the foremost wrenching line of “Little Women” was born during a quiet cabin within the woods.
It was just after Greta Gerwig's critically adored film “Lady Bird” competed within the 2018 Oscar race. "Lady Bird" star Saoirse Ronan, 25, acknowledged that Gerwig’s next project would likely be “Little Women” (in theaters Christmas Day) and made her impassioned pitch to play Jo.
Then Gerwig, 36, went off the map, needing solitude to attack a rewrite on her screenplay supported Louisa May Alcott’s wildly popular, semi-autobiographical novel, which chronicled the lives of 4 forthright, financially stricken sisters coming aged during the war. “After the entire madness of the Academy Awards was over, I went away to the woods for a few of weeks and just sat with everything and tried to puzzle it out,” she says.
And then it came: Jo’s seminal speech to Marmee (Laura Dern) within the attic after she's turned down Laurie's proposal of marriage (Timothee Chalamet) and sent him away, possibly forever.
Jo leaps up, her eyes brimming, trembling angrily.
"Women have minds and souls also as just hearts, and they’ve got ambition and talent also as just beauty. And I’m disgusted people saying that love is all a lady is fit . I’m so disgusted it!But – I’m so lonely!"
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The speech represents just how artfully Gerwig worked to weave Alcott's biographical details (the author never married and sustained her family through her writing) throughout her version of "Little Women."
"I pulled that (from the book) then I just wrote, ‘I’m so lonely’ at the top. I heard exactly how Saoirse says it within the movie in my head and that i started weeping,” says Gerwig. Months later, without prompting, that's exactly as Ronan performed it.
“It was so weird!" says Gerwig. "I do not know how that works.”
“There are certain folks that you only have this very, very special working bond with. I desire that’s what we've in bucketloads and we've always had that,” says Ronan.
"Little Women” is hallowed ground. The book has never been out of print since its 1868 debut, and die-hard fans of the 1994 film adaptation tend to resist new incarnations. Gerwig’s version is extremely new indeed, launching with the sisters as adults before layering in flashbacks.
“From the very beginning, she had a selected combat the movie,” says producer Amy Pascal, noting room for fans to like the "wonderful" old versions and therefore the new one, too. “She wanted to form it about women and economic independence and she or he wanted to intermingle Louisa May Alcott’s real experience with writing the book. it had been very ingenious.”
Under Gerwig’s watch, Jo is imbued with Alcott's fight to have her copyright over the objections of a chauvinistic editor. Florence Pugh’s Amy is tougher this time; she will go toe-to-toe with Jo. Eliza Scanlen’s Beth is as joyful as her end is tragic, Emma Watson’s Meg may be a materialistic martyr and Meryl Streep’s acid-tongued Aunt March is even more of a pill.
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Back within the fold from "Lady Bird," Chalamet calls Gerwig's set "open and joyous and loud. ... it had been one among the sweetest and replenishing (experiences) I’ve ever had.”
"Little Women" began filming just eight months after "Lady Bird" energized the Oscar race with five nominations. This time, Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach ("Marriage Story") were quietly pregnant with Harold, now 9 months old
Gerwig told nobody she was expecting, including Ronan, who had noticed her director was eating healthier and draping her frame woolen dresses and anoraks.
Production wrapped in December 2018 and “in January she called me and said she was having a baby," says Pascal. "I said, ‘That’s fantastic, when?’ and she or he said, ‘In two months.’ She didn’t want anyone to treat her differently and she or he knew inevitably, male or female, people would have.”
Where will “Little Women” go from here? Ronan scored a Golden Globe nod for enjoying Jo, but after missing key Screen Actors Guild nominations, the film has ground to hide before Oscar nominations on Jan. 13 – made undeniably harder by the very fact that “Little Women” is about women and made by a lady.
Just five women have ever been nominated for best director (including Gerwig for “Lady Bird”), and none twice.
“There is an unconscious bias that stories about women or stories about people that aren’t white are but stories about men and boys,” says Pascal, who doesn't think enough voters have seen the film yet.
But regardless of the incarnation of "Little Women," Beth's fate is where even the headstrong Jo falters. “She really believes, ‘I can stop it,’ " says Ronan, pointing to Jo's core-shaking belief she will cure her sister. "And then that's a really sad moment to understand when she's older that she can't.
"That's something that everybody goes through once they begin of childhood. Where they're like, all of the plans i assumed I could make and every one the choices i assumed I could make about which way my life was getting to go and who was getting to be in it – I even have no control over that in the least," Ronan says. "And there is a real weight thereto, you know?