It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast, podcast to a classic film in the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Keith Phipps, here again with... Josh Robinson. Genevieve Kosky. Scott Tobias. In our last episode, we discussed Little Women, directed by Jillian Armstrong. You'll be forgiven a sense of deja vu, as we're talking about Little Women again, at this time, the version directed by Greta Gerwig. Though both are true in their own way to Louisa May Alcott's novel, there's no mistaking one for another. Gerwig fills the film with young actors who've emerged over the past few years, including Shorah Ronan, Florence Pew, and Timothy Shalame. Emma Watson counts as the old hand here thanks to her years

playing Hermione in the Harry Potter films. But beyond the very 2019 casting choices,

Gourwig makes the daring decision to fracture the chronology of the story. The film opens deep in the

novel with Ronan's Joe March, already a struggling writer in New York, then flashes back seven

years to her family's civil war experiences,

a time defined by an absent father and other challenges. But this is no mere framing device,

the film then flashes back freely, allowing past and future to comment on each other.

What emerges is a kind of bold remix of a familiar story that stays close to the original narrative, but allows viewers to see it in a new light.

We'll talk it over after the break.

I'm working on a novel. It is a story of my life and my sisters.

Make it short and spicy. And if the main character is a girl, make sure she's married by the end.

Ow, Joe!

I want to be an artist in Rome and be the best painter in the world.

Well, you want too, isn't it, Joe, to be a famous writer?

Yes, but it sounds so crass when she says it.

My girls have a way of getting into mischief. Well, so do I.

This is Meg, Amy, Beth, and Joe.

I intend to make my own way in the world.

No one makes their own way.

...