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott, who loved it, used the same turn of phrase. But it works.

“Little Women” is a giant movie. I saw 98 percent of it (I was stuck in a long popcorn line for the first 2 minutes) Tuesday, and it was a great way to end the year. It’s also good in order to practice learning to type new words like “Saoirse Ronan.”

Count me, I guess as a serious Saoirse fan—I loved her in “Lady Bird,” and think she’s perfect as Josephine March, the main character of “Little Women.”

The March sisters.

And she was not alone. One of the joys of this movie is its ensemble cast. Anything that has both Meryl Streep and Laura Dern in it sounds like it could be pretty fantastic, and both shine in this film. At one point, Laura as the mother confesses to Jo that she is angry every day of her life—and we (even me, an old man) can viscerally feel why.

Sure, it’s a movie with a feminist sensibility. But it doesn’t bash men, instead it ruminates thoughtfully on what it means to be female—and not just how the “patriarchy” defines that term, but also how women view the concept. It’s Aunt March, after all, who advises Jo that “nobody makes their own way” and she should devote herself to marrying well.

Aunt March wasn’t wrong, in an important way. No man makes his own way, either—all people depend on each other, to some extent, but women in the 19th century faced particular issues, including marriage laws that made property a male domain. And yes, I know that although we have more advanced laws now, women still face many of the same enduring societal prejudices, which is part of what makes “Little Women” feel both contemporary and a historic drama.

More images from movie web site.

It’s also great to see young women being portrayed as people—having intelligence, moods, emotions, affections, hostilities, fights and reconciliations.

With the possible exception of Daddy March, who doesn’t do much but show up and stay placidly in the background, there are interesting male characters here, too. I spent part of the movie being slightly irritated at Chris Cooper—not because he doesn’t play the part of Mr. Laurence well—he, like most of the cast, seems to live the role. It’s that his voice was so familiar that I knew this actor without recognizing him in his 19th century whiskers.

Mr. Laurence gives the March girls Christmas food, and a piano for Beth, and we understand why and believe he would do it.

The movie has an interesting narrative form. Rather than follow a straight timeline, it moves back and forth, which helps connects early events to consequences later on. Yet, it was easy to follow—the plot was not all that convoluted. Lighting helps, of course, as later scenes are darker than the brighter scenes set earlier.

That narrative form totally worked. Frankly, all of the movie totally worked.

One sequence in the movie that I loved watching was seeing Jo March overlooking the printing of the first copies of her book—the setting of type, the pages on the press, cutting and trimming the parts of the books and gluing them to a red leather cover—for a media history teacher, it was a wonderful sequence.

And the writing itself was well represented, Jo wielding her fountain pen until her hand cramped and she had to switch to left-handed writing, laying out scenes and rearranging them. It is a reminder what a blessing modern word processing can be, although a shame we don’t always use our superior tools for such deft story telling. It’s also a reminder of the level of commitment and thought that any writing demands if it is to be done well.

I don’t know for sure if I’ll go see “Little Women” again in the theater, although if the opportunity came up and someone wanted to go, I would be so there for them. I’m sure later this year when it becomes available in DVD, I’ll be buying it and watching it over and over.

It’s that kind of movie. As Scott says, it was not a little movie at all. It was grand.

Memoirs that Make Me Wonder on The Why of XY

Earlier this on this blog, I noted that I enjoyed reading Michelle Obama’s memoir this summer.

Well, last night I finished “Godland” by Lyz Lenz. Immediately before that, I read “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah.

Reading them back to back was not really by design, but it seems a fortunate coincidence. I liked both books—both authors have interesting stories to tell, and are worth your time if you enjoy memoirs. And I see some parallels between these works by a African late-night comedy show host and an opinion columnist at my local newspaper.

One uniting theme is that, for an old white man (today is by 61st birthday), both books have interesting insights into the lives of women. That may be obvious in Lenz’s book and less obvious in Noah’s. But Trevor Noah’s memoir is very much a rumination on his relationship with the single woman who brought him onto this globe—his mom, who was shot in the head by his stepfather.

Noah’s book first—it's filled with poignant anecdotes and is also quite funny. That may seem strange for a book that concludes with the aforementioned violence, but (spoiler alert), his mother survived with minor injuries, the bullet passing through her head without entering her brain or destroying another life-required structure.

The book is very accessible—the fact that Trevor grew up in another culture on another continent somehow makes the stories of his misspent youth resonate more. Weren’t we all young and awkward and struggling to understand our moms? But the book left me angry at the universe, in a way, partly because the man who shot Noah’s mother suffered very little in return.

The patriarchy strikes again.

Speaking of anger, there is a fair amount of it in “Godland,” but mostly there is a yearning for completeness and a quest for it. Lenz wrote about the time when her marriage broke down and she was left adrift, seeking a new spiritual home as she rejected the male dominated churches she had been at home in.

The end of “Godland” is pretty powerful, and sneaked up on a me a bit, just because I had not looked ahead and didn’t know the number of footnote pages there would be. I was reading last night, and thought that this chapter, about her experience in a new church, not only seems pretty powerful, but is bringing the themes of this book together.

And I turned the page, and there was half a page of text facing footnotes. Well, cool? Except I wasn’t quite ready for it to be over, and I wish Lenz had written more. Well, that's a measure of a book you like, I suppose, that you yearn for the time you engrossed in it when it ends. At least with her new job at The Gazette, I'll be getting fairly frequent Lenz fixes anyway.

Although both Lenz and Noah have very different religious attitudes and different faith backgrounds, God is a potent character in both books, too. Across time and continents, Jesus can provide some pretty universal themes, which I guess is not really a surprise, but was interestingly on display in these books.

One contrast between these two books is that Lenz does a lot more reporting, while Noah is sticking with his personal experiences. Yet, Noah’s book, which roams over his childhood, high school years and early career, felt “broader” to me. It stretches over more time in his life, while Lenz wrote a tighter personal narrative on a narrower snapshot of her life.

Still, my own personal journey was, in some small measure, enriched by these two writers. And as an old man, I don’t feel that I understand women—but then again, they don’t understand me. In fact, I often don’t understand most men, either—in this life, gender is significant, but not the full story of our joint and severed humanity which makes all of us complicated individuals.

And I consider myself a feminist. I want all humans to be unfettered by biology in their personal journeys—life will throw enough barriers in our ways, we don’t need assumptions or ideas about masculinity or femininity to add to our burdens.

Yet, as demonstrated in both books, women have challenges that are weighted differently. Being heard. Being accepted as leaders. Being paid. Being acknowledged as full-fledged adults. And also, not being shot in the head by angry significant others—those are all human struggles, but they fall unfairly on the XX chromosome-bearing members of my species compared to those of us who express XY traits.

I don’t know why. The reasons are complicated.

And although answers may be elusive, the injustice is simple to see. And both of these books help with that.