Little Women (2019)

A minute-by-minute analysis of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

Blending film criticism with creative nonfiction, each book in the Timecodes series focuses on one film, exploring it minute by minute beginning with minute one, and ending with the final minute before the closing credits.

In 1868, Louisa May Alcott published the literary masterpiece, Little Women. Written in a heartfelt style that combines the Timecodes series’ dedication to close analysis alongside theoretical, cultural, social and personal reflection, Boljkovac intimately and thoroughly reveals how Alcott’s book and most recent screen adaptation, directed by Greta Gerwig (2019), is more than just a classic literary story. Gerwig’s Little Women releases – for the first time onscreen – Jo’s potential and the feminist queer resistance latent in the novel. This book furthers the momentum of the 2019 film in embracing Alcott’s 21st century thought. Eschewing theories of (auto-)biography, Boljkovac advances, via Gerwig, instances of feminist moving image (self-)portraiture that celebrate open-ended possibilities for women of any time.