View Poll Results: Little Women

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Thread: Little Women (Greta Gerwig)

  1. #26
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    It's annoying. I hate this kind of editing. There's a long take after a dialog scene early in the film and it immediately cuts to a shot of outside the house in a completely different timeline. And because of the reasons Irish mentioned where the age of the characters is indistinguishable, it pulls you out of the emotional connection which is basically telling your brain, "RESET!! we are going to be talking about something completely different here."
    Aren't you a fan of Christopher Nolan?

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  2. #27
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Ezee E (view post)
    Aren't you a fan of Christopher Nolan?
    Not seeing the connection there.
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  3. #28
    Screenwriter Lazlo's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    Not seeing the connection there.
    Nolan's most recent movie was entirely built around a device of three different timelines overlaid that isn't immediately clear to the viewer.

    No sweat if it didn't work for you in Little Women, it played beautifully to me. Past informing the present. Especially the sequence around [
    ]
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  4. #29
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Lazlo (view post)
    Nolan's most recent movie was entirely built around a device of three different timelines overlaid that isn't immediately clear to the viewer.

    No sweat if it didn't work for you in Little Women, it played beautifully to me. Past informing the present. Especially the sequence around [
    ]
    And Memento was a film in reverse. I see this as two different things. One is a structure of a movie that stays consistent with the rules established in the film. The other is a single story being told, where random cuts happen because... because script? There really is no reason why, they just happen. They don't add any more weight to the scenes. They don't add anything. It hurts the film more than it supports.

    I enjoyed the story, I'm just pointing out how frustrating it is to be emotionally tied to scene only to have it ripped away suddenly.

    If Ford v Ferrari didn't exist, this would be the most overrated film of the year.

    Edit: Crap, no the Irishman.
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  5. #30
    Screenwriter Lazlo's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    And Memento was a film in reverse. I see this as two different things. One is a structure of a movie that stays consistent with the rules established in the film. The other is a single story being told, where random cuts happen because... because script? There really is no reason why, they just happen. They don't add any more weight to the scenes. They don't add anything. It hurts the film more than it supports.

    I enjoyed the story, I'm just pointing out how frustrating it is to be emotionally tied to scene only to have it ripped away suddenly.

    If Ford v Ferrari didn't exist, this would be the most overrated film of the year.

    Edit: Crap, no the Irishman.
    Haha, all three of those overrated movies are in my top ten of the year. I never felt ripped away in Little Women, but, hey, different strokes.
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  6. #31
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    My mother is a huge Louisa May Alcott fan, also a writer and she just released a novel this year about Alcott's life called In the Orchard of the Little Women... no translation to English as of right now, and well, the world soon went to shit. At first I thought I'd never read Little Women, but as I watched this adaptation (which I'm positive is the fist I've seen) I realized that it was one of the first books I ever read, when I was five or six years old (yes, I was a very early reader), because it was one of those my mother gave me, along with Emilio Salgari, Conan Doyle, The Sons of Captain Grant, Pinocchio and Daddy Long Legs.

    Despite the pleasure of having this buried childhood memory suddenly pop up back in my head (analog to what I experienced when I watched The Real Ghostbusters on Netflix and realized I remembered every episode), I wasn't the biggest fan of Gerwig's film. My biggest contention points, same as the others on this thread, are the jumbled chronology which really hurts the film and strips the story of any momentum and genuine emotion and the modern day, "revisionistic" touches which are frankly kind of eye-rolling. This point was recently addressed in the Portrait of a Lady on Fire thread, but I believe it's different - Sciomme wrote an original story and had her characters approach their conflicts from a contemporary point of view, while Gerwig takes an existing story and sort of arbitrarily overwrites what her PC sensibilities give her trouble accepting, which I find all kinds of lame.

    I won't say this is a terrible film because it's not. I thought there was something a bit cool about the way Gerwig infused the dialogue with a screwball comedy tempo, and Saoirse Ronan is just an incredible actress all around. Like Leonardo Di Caprio, she's one of those thespians who have a very particular face and yet are incredibly versatile at the same time.
    Last edited by Grouchy; 03-21-2020 at 03:28 PM.

  7. #32
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    What are some "revisionistic" touches that bother you? There are some stuff here and there that I thought were Gerwig's additions but found afterwards that actually Alcott's, just not from the actual Little Women text.
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  8. #33
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Peng (view post)
    What are some "revisionistic" touches that bother you? There are some stuff here and there that I thought were Gerwig's additions but found afterwards that actually Alcott's, just not from the actual Little Women text.
    I know from talking to my mom that Jo's views on marriage are actually Alcott's... I mostly just meant the part where Gerwig films the novel's romantic happy ending while having the actual character deconstruct it. I bet they thought that was clever but it just came off as dupliticious and silly to me. But you actually seem more informed than me. What stuff do you mean, specifically?

  9. #34
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    It's actually that ending. I can't deny if the execution doesn't work for you, but personally I think it's a grand way to honor both the original text, of having Jo married, and Alcott's original intention, of having Jo remain single. But like Ronan's Jo at the film's end here, Alcott was pressured by tradition at the time to have Jo end up with someone, so Alcott at least went out of the way against the readers' "shipping" of Jo/Laurie, making it be someone completely different than Laurie (and almost "unsuitable" for those time, older and no boy-next-door quality).

    Alcott wrote to a friend, Alf Whitman, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse & out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect."

    And from her journal when she started the second "book" (actually the second half of Little Women; it's originally one book that ends with the March father returning home, and after she wrote the adult part when it's successful, they are both combined into one book): "Began the second part of “Little Women.” I can do a chapter a day, and in a month I mean to be done. A little success is so inspiring that I now find my “Marches” sober, nice people, and as I can launch into the future, my fancy has more play. Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life. I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please any one."




    I know about Alcott's sentiment when reading article about the film, but seeing her actual words just now when googling to make this post, I kinda love how grumpily proto-GRRM she is about her works.
    Last edited by Peng; 03-21-2020 at 05:52 PM.
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  10. #35
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    That does put the ending of the film on a better perspective. My judgment might have been rushed.

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