HEARTS AND MINDS (LITTLE WOMEN)

How do you breathe new life into another big screen adaptation of a classic novel?

That is the challenge writer-director Greta Gerwig sets herself in an ambitious version of Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women'.

Alcott's 1868 novel has been adapted for the cinema seven times.

Most of these have been good accounts of the story.

George Cukor's 1933 movie with Katharine Hepburn as Jo - the first sound adaptation after two silent versions - has a lot of admirers.

Mervyn Le Roy's 1949 cersion with June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Elisabeth Taylor and Janet Leigh was the first to be shot in colour and has its supporters too.

But for me, the best adaptation up to now was Australian director Gillian Armstrong's gorgeous 1994 adaptation with Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dundst, Claire Danes, Christian Bale, Susan Sarandon and Gabriel Byrne.

It is, therefore, asking a lot of any director to better these versions.

So when Greta Gerwig, fresh from the success of her high school teen drama 'Lady Bird', announced she was planning a new adaptation which would reunite her with Saoirse Ronan, there was a lot of interest in how she would tackle Alcott's story.

One of the first problems for Gerwig is thee is little point in conventionally retelling 'Little Women' in the way it has been done before

Cukor, LeRoy and Armstrong have already done that with their three accomplished versions.

Gerwig's solution is to create parallel storylines - the first covering the girls' adulthood years and another their experiences as teenagers.

At the start of Gerwig's version, Saoirse Ronan's aspiring writer Jo March hovers at the door of Tracy Letts' publisher Mr Dashwood, hoping to sell a story.

She succeeds in persuading him to publish - even if he considerably trims back her work.

Hi returns to the school where she teaches with a spring in her step and a determination to write more.

Standing by the fire, she sets her dress alight but is rescued by Louis Garrel's Friedrich Bhaer.

Later, she attends the theatre and goes to a local hostelry where she is coaxed onto the dancefloor to join Friedrich and others.

This moment is set beside a flashback from Jo's teenage years where we see her singe the hair of her sister, Emily Watson's Meg before they attend a dance.

It is there where she meets Timothee Chalamet's Laurie for the first time - dancing with him outside the home where the party is taking place because she has singed her dress too.

The sparks of a friendship ignite but Gerwig contrasts this episode with the adult years when Laurie is nursing a broken heart in Paris after his romantic rejection by Jo.

He runs into the youngest of the four girls, Florence Pugh's Amy in a Parisian park where she is travelling on a horse and carriage with Meryl Streep's haughty. Aunt March.

It is that encounter that will spark a new romance.

By shuttling back and forth between the early life of Jo, Meg, Amy, Eliza Scanlen's Meg and Laurie, Gerwig cleverly juxtaposes the sunnier times with the darker during both time periods.

This refusal to follow the conventional narrative arc laid out in Alcott's novel is a gamble but it quickly pays handsome dividends.

The shifts in mood in Gerwig's adaptation mirror the topsy turvy dynamics that made Gerwig's  'Lady Bird' so fascinating.

In this adaptation, Gerwig foregrounds from the start the simmering tension between Amy and Jo and yet, like Lady Bird's tempestuous relationship with her mum in Gerwig's previous film, there is undeniably a strong affection too 

The writer-director also quickly establishes from the moment he enters the March family's lives, Amy's crush on Laurie - even though his heart for much of the film lies elsewhere.

Beth's struggle with illness also weighs heavily on the film - a sickness that is born out of a good hearted attempt to follow in Laura Dern's Marnie's footsteps by visiting families in need.

Beth's aptitude for the piano sees her strike up an unexpected friendship with Laurie's grandfather, Chris Cooper's Mr Laurence whose family has known tragedy.

But she is fighting ill health and it is these moments that are the most poignant in Gerwig's film.

The film is dominated by Ronan, Pugh and Chalamet's performances but that is not to downplay the contribution of the rest of the cast.

Watson and Scanlen strike the right note as the good hearted Meg and Beth.

Dern is warm and nurturing as Marmie.

Bob Odenkirk turns up later in the film as the girls' kind hearted father who is wounded in the Civil War.

Streep is in mischievous form as the sarcastic Aunt March, channelling her inner Maggie Smith with her withering observations of others.

James Norton is solid as an earnest John Brooke, Laurie's tutor and Meg's eventual husband, while Cooper is wonderful as an affectionate Mr Laurence.

Garrel embraces the opportunity to play Jo's other suitor while Tracy Letts is perfect as the publisher who is taken aback by the popularity of her writing.

We know that Ronan and Chalamet are the finest actors of their generation and have a strong screen chemistry.

Again, they do not disappoint.

Ronan's ability to communicate her character's emotions with her eyes is once again deployed by Gerwig to devastating effect - not least in the saddest moments in the film.

She wears Jo's strengths and flaws clearly on her sleeves and steps comfortably into shoes that Hepburn and Ryder memorably occupied and she never seems overshadowed by those two great performances - carving out her character on her own terms.

There is a real thrill too seeing Ronan go toe to toe with Meryl Streep, the finest and most consistent actor of her generation.

As Jo and Aunt March trade observations, it is a joy to watch two great actors trading barbs.

Chalamet is sldo wonderfully louche as Laurie, oscillating between charm and, at times, incredible arrogance and insensitivity.

And when the heartbreak comes, you never doubt for one minute that he has been derailed by Jo's rejection of him.

Arguably the most impressive performance in the film is from Pugh, who seizes the opportunity to imbue Amy with a depth that has never really been explored in previous versions.

Gerwig and Pugh's Amy is not merely the flighty, spoilt younger sister of previous versions but an ambitious young woman trying to break out of the shadow of her older sister and make her own mark as a portrait artist.

Pugh brilliantly captures the spite that sometimes gets the better of the younger Amy and the subsequent guilt.

But she also mines tge rage at Laurie for wasting his life in Paris and not treating her with the same love and affection.

Stunningly shot by Yorick Le Saux, Gerwig serves up a visually sumptuous feast that is as gorgeous to look at as Armstrong's 1994 version.

But she has also delivered the most empowering version of 'Little Women' to date - a fact underlined in its latter stages by Jo's negotiation with Mr Dashwood over the rights to her debut novel.

If 'Little Women' confirms anything, it is that Gerwig is one of the most exciting talents operating in American cinema today.

And if the efforts of her and her cast are ignored during awards season, it will be a damning indictment of the industry.

It takes guts to take on a new version of 'Little Women' but her adaptation cannot survive on guts alone.

It must stimulate new debate and reflect the changing dynamics of women in society.

Gerwig's new version is well up to the challenge 

By taking audiences on a more ambitious retelling of Alcott's tale, she has directed the best version ever.

It is so good, it is hard to see how it could be bettered.

It will certainly take some filmmaker to top this exuberant version.

('Little Women' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on December 26, 2019)