I watched the 1994 version of Little Women Friday afternoon, since I recently found it in the 5 dollar bin at Wal-Mart and bought it. I first saw this movie when I was nine with my mother when it first came out. We went, not because I asked to, but because she wanted me to go with her in what, I suppose, was intended to be a mother-daughter bonding activity. I remember this outing for a number of reasons, partially because many of the film’s scenes have stuck with me ever since then and because it’s the first time I can remember desperately wanting to hide something I felt from my mother. Needless to say, the outing probably didn’t come out quite as she intended. I was surprised at how many of the film’s moments I remembered (Amy and her limes, Laurie coming out of his hiding spot, Jo cutting her hair, both times Beth’s on her death bed, Amy’s plunge into the ice) as well as how those scenes that either scared the crap out of me or really resounded with me didn’t this time around. When I was nine, I was so distressed at Beth’s first “dying” scene I convinced my mother that I absolutely had to leave the theater to go to the bathroom (she wasn’t too happy about leaving the theater as I recall). I tried this the second time around, but to no avail. So, my nine year-old self sat next to my mom, biting my lip hard to keep from crying because I was too embarrassed to tell her watching Beth die really upset me. Maybe, this time around, because I knew it was coming it wasn’t as traumatic. Or maybe its because I’m older and have experienced the death of a family member, or maybe its because I can better separate fiction and reality. But what I think it really is, is that when I was nine I identified most closely with Beth. Like Beth, I played the piano, tried to help people when I could, liked babies (fat lot of good that does Beth!), and was often painfully shy. Watching the movie this time, I found it hard to identify with anyone but Jo, not because she’s the type of woman I have grown into, but because she’s the girl the film highlights by virtue of giving her the strongest voice and having her narrate the film. The other girls took a backseat to Jo, and to my much older eyes, had less developed, more stereotypical, flat characters. Despite that, give Kirsten Dunst a hand, she’s a fabulous Amy.
Oh, one more thing, when I first watched Little Women I told my mom, “Wow, they must have to have waited a long time for all of Jo’s hair to grow back!” She told me “No, they probably just did all the scenes with her long hair first.” I was shocked they didn’t make a film in the right order. How would they know what’s going on! So, like the book does for so many, this movie represents a coming of age for me. I wonder if the fact that my growing up is encompassed and wrapped up in the viewing of a movie says something about our culture.