In other words, she tugged at the threads of these throughlines and wove them together to create a succession of events whose order is determined not by linear time, but by the inner emotional logic of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. She met that challenge by organizing her storytelling not by a chronology of time, but a chronology of emotion.
Gerwig was faced with the challenge to translate the full weight of discovery, heartache, intimacy, and ambition present in Alcott’s telling of these four lives into a mere 135 minutes. One of the book’s strengths is its narrative throughlines which manage to tie together the distinct wanderings of the four sisters into one cohesive whole: the metaphor of pilgrimage, for instance, or even Jo’s dedication to storytelling, both act as such throughlines for Alcott’s sprawling tale. The story of Little Women spans a great deal of time, following our sister protagonists from their childhood pastimes all the way to their adulthood anxieties. Greta Gerwig’s central decision in directing this film, the decision which informed all other decisions, was to break away from a single, linear timeline.
#BETHS BREAKAWAY HOW TO#
It reminded us of what is most true at a moment when our very next breaths seemed to take us into a tragic new world.īut what I’m here to talk about today is the unique task of Alexandre Desplat’s film score-in light of director Greta Gerwig’s decisions as to how to tell the story-and why a specific song on that score unfailingly reduces me to tears with every listen.
#BETHS BREAKAWAY MOVIE#
For starters, Spotify told me so its end-of-year report informed me that my favorite album was Little Women, my favorite artist was Alexandre Desplat, and my favorite song was “Christmas Breakfast.” Perhaps this is because in December 2019, it was the last movie my wife and I had seen together in our beloved Belcourt Theater before the pandemic, and we’ve remained captivated by it ever since. It is no exaggeration to say that the soundtrack from 2019’s Little Women got me through 2020.
0 kommentar(er)
