Tag: Poor Things

Poor Things where you never expected!

Posted on by victorfraga

From a stereotypical point-of-view, no one would expect that there are films on Disney Plus like Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023). Even I was very surprised that this thought-provoking adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel was available on the platform. But then again, I found myself watching the entire movie. Did I like it? Still dwelling on what I felt to be honest. Here’s the thing though, I wasn’t able to read the novel, so I won’t be able to compare the story or if the movie did justice to the original story.

But on its own, the movie was kind of hard to watch at first, especially if you’re not comfortable watching in black and white. Story-wise, it’s where it gets interesting. So, let’s break down the entire movie and I’ll share with you everything that I loved and some things that felt meh for me. Right now, you can watch this award-winning movie on various streaming platforms, including Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Dish TV, and more!

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The cast

I’d be lying if I say that I didn’t watch the movie because of the cast. I saw Emma Stone on the movie cover, and that’s when I knew I had to watch this film. Apart from the story itself, it’s safe to say that the combined talents of the cast is what completed this movie. Let me introduce you to the major cast one by one.

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1 – Emma Stone as Bella Baxter:

Bella Baxter (pictured below) is a young woman brought back to life through an unorthodox scientific experiment by Dr. Godwin Baxter. Throughout the movie, Stone portrayed the character beautifully. She was weird, vulnerable, and full of curiosity all at once.

2 – Willem Dafoe as Godwin Baxter:

Willem Dafoe is perfectly cast as the eccentric Dr. Baxter (pictured above). He brings his signature intensity to his character – the type that leaves you never quite sure what Dr. Baxter’s motivations are. Is he a bad guy or is he one of the good ones? He’ll definitely keep you guessing throughout the movie.

3 – Mark Rufallo as Duncan Wedderburn

Duncan Wedderburn is the villain of the story – a corrupt lawyer who uses his fancy talk and exciting plans to win Bella over. He’s all about himself and wants to control everything around him. It’s hard to tell if he actually likes Bella or just sees her as something he can own.

4 – Ramy Youssef as Max McCandles

Ramy Youssef plays the sweet and gentle Max. He’s the complete of Duncan. He’s a kind soul, a bit awkward maybe, but genuine and caring. Aside from Godwin, Max is probably the only one who genuinely cares for Bella. And despite witnessing Bella develop, he accepts him with his whole heart.

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The story

Before we proceed, keep in mind that there will be spoilers at the end of this article. And if you’re planning to watch the movie, make sure to have a fast and stable connection like the one from HughesNet so you can really enjoy and understand the story. Back to the story… The movie starts in black and white following different scenes, like a glimpse of Godwin and Bella’s everyday lives together. Godwin’s face is full of scars, like the entire skin of his face has been detached and re-attached in several parts, while Bella looks like a typical adult woman who’s wearing an elegant dress.

Dr. Godwin Baxter is an extraordinary surgeon renowned for his operating skills. While Bella seems like a typical adult woman suffering from a mental disorder, it’s not the case. Bella is Dr. Baxter’s experiment. She is brought back to life by Dr. Baxter after jumping off a bridge – she’s pregnant by the way. Since she’s technically dead and her brain isn’t working, Dr. Baxter used her baby’s brain (from her womb) and placed it in her skull. So now, we have a young woman’s body with the mind of a newborn. This explains how Bella acts.

With a newborn’s mind, Bella was full of curiosity until she discovered a sensation that sparked a different kind of curiosity. That’s also the way Duncan made his way into her life and invited her to elope with him. The time they spent together is where Bella actually grew. She was exposed to the real world, wherein she learned everything about human nature, the societal norms, and everything in between.

As a viewer, you will see Bella’s world and how the people around her sees a typical woman. An object, a possession, a should-be-mother, and whatnot – just like how some individuals think of one up until this day. However, Bella was a free woman. She’s independent, determined, and everything the society isn’t expecting her to be. There are scenes that can be disturbing and unsettling to watch, think of a horror scene you can see on Spanish TV, but with Bella, it’s a different kind of horror.

It’s the horror of watching someone break the societal mold. Bella’s innocence and untamed desires challenge the very core of what society deems proper for a woman. It’s how we see how women will be treated if we disregard the societal norms that’s already in place, how men sees themselves superior than women, how the society criticizes every decision a woman make for her body and her life, yet it wouldn’t be the same if it was men on Bella’s place.

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The business of pleasure

After leaving Duncan, Bella decided to sell her body for money. While this type of work is stereotyped and constantly criticised by the society, it shamelessly show how the criticism often comes from those who pay for this type of work. For every transaction, Bella analyses her so-called clients, and it goes to show that individuals into this type of work comes from different backgrounds – family men, politicians, and even church people. It’s the harsh truth surrounding this industry for so many years.

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The final verdict

This is a beautiful yet disturbing story about a woman’s story of self-discovery in a way that’s both liberating and unsettling. Emma Stone’s acting was brilliant, and it will really keep you thinking about the prejudices in our society about women. This movie definitely deserved the Oscars wins, and if you haven’t watched it, then go ahead and do it right now. It’s definitely worth every second.

Poor Things

Posted on by victorfraga

Socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg once noted: “ Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” It’s easy to imagine Bella Baxter, the heroine of Poor Things, reading those words. A fictitious contemporary of Luxemburg, her peculiar tale comprises the 1992 novel by the Scottish nationalist Alasdair Gray. Thirty years later, Gray’s postmodern bildungsroman has finally been adapted into a feature film by Yorgos Lanthimos and Tony McNamara, the director-writer team behind The Favourite (2018). With Lanthimos’s flair for corporeal grotesquerie, this visually striking interpretation of Gray’s text pares back the novel’s complexity to hone on the Greek Weird Wave auteur’s fascination with the human body as a site for potential, perpetual transgression.

Bella’s (Emma Stone) story begins with another’s ending as a pregnant woman leaps from a bridge to her watery death. That woman is revived by the alchemical machinations of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who surgically replaces her brain with her unborn child’s. Baxter enlists the services of a young colleague, Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef), to assist him in observing the woman he’s christened Bella as her cognitive abilities and sexual curiosities rapidly develop.

At the behest of the benevolent father figure she calls “God”, Bella is engaged to marry the meekly inoffensive McCandless and reside in the Baxter estate. But she’s wooed by the lascivious lawyer finalising the marriage, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), and before long, Bella embarks on a whirlwind adventure with Wedderburn for her benefit more than his. The sights Bella absorbs, lensed in vibrant ektachrome by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, initially captivate her, but gradually revisit the opening scenes’ monochromatic palette as she strives to retain her compassion with every form of opportunism and cruelty she encounters.

The narrative beats of Gray’s novel are replicated in McNamara’s script, though its epistolary passages are understandably streamlined as Bella makes her way from Lisbon to Paris, daring Wedderburn to keep up. Lanthimos’s fascination with awkward expressions of human movement has persevered in his transition to the outer fringes of the mainstream. He has found his platonic ideal in Stone. With fearless physicality, her performance warrants a co-author credit in her contribution to shaping Bella’s transition from farcical naivete to self-assured perspicacity.

Yet despite my admiration for Stone, there are a slew of creative decisions in Poor Things that stymie the radical potential of its central character. Lanthimos visually emulates Bella’s awe at a world beyond any constraints of realism with the production design duo (Shona Heath and James Price) freely fusing Albert Robida’s futuristic illustrations with the buxom architecture in Fassbinder’s Querelle. Robida’s career was effectively ended by WW1, his fantastic machinery having lost their lustre in the face of mass carnage. The Great War ends Gray’s novel, yet it goes unmentioned in the film, which opts for a rare happy ending in Lanthimos’ oeuvre.

However, the parting note of emancipatory joy in Poor Things rings hollow. The sights of systemic inequity which shake Bella resemble those from the book, significantly a sojourn to Alexandria that yields her first exposure to squalor and despair. But it’s telling that while the film bluntly allegorises a gap between the higher and lower classes, McNamara and Lanthimos lack Gray’s interest in interrogating the social or psychological apparatuses which uphold that disparity.

Instead, Lanthimos’ jettisons specificity for a “universal” approach that too often mistakes vulgarity for transgression. The much-ballyhooed sex scenes do yield fleetingly pithy observations on the body as a site for pedagogical growth, but their outrageous lunacy plays too often to the peanut gallery. This faux-provocative attitude is bolstered by McNamara’s odious use of anachronistic swearing to get an easy laugh. “Hope is smashable, realism is not,” a cynical figure (Jerrod Carmichael) tells Bella. But Lanthimos’ inability to explore the complex methods of maintaining political hope belies his progressive overtures.

The result is a postmodern exercise in packaging history as a spectacular singularity, however fearful of pushing its audience to look beyond their own bodies. To that end, Poor Things is a film whose remarkably bold central performance is left to wallow in a secretly feeble movie.

Poor Things showed at the 61st New York Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premiered in September in Venice, where it won the Golden Lion. The UK premiere takes place in October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It also shows in the Best of Festivals section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In cinemas on Friday, January 12th.