I'd never seen this problem portrayed anywhere until I saw the end of Lady Bird, but now I realize it's always been one of the foundational questions of Little Women and Gerwig just brought it out because it's one of her major preoccupations as an artist
-
-
Prikaži ovu nit
-
it's often mistaken for a millennial fear of failing to achieve one's potential, but that's not how I read it at all; I see it as a shocked, pained recognition that one's teen-girl self was the best version of one's self
Prikaži ovu nit -
that the teen-girl iteration of you was the purest, truest, most authentic expression of your soul, with the deepest capacity for joy and delight in the world and in yourself; you took up space in the world, you sparkled
Prikaži ovu nit -
the shattered look on Saorsie's face at the end of Lady Bird -- that panicked glance around the city, the thousand-yard stare -- is (in my interpretation) her realization that the "Lady Bird" version of herself has died and isn't coming back
Prikaži ovu nit -
and has been replaced by this anxious wallflower of a woman whose main concern is not looking stupid in front of men; and tragically, she KNOWS this, but knowing isn't enough to make it stop
Prikaži ovu nit -
so this is the question on which Lady Bird ends, and now it's the central subject of Little Women: how do you make a meaningful life for yourself if you peaked as a teenage girl? (or, in Laurie's case, if you never even got the chance to BE a teenage girl)
Prikaži ovu nit -
Meg/Emma Watson is obviously the weakest character/cast member, but on my second viewing I thought she embodied this problem really well: in all the flashback scenes she looks RADIANT, and in the present-day scenes she looks so fucking sad, depleted, dead inside
Prikaži ovu nit -
and her life is objectively good! John Brook seems like a wonderful husband, their marriage is a happy one, she loves her kids, she even has her family nearby, she's very lucky...but her eyes are dead like Saorsie's at the end of Lady Bird
Prikaži ovu nit -
to some extent it's a universal problem (we grow up, we put away childish things), but it's also very much a political problem (when society slots you into the "woman" category, it necessarily kills at least part of your soul)
Prikaži ovu nit -
on my second viewing, I thought the ambiguous ending of Little Women was proposing two possible answers to the question of how to continue living; and surprisingly, I don't think it had as much to do with the question of marriage, per se, as everyone thinks it does
Prikaži ovu nit -
what struck me on my second viewing is that the "Jo is married" ending is a vision of COMMUNITY, practically a commune: the whole family is together, surrounded by children, everyone pursuing their talents and dreams
Prikaži ovu nit -
I cried to notice that Meg seems to be teaching an acting class, Amy is teaching painting, and Laurie is holding the baby; everyone is together (except Beth), it's the closest possible approximation of a total return to adolescence
Prikaži ovu nit -
it's like writer-Jo's gift to herself and her sisters: a vision of the best of all possible worlds, and a not-entirely-impossible vision at that
Prikaži ovu nit -
but then the other ending, in which Jo is a novelist who writes "Little Women," is a different sort of happy ending, a more capitalist one: Jo has remained true to herself, but I think she's also terribly alone, and that's the trade-off she's chosen to make in this timeline
Prikaži ovu nit -
neither ending feels entirely right (in one, Jo is unconvincingly married and a thwarted writer; in the other, she's alone and her once-close family is fragmented), and I think maybe that's the point -- NOTHING will entirely bring back what Jo and her sisters had as girls
Prikaži ovu nit -
that's why (thanks to
@anyamicaela for pointing this out, I missed it on my first viewing) the second-to-last shot is of all four March sisters as little girls, holding toy swords in the air like musketeers -- dissolving to the final shot of the film: Jo, alonePrikaži ovu nit -
real talk: I'm crying again just typing out these tweets. Little Women means SO MUCH to me
Prikaži ovu nit
Kraj razgovora
Novi razgovor -
Čini se da učitavanje traje već neko vrijeme.
Twitter je možda preopterećen ili ima kratkotrajnih poteškoća u radu. Pokušajte ponovno ili potražite dodatne informacije u odjeljku Status Twittera.