Just weeks after fearing that male award season voters were overlooking them, the creators of Little Women are overjoyed to find that they’ve not only been seen, but also recognized with six Academy Award nominations — including best picture.
When the film first began to screen for awards consideration, strategists were troubled because RSVPs were skewed 2 to 1 for women over men, meaning many voters simply weren’t showing up. When the movie was largely snubbed by the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild, that worry became alarm.
After some attention, attitudes began to change, bringing a wave of Oscar nominations that the team now counts as a happy ending, although it wouldn’t be Little Women without a dash of heartbreak. Filmmaker Greta Gerwig, who received a nomination for adapted screenplay, was not listed among the directing contenders. (“Congratulations to those men,” actress-writer Issa Rae said Monday morning after helping announce the category.)
Producer Amy Pascal said the disappointment over that was shared by the rest of the cast and crew — but not by Gerwig herself. “I can say I wish it had been otherwise, but that’s not what she’s saying,” Pascal told Vanity Fair. “She’s saying, my actors got nominated, they recognized the beautiful screenplay she did … We all followed her. She was in every single part of all of these nominations.”
The film also received a lead actress bid for Saoirse Ronan’s uncompromising Jo March, supporting actress for Florence Pugh’s driven (sometimes abrasive) youngest sister Amy, best costume design for Jacqueline Durran (a now six-time nominee who previously won for 2012’s Anna Karenina) and original score for composer Alexandre Desplat (an 11-time nominee who previously won for 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and 2017’s The Shape of Water.)
There was an effort by midday Monday to not dwell on the snub, but rather celebrate the recognitions the film did receive. “I’m proud of it, and proud to be part of it,” Pugh told Vanity Fair. “For me, one of the things that really jumped out in this version is we are allowed to see just how difficult it was for women to succeed. They were all creative, they were all artists, and they all had big dreams, but due to that era they all had to give that up, except for Jo. That was something I hadn’t taken into account as heavily as this version highlighted.”
She singled out Gerwig for drawing that contemporary theme out of Louisa May Alcott’s 151 year old novel. “They’re incredibly creative and driven girls, and Greta has allowed them to have more of that and less of the love triangle, which was fun to see in the writing,” Pugh said.
Durran also used her nomination as a way to embrace Gerwig with praise. “I loved the collaboration with Greta. It was so thrilling to be working on this job, which was a story about the different paths women’s lives can take,” the costume designer said in an interview from London. “It was such a strong vision given by Greta, that we could then fill out in our own departments. Her take on it was bold, and interesting, and modern, and reflective.”
She explained Gerwig’s influence on the costumes by citing Jo’s interaction with the somewhat chauvinist editor (played by Tracy Letts). “The script opened with her going to the publishers, and it was described as she was this young girl who just arrived in New York, and she enters the room and all the men were sitting, smoking, with their feet on the desks and their hats on. It was intimidatingly male,” she said.
In that first sequence, Ronan’s hair hangs in girlish ringlets and her clothes are neat, prim and proper, but by the end of the movie, when she confronts the editor again and successfully asserts herself, her tie is bright red and as casually loosened as she is, and her bowler hat projects a masculine energy. “She’s kind of owning the space in the way she didn’t in the first scene,” Durran said. “It’s a woman’s hat, it just [reminds] us of a male hat. There were all sorts of loops like that. It was a very complex script.”
How did she feel about Gerwig’s absence in the directing category? “I’m not angry. I’m sad that she wasn’t there,” Durran said. “I’m sad that that’s not part of the celebration we’re having about the film, but it is what it is.”
While fans may be grumbling, Gerwig herself released a statement that was as inspiring as it was jubilant. “I am brimming with happiness — thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you (that’s six!) to the Academy,” she wrote. “This film of Little Women has been over thirty years in the making, from the very first time Louisa May Alcott and Jo March reached across time and space and made me believe I could be a writer and creator.”
She went on to say, “every single person who worked on this film poured their heart and soul into it, and we are all so grateful to the Academy for recognizing the collective effort. I am so personally proud of each person who worked on the film, and I am bursting with joy for all of them.”
“I hope our Little Women does for another generation of girls and women what it did for me: lights a fire to write your book, make your movie, sing your verse,” Gerwig concluded.
Pascal also expressed gratitude to all who encouraged others to see the film through word of mouth. That’s what changed the film’s awards prospects, she said. “Once the movie came out and people saw that it was for everyone, and was a movie about the sacrifices that all of us have to make, and a movie about family, I think the [awards narrative] changed,” Pascal said. “I was very gratified by that.”
The film cost an estimated $40 million, and has so far earned $74 million domestically since its Dec. 25 debut, and still going strong. The Oscar nominations will only galvanize that. “Greta looked at something that was a classic and went back to the roots of what it was about, and brought out all the subversiveness that hadn’t been as explored in other adaptations,” Pascal said. “Other adaptations have been wonderful, but she found new things to make the movie about, and injected it with her own vision and commentary.”
The producer cited another Oscar stat that Little Women now holds. “This is the third movie in the history of the Academy that has been nominated [for best picture] that has been written, directed, and produced by women. (The others were 2010’s Winter’s Bone and 1993’s The Piano.)
“Third time,” Pascal emphasized. “That feels good.”