In the 2019 adaptation of Little Women, Hollywood heart throb Timothée Chalamet slides into the supporting role of Laurie, the predominant love-interest of two March sisters throughout the film. Laurie grows up next door to the Marchs, spending most of his childhood and adolescence the best friend of Jo March, and eventually professing his long-term love and proposal of marriage towards her. However, Jo turns him down and Laurie eventually leaves on other ventures. He does not appear again until later in the film, where he runs into Amy March in Paris, and they begin to develop a closer relationship eventually leading to marriage at the film’s conclusion. Despite Chalamet being at the height of fame during the film’s production, his character is given “fleeting time” on screen, only amounting to twenty-five minutes in the two hour and fifteen-minute production (Straw 122). This is what Will Straw, in his article “Scales of Presence: Bess Flowers and the Hollywood extra,” would define as the onslaught of secondary characterization due to the “bigness as a production,” and “telescoping” (Straw 122). The “scale that catches film and performer in shifting ratios of screen presence” is, in this case, driven by a film’s narrative needs rather than an actor’s performance capabilities or audience recognition (Straw 122). In the case of Laurie, for the sake of screentime and distribution of attention for the March sisters, his character is underdeveloped compared to the character’s impact in the original novelization. As the film has stars like Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, and Saoirse Ronan who make up the main March sisters, Chalamet’s character shifts to the role of a slightly enhanced “bit player” represented through the male love interest (Straw 121). He acts as a tool that enables Jo to break out of the typical feminine societal role, and a guide for Amy to overcome her fear of living in her sister’s shadow and securing financial stability. Laurie’s “key functions [as the] extra or the bit player is to react,” as his facial and physical reactions create opportunities for growth and development in the major characters, as well as emotional responsivity for the scenes he is in. For example, Chalamet’s heartbroken face and hand gestures after Jo’s rejection, or his loving and confused filled gazes at Amy as she paints or draws, both act as key factors in the “collectively shared affect” of the film (Straw 125). This affect helps serve the progressing narrative of the film, the true purpose of the secondary or minor character. Although Laurie has a relatively smaller “distributed field of attention” compared to the rest of the characters, he acts as “the [surrounding] edges of a [film’s narrative] frame,” which produces the ripple effect of “information [reaching] outwards [to the audience] from a film’s central characters” (Straw 125).
Works Cited
Little Women. Directed by Greta Gerwig, Performances by Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson, and Timothée Chalamet, Sony Pictures, 2019.
Straw, Will. “Scales of Presence: Bess Flowers and the Hollywood extra.” Screen, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 121-27.
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