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 https://letterboxd.com/film/poor-things-2023/ letterboxd posted:Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation. Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a rag-doll frankenstein who ventures out into the world with an empirically searching mind and horndog desires. Dafoe is her dr.frankenstien father-god figure and continues to make the case that he plays great in black and white. Ruffalo gets to indulge in every emotion played to ten. Story plays out almost like The Little Prince, with Bella journeying around Europe and meeting people of different persuasions. It doesn't go into any ideology in any deep manner, but she meets characters summarized repeatedly as "The Cynic" and "The General". Bit more loving, but it's presented so matter-of-factly that it plays more funny than gratuitous. Trailer does a good job presenting the films style, and if anything maybe undersell's how well it commits to it. In one scene you might go from a fish-eye to keyhole view to close ups, and it works. Appropriately disorienting, and oddly non-distracting. And the backdrops and sets felt like the dream of Henson's Mirrormask or Netflix's "Series of Unfortunate Events" finally achieved. Gorgeous painted backgrounds that are obviously CGI but blend so well it feels like your watching a theater with oil painting backdrops. loving funny too. Go see it, it's still in theaters!
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Jan 3, 2024 09:02
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Great film, just got back from seeing it tonight. Some minor complaints re: Ruffallo's wandering accent and I'm a little lost with what Jerrod Carmichael was aiming for, but Stone is goddamn excellent. Also it's very, very funny.
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Jan 3, 2024 13:32
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During the movie I kept wondering if the composer was the same fella who did White Lotus. There's one scene in particular where the music sounds extremely close to the White Lotus Theme, and the electronic modulation (not sure if that's the right word) reads similar. Didn't mention it in the OP, but soundtrack is good. Turns out, nope! But the guy who did the composing is under 30 and has a solo album that's great: https://open.spotify.com/album/23tjIW6fzlYMWfc55QHSAs?si=qFOtDziwRO-1XD3ANWMnwQ
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Jan 3, 2024 16:25
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Sick movie, and yeah the soundtracks great.
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Jan 4, 2024 00:55
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Sometimes when a director gets more budget and access to bigger stars they don't know what to do with them but Poor Things is such a great example of Yorg letting his actors really shine and building incredible sets around them. If there's two actors doing better work right now than Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe I haven't seen them, because they're both just knocking it out every chance they get, especially here. Trying to think of the last movie I laughed this hysterically at for almost the entire runtime, and it's probably Everything Everywhere All At Once. flashy_mcflash fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 01:34
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Just saw this and loved all* of it. My friend and I both found it weird that she doesn't put God's brain in the General's body at the end. I suppose that's explained better in the book but the on-screen presentation made it feel like a false note. Ending spoiler, obviously. E: *After a day of digesting it, there are some things that I most definitely do not love. moths fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 03:46
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moths posted:Just saw this and loved all of it. Maybe she thought it was too good for him and he didn't deserve it? That's how I read it anyway.
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Jan 4, 2024 04:26
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moths posted:Just saw this and loved all of it. I took it as closing the loop of trauma in God's life. Enough experiments. This was a pretty beautiful movie, which I didn't expect. I was expecting something twee and Burton-esque but it wasn't at all. Might be Emma Stone's best role ever.
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Jan 4, 2024 04:34
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With the general I was surprised when she knocked him out the servants didn't revolt and tear him apart. Had queued it up with him suspecting as much and waving the gun at them so much. Suppose that would validate his paranoia, but it still would have felt like a slightly more fitting end than to become a goat. The later felt a bit weird - I like the slow reveal of Bella been a suicide baby implanted in their mothers head, but wish the General had come sooner. It didn't feel super cathartic seeing him turned into a goat, partly because he showed up after the movie had already come to one ending.
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Jan 4, 2024 04:38
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Famethrowa posted:I took it as closing the loop of trauma in God's life. Enough experiments. Well that's just it - by the end of the movie it's proven that the experiment is a successful procedure. This was her chance to do good in the world, to alleviate suffering by starting a new cycle of healing, and giving him a fresh start in a body that wouldn't scare kids. It would have been exactly the gift he gave her: a second chance at life, and an opportunity to experience the world without his father's harmful control.
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Jan 4, 2024 10:18
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moths posted:Well that's just it - by the end of the movie it's proven that the experiment is a successful procedure. This was her chance to do good in the world, to alleviate suffering by starting a new cycle of healing, and giving him a fresh start in a body that wouldn't scare kids. While that makes practical sense, it completely conflicts with the message of the movie. It's very deliberately a riff on Pygmalion, where instead of the "poor thing" flower-girl being made refined by the experiments of her patron, Bella finally self-actualizes once away from this kind of experimentation. It would be really jarring to have a whole movie demonstrating how ultimate worth and dignity is intrinsic and comes from within not without, to then end with upgrading God's body through more experimentation. Dying this way, with dignity, making the choices afforded to him by his bodily autonomy (not his father's experiments), seems like the only way to end.
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Jan 4, 2024 10:52
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Not at all, all of God's handicaps were inflicted on him by his father. Bella restoring his autonomy makes more sense thematically than revenge. Saving God would be an expression of the movie's central theme - advances and improvement. The petty surgical prank shows that she's not hanging up experimentation, and suggests that she's more interested in experiments than their meaningful implementation. She never turns away from experimentation, she explicitly states that we learn things to replace things we've learned and then learn new things to replace that. She ends the film studying for her physician's exam, and you're left wondering what she's meant to do with it. The goat punchline suggests she's not actually going to be healing anybody. It's a clumsy note. I think the timing on the two events was meant to be farther apart. moths fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 11:24
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Famethrowa is absolutely right on this one imo. Anyway, whatever about the movie I'm eating a Poor Things promotional salted caramel chocolate bar right now and it's very good
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Jan 4, 2024 11:29
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I thought it was a pretty big letdown from Yorgos's previous films overall. The best parts to me were the costuming, production design and colors. Although the black and white was also really well done - real black and white and not just desaturated digital. Emma Stone is really fantastic and Willem Dafoe is as good as he always is. I don't like all of the different lenses that he shoots with. I know it's kind of his thing, but I thought it was way overdone here and needless. A lot of the shots were also incredibly short for no reason. Narratively and visually is stopped being compelling to me after the Lisbon sequence. The whole Paris part I found really repetitive and generally stupid. Bella's whole journey just leads to... sex? I guess there's some vague socialism that happens offscreen. That's it, there's nothing else. It also stopped being funny around this time, with the exception of the crab man I guess. There's no edge here, it's all presented at the end as some empowerment story. The portrayal of prostitution is also naive and weirdly regressive. Of course we have to have a token black non-character here to support our protagonist but embodies no actual human characteristics or flaws and is also not funny at all. I just feel like after the imagination displayed in the first part there's nothing much else the movie had to show me. By the time she gets back to London I had stopped caring about her journey. The aside with her original husband had very little to do with anything, seemed rushed and underdeveloped and was used as an unfunny joke at the end. Mark Ruffalo was miscast or just sucked. Ramy Youssef was trying but just can’t act. Jerrod Carmichael can’t act and didn’t even seem like he was trying. I would have enjoyed something meaner, darker, or funnier. Instead it used up all the good ideas and then continued on for a very long time. Looked cool, though. Mullitt fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 19:54
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I don't know if it's just because it's such a departure from what he usually (always?) does but Ruffalo made me laugh my rear end off the entire time. He played his petulant baby of a character to a T.
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Jan 4, 2024 20:09
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The General's scenes felt like where all the missing violence and misogyny from the bizarrely sex-positive brothel went. Like the little pond outside of a Walmart to offset wetlands displaced by the parking lot. (But for sexist violence.)
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Jan 4, 2024 20:19
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The Christopher Abbott stuff does feel awkwardly placed in the movie but that fits the general feel of the thing. Just him bursting in on what seemed like the end of the movie felt subversive, like an inverse of Return of the King-syndrome.
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Jan 4, 2024 20:22
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I didn't mind the brothel bits. She needed money, wanted sex, and got both, but did have a lot of awkward and bad encounters in the process. Wasn't necessarily glorified just because we didn't get the scene where the Jack the Ripper shows up. Do wonder if the Socialist had some scenes cut. It was a little weird she had no character outside of taking Bella off screen to socialist meetings and being an implied confidant.Mullitt posted:Bella's whole journey just leads to... sex? Nah, she just sprints through adulthood and that's a big part of growing up. Instead of working out these things through college, she works at a brothel. Journey is noted by Bella herself multiple times about seeing the world and having experiences both good and bad.
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Jan 4, 2024 20:33
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She reforms the way the brothel operates.
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Jan 4, 2024 20:34
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moths posted:Not at all, all of God's handicaps were inflicted on him by his father. Bella restoring his autonomy makes more sense thematically than revenge. You are right, the ending is ambiguous as to what she will become but... that was my point. It's full self actualization. She has human agency and can do what she sees fit to do from now on. Experimenting is not the issue, it is the removal of ones agency and self-actualization like what God originally attempted to do, and what was done to God himself. Does she continue down a path of seeking redemption through vengeance and continue the cycle of trauma? Hopefully not, it would be a betrayal of all she learned, but she is now a fully formed human able to make those choices. That's the real meat of the ambiguity to me. (also just desserts for her awful husband was fun and funny so  )To me, the text suggests that she is interested in the betterment and enlightenment of mankind, as evidenced by her rejection of hedonism (Mark Ruffalo's character), cynicism (Jerrod Carmichael's character) and power for the sake of control (her husband). The characters she seemed most sympathetic to, her socialist friend and the zenlike lady on the ship, seem to point to a future where she uses her new wealth and education for good.
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Jan 4, 2024 20:59
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Movie was excellent. I like the way it ended, but I agree that it felt like they were setting something up that didn't pay off. It felt like they misdirected the audience then forgot to close the loop on showing why. I totally get why it's better that God wasn't transferred, but it felt like there was a missing scene where Bella gave him the choice to decline and he did. The way it was cut made that more of a reveal, but I just wanted it to be more explicit. As it stands, it feels like they valued the gag of him being a goat over actual closure. I thought Ruffalo was terrific. Definitely an unusual choice for this kind of role, but it made the character far more interesting to me than a mire traditional casting would have. Jerrod Carmichael, on the other hand, felt miscast. I get how more stiff performance would suit a cynic, but he was completely wooden, it felt like he was reading lines off a page.
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Jan 4, 2024 21:15
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live with fruit posted:I don't know if it's just because it's such a departure from what he usually (always?) does but Ruffalo made me laugh my rear end off the entire time. He played his petulant baby of a character to a T. It just felt very one note. He’s a buffoon from the beginning, so he has no real change and him becoming possessive feels inevitable because he’s stupid. He’s also purposely not physically intimidating so there’s not a dangerous side to him. A lot of it was the writing, but I also thought his weird and bad accent and unthreatening demeanor didn’t help. CatstropheWaitress posted:I didn't mind the brothel bits. She needed money, wanted sex, and got both, but did have a lot of awkward and bad encounters in the process. Wasn't necessarily glorified just because we didn't get the scene where the Jack the Ripper shows up. Do wonder if the Socialist had some scenes cut. It was a little weird she had no character outside of taking Bella off screen to socialist meetings and being an implied confidant. I find it hard to equate working at a brothel with normal sexual development for a modern middle class person. I understand that is the intent, I just don’t think it makes much sense. I find the implications for the other prostitutes very disturbing as well. Mullitt fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 21:48
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Mullitt posted:It just felt very one note. He’s a buffoon from the beginning, so he has no real change and him becoming possessive feels inevitable because he’s stupid. He’s also purposely not physically intimidating so there’s not a dangerous side to him. A lot of it was the writing, but I also thought his weird and bad accent and unthreatening demeanor didn’t help. He goes from hyper confident to pathetic. He's literally hiding behind Alfie at the end. Also, Alfie isn't her husband, he's her dad.
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Jan 4, 2024 21:50
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live with fruit posted:He goes from hyper confident to pathetic. He's literally hiding behind Alfie at the end. His whole thing is clearly a charade from the first scene. It did not come as a surprise to me at all when he got more and more pathetic. It also stopped being funny pretty fast.
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Jan 4, 2024 21:59
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Mullitt posted:His whole thing is clearly a charade from the first scene. It did not come as a surprise to me at all when he got more and more pathetic. It also stopped being funny pretty fast. He sneaks into her room and molests her right away. He then later kidnaps her and takes her on a cruise so she has no where to go. You could say that his attitude is over the top to cover up how he really is but it still fades away.
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Jan 4, 2024 22:08
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Mullitt posted:He’s a buffoon from the beginning, so he has no real change and him becoming possessive feels inevitable because he’s stupid. Weird critique. It's like identifying Ursula as a bad guy and finding that a fault of the Little Mermaid. He's brought on as a lawyer, just to go over a marriage contract. Is identified immediately by everyone besides Bella who knows three people as not-a-goodnick. They try to persuade Bella to not go with him, but she demands it cause she wants to go see the world and he's literally opening the window. The danger is less his physicallity and more the situation. He's her tether from the unknown initially, and has her on a boat in the middle of the the ocean. It isn't until she befriends a bunch of people that that power subsides. Plot also easily could have moved in a direction where he uses poison or something underhanded to keep her 'under control'. Glad they didn't personally, but a character being pathetic doesn't mean they can be written off as not dangerous. quote:I find it hard to equate working at a brothel with normal sexual development for a modern middle class person. I understand that is the intent, I just don’t think it makes much sense. I find the implications for the other prostitutes very disturbing as well. & idk, I don't think you have to equate them exactly. It's a hosed up extreme version of something most people experience, presented in a fairy-tale movie. CatstropheWaitress fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 23:39
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Today I realized Bella is literally a child and the film treats her sexual adventuring like a wonderful and necessary awakening. She's not potty trained when we meet her. She's still using infantile words for loving. Maybe we're supposed to infer hyper-maturation because her hair grows fast? It doesn't stand out at first. It's implied that she's a brain damaged adult woman, trying to recover her adult self and mind. The childlike exploration behavior is silly and funny, because a grown-up is acting like a toddler! But then holy gently caress. Kids pretty much use the toilet by 3. It's not the intended point or message - but if accusations come out, this film's going to get recontextualized hard.
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Jan 5, 2024 01:58
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The film very much understands that. It's kinda the entire point.
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Jan 5, 2024 02:02
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like that is a big part of the reveal? Are you Bella??
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Jan 5, 2024 04:41
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moths posted:Today I realized Bella is literally a child and the film treats her sexual adventuring like a wonderful and necessary awakening. This is not even subtext, it's text, and it very much stands out. I can't imagine watching this movie and not understanding this.
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Jan 5, 2024 04:55
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moths posted:It's not the intended point or message - but if accusations come out, this film's going to get recontextualized hard. imagine being burdened by this thought watching Raising Arizona "boy i hope these guys never kidnap a child, or this will look terrible!" Scarface: "I hope this guy never gets into coke, that'd make the whole film be recontextualised!!" Schindler's List: "whoof better hope this guy doesn't genocide millions of people! that would look pretty pretty pretty bad!" This is just an extension of the dumb poo poo people said in the Killers of the Flower Moon thread - there seems to be a lack of critical awareness that main characters aren't all "good guys" or a sore lack of understanding what the term "protagonist" means. Poor Things asks audiences to examine motivations and meanings of characters - (whole film spoilers) [spoilers]is McCandles better than Wedderbun because he's doing things the "proper" and accepted way? Arguably he's the more villainous of the two because of his use of language like "love" and "fate" when it's entirely obvious he treats Bella as property, as does Godwin - Wedderbun is deceptive, but forthright (and so I'm not misconstrued, absolutely a gigantic pile of poo poo, as are most men in the film!). The film uses shock and crudity to question the viewer how they view agency (social, sexual, intellectual, physical) when applied to women by examining Bella's contracted upbringing through an entirely masculine society - even the Paris section asks that, as the madame mentions that they took over from the presumably male pimps and is shown using the exact same cycle of abuse and control.[/spoilers] This is also a consistent thematic concern of Lanthimos' through his entire filmography. If you want to pearl-clutch, at least try and research what you're talking about. If you want to make a point about predators within the film industry, don't just poo poo out a hot take because that at best undermines and at worst minimises real harm.
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Jan 5, 2024 05:13
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This was excellent, I really enjoyed the use of color palette and music to denote location, character and Bella's growth. I also loved the use of different film lenses, particularly the fish eye lens early on to show Bella's sense of wobbly balance. Ruffalo wasn't a revelation or anything but he was definitely a funny presence and has a wide ranging character even if it is largely just playing along the full spectrum of "pathetic dandy rear end in a top hat".Mullitt posted:I thought it was a pretty big letdown from Yorgos's previous films overall. Yeah I mean I definitely get this, it was certainly a departure from a lot of his earlier stuff, which for my own taste was a little too mean and dark as well as being a good deal less funny (to me)
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Jan 5, 2024 05:18
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I, Butthole posted:imagine being burdened by this thought IDK man, the movie was about dozens of people loving a four year old into enlightenment. Did I miss something or is that not skeevy in 2024?
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Jan 5, 2024 16:42
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moths posted:IDK man, the movie was about dozens of people loving a four year old into enlightenment. Did I miss something or is that not skeevy in 2024? You literally missed that she's not "a four year old" at any time she has sex. By the time she leaves home she's late teens and rebelling against her parent and leaving the nest. I'm loath to tell people they watched something wrong but, you watched this movie wrong.
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Jan 5, 2024 17:48
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Where do they show that? When McCandless meets her she wee's on the floor - suggesting she's about 3. Nothing in the presentation of any characters suggests that 10 years have passed, could I have missed a "TEN YEARS LATER" card?
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Jan 5, 2024 18:02
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moths posted:Where do they show that? When McCandless meets her she wee's on the floor - suggesting she's about 3. the movie is saying that her situation leads her to develop beyond her brains age. otherwise, how would she be debating the virtues of cynicism like...3 months later? she's a chimera of an adult and a brain that is rapidly catching up. I dont think movies should or need to flash big text cards explaining things, no. e. this too, honestly Mullitt posted:They specifically mention her developing at an accelerated rate, also the leering of the older male characters at her is very obviously coded as creepy and bad. I mean, this reading of the movie is so off base it's impossible to fully correct you unless someone re-explained the entire plot. Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 18:05
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I wouldn't say she's late teens based on her still evolving speech pattern and balance issues to that point. However there's some excuse in that she was being raised in a very controlled and pigeonholed environment by "God" who did not have the best instruction himself in how to parent not like a weird loving science obsessed monster, so her weird speech patterns may be more from that. Her grammar certainly got shitloads better once she was exposed to like, a handful of books. IMO the movie is ambiguous about Bella's exact status but I think it is fairly clear that Bella is not strictly just a newborn in an adult body, she is a weird hybrid of the two*. I don't remember if they give a timeline for the suicide attempt -> time in the manor -> trip -> ending but it certainly can't be more than a handful of years, and she evolves from not being potty trained when Max first arrives to unambiguously being a full adult by the time she returns from her trip, that's not something a regular growing child could have done, so there's some pseudo-science happening where being in an adult body causes the brain to mature exponentially faster. Obviously it's your judgement to make on whether a "baby's" brain in an adult body with adult hormones is technically just the exact age the brain is, and whether the movie is therefor saying "it is good to gently caress children if they have adult bodies" but I don't think that's the point of it. * I'd have to rewatch but one thing that jumped out to me was the aversion to kippers circling back when you find out they were a part of her abusive past life
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Jan 5, 2024 18:05
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moths posted:Where do they show that? When McCandless meets her she wee's on the floor - suggesting she's about 3. They specifically mention her developing at an accelerated rate, also the leering of the older male characters at her is very obviously coded as creepy and bad. I mean, this reading of the movie is so off base it's impossible to fully correct you unless someone re-explained the entire plot.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:06
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They don't throw a card up saying "24 DAYS LATER" which does muddy the water, but it is implied that we're seeing more time pass by than like, a week. Paris seems like it takes place over months, and lord knows how much time is passing between the start and when she leaves for a world of color. It felt clear enough the intention is for her to be mentally aging in like, dog years or something. It's ultimately a fairy-tale kind of flick though, so I don't mind the hand wave. You can't place the brain of a baby in a fully grown person, so once that magic is accepted not sure why the "and it's learning and maturing super fast" bit wouldn't be accepted as well.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:21
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I'm certainly reading my own experiences into it, but I'm uncomfortable when a movie loopholes minors into adult situations. There was a lot of hand-wavey movie magic to acceptably put a child's mind into a sex worker, and I realize "she was maturing extra fast" wasn't intended as it reads. I don't see myself getting past that, so this probably just isn't a film for me. Famethrowa posted:I dont think movies should or need to flash big text cards explaining things, no. We got them whenever she visited a city. I didn't find that excessive but I'm probably bad at movies.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:25
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