Let’s take a hot minute to discuss Greta Grewig’s Little Women, ladies. A giddy, clamouring and playful adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old novel, Gerwig enlivens the original source, fashioning a flick of cheerful chaos – merging timelines, competing characters and overlapping desires.

Little Women perfectly grasps the way in which we struggle to navigate who we are in life and who we want to be in life. And Gerwig’s bohemian, giggling, pastel adaptation foregrounds the continually pertinent themes of female fulfilment and recognition of women’s creativity. This film is warm, bustling and subtly evocative. Overall, it was an ideal Boxing Day watch; cosy without being cringe-worthy and soft without being sickly.

Yet there was one big problem with Little Women, and that is that men didn’t really seem to want to see it. Why not? Greta Gerwig’s jubilant movie starring Laura Dern, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothee Chalamet and Meryl Streep. Not a strong enough troupe? No. Louisa May Alcott’s classic story which examines the trials and tribulations of the March sisters - not for you? Didn’t really fancy it? Not sure it was your thing? I’ll ask again – why not?

We really need not look further than the recent Oscar nominations in search of an answer. I have to say that it was beyond refreshing to see Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite steal the show and for foreign cinema to be granted a modicum of prestige. Yet it was dismally familiar to note not a single female director nominated in the ‘Best Director’ category. That is – despite Little Women being nominated for Best Picture. At least it’s a great deal better than the BAFTAs, for which Little Women wasn’t nominated for Best Picture or Director.

For such a buzzing film, there was a real lack of energy surrounding this picture. It has been met with a lack of engagement, a lack of acknowledgment, and a lack of awards. It has fallen on deaf ears. It seems obvious to me that the lack of phenomena is complicity linked to the lack of male interest. ‘Women’s films’ (by which I mean both films by women and films about women) are not treated with the same importance, nor discussed in the same way as. This is fed by a view that says that so-called women’s stories are for women, and so-called men’s stories are universal. Women’s stories are a subset with women of colour being an even smaller subset.

Gerwig’s film is simply enjoyable and can be relished by anyone – that is, anyone who goes to see it. People can resonate with the determinism of Jo, the earnestness of Beth, the attentiveness of Beth, the rage and passions of Amy. There are clashing personalities here relevant to all genders. Of course, the movie will be best appreciated by those women who resonate with the passionate intensity and caged loneliness of the March sisters. And so, the film is pigeonholed and fails to be officially recognised as the joy it really is.

There are rebellions against such snubbing. Natalie Portman’s dress embroidered with the names of women such as Greta Gerwig, Lulu Wang, Melina Matsoukas and Celine Sciamma – the names of the female directors that hadn’t been nominated for their acclaimed work –  is a gleaming example of such protest.

Things are changing, of course. And I cannot ignore the fact that Gerwig’s Ladybird was nominated for five Oscars in 2018, receiving nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. More spaces are undeniably being made for women writing, directing and acting in the stories we want to tell. Saying that, the fact remains that only five female directors have ever been nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Ever. It might seem unrelenting, but women must continue to beat this drum. We need to see more female creatives in positions of power.

Men cannot be the standard from which all else silently deviates. We need to see more names of female directors on Golden Globes, not in golden thread. The real happy ending of Gerwig’s Little Women is the publishing of Jo’s book, not Jo’s marriage. The final sequence in which Jo watches over the binding and sealing of her novel vividly renders the conviction that until we write our own stories, we don’t know who we are.

Gerwig’s Little Women is alive and beating, and in her subtle merger of Jo and Alcott, Gerwig tips her hat to the story’s prevailing relevance. At the heart of this story are the March sisters figuring out who they are. The relationship the girls have with each other is the central focus, and that relationship is complicated and competitive, as well as educative and intimate. This is a depiction of female strength and determinism.

It might be that 150 years on we are still waiting for our stories to be entirely unbound and respected, but I have full faith in Gerwig’s ability to creatively champion women’s stories and women’s abilities.

Written by Polly Wyatt

Cover Photo: (Credit) The March sisters picnicking on the beach. From left to right: Emma Watson as Meg, Florence Pugh as Amy, Saoirse Ronan as Jo, and Eliza Scanlen as Beth. Little Women tells the story of their modest, imaginative girlhood. Author Louisa May Alcott based the story on her own upbringing.BY WILSON WEBB/© 2019 CTMG, INC.