What is it like adapting a timeless classic for the big screen?
Well, Little Women helmer Greta Gerwig talked about the process of bringing a new version to life (for the seventh time) in a Q&A after an Awardsline screening of the film.
The most important thing for her was to delve deep into the source material, that is Louisa May Alcott’s 19th-century novel.
“The last time I had read it was at 14,” she recalled. “Then, I read it when I was 30, and I felt like I had never read it before. I couldn’t believe how modern and pressing and urgent the message of the book was. There seemed to be all these themes running underneath it that were right there about women and authorship and ownership and art and ambition and money. I just thought, ‘Oh — this is all the stuff that I’m interested in.’ And it was right here in this book that I loved so much, but I never really noticed it.”
She also made it a point to film in on location, that is Concord, where Alcott lived and set her story. “Everything there is just stunningly beautiful and preserved,” she said. “Pretty much anywhere you point the camera it looks like a Winslow Homer painting.”
The film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, James Norton, Louis Garrel, Chris Cooper, and Meryl Streep.
