Greta Gerwig’s ‘Little Women’ is a Christmas Movie

It’s become a tired cliché to argue that a non-holiday-centric film is in fact “a Christmas movie,” but Greta Gerwig‘s 2019 version of Little Women totally is. Released during the holiday rush, set during two pivotal Christmases, and brimming with the warm glow of familial love, it is an undeniably perfect movie to kick off your own holiday season. In fact, it’s undercurrent of melancholy and depiction of estrangement make it perhaps the perfect movie for Christmas 2020.

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women has been adapted countless times for the screen, but Gerwig’s story is the most viscerally raw version of the March family’s story. Set in the 1860s, Little Women follows the four March sisters — Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh) — as they struggle to come of age against the backdrop of the American Civil War, and later mature into womanhood. Guiding them through this tumultuous time is their impassioned mother Marmee (Laura Dern). Left to raise her daughters without the aid of their idealistic father (Bob Odenkirk), Marmee creates a home where imagination flourishes at the expense of propriety.

Colliding into the March sisters’ orbit is wealthy orphan Laurie (Timothée Chalamet). Left in the care of his gruff grandfather (Chris Cooper) and obsequious tutor Mr. Brooks (James Norton), the lonely boy is absolutely starving for the feminine warmth of the March clan. As soon as he meets tomboy Jo at a Christmas party, he invites himself into the sisters’ world — and changes it forever thanks to his family’s support and the love triangle he inspires between himself, Jo, and Amy.

However, that’s not all Little Women is about. It’s about mothers and daughters, the rivalry between sisters, and the battle that women artists wage against the expectations of the patriarchy. It’s about grief, destitution, and sticking to your values in the face of chaos. And yes, it is also about Christmas. In fact two of the film’s biggest scenes take place during the Christmas season.

Alcott’s book famously opens on Christmas morning, with the impoverished March sisters lamenting that it doesn’t feel like Christmas without any presents. Later, they agree to donate their lavish breakfast to an immigrant family who has it even worse. In exchange for this generosity, Laurie’s grandfather treats them to a delicious dinner spread. Gerwig takes this scene and pushes it later into the first act so that the moment feels all the more magical for the March girls.

In fact, Gerwig rips Alcott’s plot apart and stitches it back together on two parallel tracks. The first, which represents childhood, culminates in something of a Christmas miracle: when their father returns home from the front. The second follows the March siblings as they confront the loss of their sweetest sister, Beth. Gerwig lets the events of both timelines shadow each other, giving new pathos to the joy of adolescence and greater meaning to the hard-won successes of the sisters.

That the film ends the triumphant publication of Jo’s book feels like Christmas to me, personally. The moment that Jo hugs her first ever published novel as printers crank out more copies feels the same as someone opening the gift of their dreams on that same holiday morning. Indeed Gerwig frames this moment as the greatest gift Jo — or any creative woman — could receive. A book.

But setting and theme apart, Little Women is crackling with the kind of golden warmth that cuts through the coldest winter night. The love the March family has for each other is the universal ideal. The film’s message is that love, hope, and kindness will light the way through the darkest times. With these forces guiding them, the Marches overcome grief, trauma, and hardship.

Little Women is essentially a story that celebrates the same themes that Christmas is all about. But Greta Gerwig’s Little Women highlights the tumultuous tragedies that the March sisters have to endure before they get their happy, warmly lit ending. Because of that pathos, it is the ideal movie for this particularly holiday season.

Where to stream Little Women (2019)