Why Poor Things is a Flawless Masterpiece
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- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
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#poorthings #yorgoslanthimos #bookvsmovie
You are so well spoken and articulate. Never stop teaching. You have a gift. Oh, and I loved this movie. Now, I have to read the book. TFS.
Wow, thank you so much!
Seeing Poor Things through your eyes enhances it even more!
I watched the movie a week ago and I was completely mesmerised by everything! The cinematography, the acting, the SCORE too! Loved it so much, I got the book which I can’t wait to read!
Willow I love your reviews so much! Your passion, your enthusiasm and love for books is truly so wonderful to see! Entertaining and erudite are words that come to mind when I watch your reviews! And the way you weave words together is just so masterful. I’m so glad you share your reviews with all of us!
You are a treasure to Booktube and I hope more people subscribe and support you!
Wow, you are so kind, thank you!!
Some trivia you might enjoy is that the film production team achieved the effect you're calling a fisheye with a victorian era lens called a Petzval lens. It's being reproduced by lomography and it's a gorgeous brass artifact straight out of steam punk. Another layer of Victorian aesthetic worked in by the art department.
Amazing! Thank you so much for that
Oh wow! Very cool
What a phenomenal review thank you!
The first time I read this book was in my early 20s. Rereading it recently I realized how formative it was for me, socially, morally, in so many ways. In part it teaches the value of making your good intentions manifest in the world. It explores what it can mean to be a woman in patriarchal society, viewed as an object, childlike, with parts of you rearranged, things removed or given without permission by a “God”like man. In this way, it speaks to survivors of child abuse but with subtlety and humor.
Bella’s last letter, a kind of addendum, hits on how a couple can spend a lifetime together never really knowing the other person’s inner world. In the end,“Candle” & Bella’s distorted views of their own marriage symbolize the diversity of viewpoints in civilized culture. It nods to the reality of a multitude of possible POV’s and is a fitting way to tell this particular story - in part about the dark side of morality. How one might devote their lives to helping others and yet diminish the needs of their significant other.
My favorite part is Ch18-19, the most interesting encapsulation of world history and politics I’ve ever heard anywhere. And love Gray’s tip of the hat to Dostoyevsky on the ship.
Acknowledging the Lolita aspects of the novel, I have to say that McCandless does not come across as manipulative or grooming to me. Quite the opposite, he seems intrigued by this lovely woman’s wide-open innocence and the way she absorbs everything with such fervor. He could have so easily destroyed that innocence but instead he was childlike alongside her, nervous and captivated. Overall, this book is a dark, delightful journey. Tre Bella!
Oh my goodness you’re the first person to notice the Lolita aspects of it too, or rather the first person I’ve seen mention it. I noticed it immediately in the film, especially when Wedderburn first sees Bella. Gorgeous review btw! I just bought the book and am eager to read it.
Just finished reading the book. Absolutely amazing review!
SO excited to see what you have to say about this movie, it really feels like a magnum opus project for Lanthimos.
I’m really looking forward to Poor Things and I’ll probably read the book too. You’re one of the most intellectual BookTubers there is and I look forward to your videos.
Wow, thank you!
I finished it last night and really enjoyed it, especially Bella's letter at the end of the book.
Thank you for this review!
I see a lot of people just boiling it down to a remake of Frankenhooker, and while that could be fun, I knew it had to be deeper than that. This makes it sound amazing!
What do you think about critiques of the film that there was no reveal about candles as an unreliable narrator, potentially reducing the whole thing to a male fantasy of women's liberation?
It’s a good take! However, I’d argue that it’s the reveal itself which reveals the feminist themes in the book. But because the film shifts perspective and reframed Bella, it explores the same themes just as well but from a more explicit and less subtle angle.
I had to pause this about halfway through, because I am reading Poor Things now and am not quite that far. But excited to hear your thoughts once I finish.
For the last several years I’ve read all the books nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards before watching the film. It’s an interesting exercise. I just finished up Erasure yesterday (adapted to American Fiction), and am slogging through nearly 30 hours of American Prometheus on audiobook (Oppenheimer).
Still have The Zone of Interest to go. And may throw in the Society of the Snow as a bonus.
It’s a workout. But fun.
That’s a very cool project!
This movie was so brilliant. My favorite of the last few years. Saw it twice. So many things to think about and discuss
The timing of this is INSANITY because I literally spent the weekend reading and watching Poor Things!!! Cant wait to get a snack, sit down and hear your thoughts.
I hope Poor Things will be availble at cinemas here. Thank you for your review Willow, so clear and easy to understand❤
I’ve had ‘Poor Things’ on my radar since I heard Jen Campbell discuss it years ago on her channel. Your review has given me a nudge to at least try out the book ASAP and then see how I feel about the movie.
Oh I need to read the book and watch this movie now!
My favorite film of the past year, and I also thought it exceeded the book. Loved your analysis! ❤
Just saw the film yesterday, loved it!
I love the film and I love this video. Well done. Bravo!
I saw an interview with Shark Buffalo & Willem Dafoe where they were laughing about how awful SB’s accent was. And how he kept apologizing to Yorgos for it. The running joke on set was they were going to hire Oscar Isaac to replace him. So one day, without SB knowing, they invited Oscar to set, he came up from behind, put his arm around SB’s shoulders, and said “It’s time for you to go.” 😆
Shark Buffalo then said, because his accent was so awful he imagined his character an American affecting an English accent, because where Wedderburn was concerned - anything was possible with that guy.
I love everything about that lol thanks for sharing!
I knew you would adore the book and film so incredible.
Since you are in Glasgow have you seen the mural in hillhead subway station??? It is depicting Glasgow and is done by Alister Gray. you can definitely tell the moment you look at it!
I have, and it is beautiful 💜
Love Alasdair Gray! Great video!
i read the book last year in preparation for the film and although i haven't seen it just yet (it's not avaliable in my country) i can tell it's gonna be a brilliant movie if it's anything like the novel!! i was in awe, specially by the change of narrative at the end. so good!!!
Okay, I have to read this and watch the movie now
its available for streaming in Disney+
Aye
My head is hurting, but I still managed to process most of what was said in this video. The library wouldn't let me place a hold for the print copy, boo! But I got to borrow the audiobook, so I'm gonna consider that a win. 😃
Yorgos had a reasonable argument to change the city from Glasgow to London. To call that criminal is a bit over the top:
From Little White Lies interview:
“ Well, I think Alasdair probably wouldn’t be very happy about that, because he was a very proud Scotsman. But we give [Godwin] Baxter some of his character, and a Scottish accent - Alasdair was also a great inspiration for Willem [Dafoe] as a presence, so we filtered that through him. In the novel, the Scottish issue feels like a different part of the book, and I felt it would just be like trying to make two different films if I tried to put it into this version of the story. Once we decided that the point of view of the film was going to be Bella’s, and it was going to be her story and her journey, and working with an American cast, it just made more sense to contract things.”
I was lucky to be able to visit the costumes from the movie at the Barbican the day after seeing the film!! Can’t wait to read the book soon.
Thanks for the review!
your videos and analyses are always SO GOOD ugh love your channel💖💖
Thank you 🥹
I had reasonably high expectations going into this film having heard good things. I really didn't like a lot about this film. Had a few good moments. Not sure why it is so well liked.
I guess for all the reasons I laid out in my video :)
Have you read Kaikeyi? (By Vaishnavi Patel) It’s a retelling of Hindu mythology, specifically of Kaikeyi, who is sort of seen as the “villain” of the story, but it’s so much complex than that. I loved it tbh. If you have the space to add it, I highly recommend it!
I’ve never read this book, it’s just sat on my shelf of shame for years. It’s been so beloved by so many, I think I was afraid to touch it and find out I didn’t like it, or worse; didn’t get it! 😮 But, as always, you make me want to read all of the things 😂 You have ruined my life with the Shark Buffalo thing though 🤪
0:47 i didn't know about the flowers for algernon influence in the book!! guess i'm gonna have to go backwards and read it after reading poor things, i'm curious now lol
Oh I’m not sure if it was a direct influence; I just saw a parallel :)
I really liked the film and want to read the book now! What didnt you like about the ending? The last 30 minutes or so was my favourite!
A few years ago, I was obsessed with the “born s*xy yesterday” trope and all its creepy implications. Great review! I’m gonna check out both versions, even though I know the book will infuriate me!✨✨
wait sorry did i miss something? you live in glasgow now?? cant believe we live in the same city that is insane haha
Haha yup, moved here at the end of September :)
You mentioned you didn't like the ending. What didn't you like about it?
I only saw the film. I normally prefer to read things first, but I didn't know it was a book. And I went because of Lantimos, I love all his work. I wonder if I would be disappointed with the book after the film.
Ok so spoilers for the ending…
I didn’t like that she decided to marry McCandless after all. He remains a creep because he crushed on a child, and also she has liberated herself beyond needing to return to him for no justifiable reason. In the book, it’s a little more interesting because the final few dozen pages are a letter written by her after his death, explaining how he made it all up as a flight of fancy.
Seeing socialism as freedom is crazy, URSS survivors would differ 😂
Sixty years ago, Western governments started a propaganda campaign to frighten anyone out of thinking that things like free healthcare and public ownership of services such as public transport (prime examples of socialism) were a good thing. Sadly, this campaign still works on those who can’t think very well. Get well soon.
I lived in USSR, not everything was so bad there. The actual idea of a socialist country was great and a lot of aspects of it did work. But obviously, human nature is corrupt so it didn't fully work.
I love everything about this video! I recently read Poor Things and now I'm obsessed with it. I'm hoping to watch the movie this week.
POOR THINGs left me so disappointed, and even more so, in the writer, Tony McNamara. The book does a better (not much, but better) job of handling this complex and problematic subject matter, not least of all by acknowledging that the story is told from a man's limited, unreliable point of view - in the case of the film, we must hope the audience sees that on its own. At one point on her two-week cruise of enlightenment, Bella says "if it is disgusting, why should I keep it in my mouth?" as she spits out her fancy dinner. She doesn't like it, she spits it out - she doesn't continue eating it, day in, day out, forever to see if she might feel differently about something she felt was disgusting. She actively expresses the disgust she feels when working as a prostitute, and yet she continues to do it, indefinitely, seemingly under the thumb of a madam who physically harms her. Then, bafflingly, she declares it a net-positive experience and the film plays it for laughs. An unsocialized human would instinctually, as we have seen, run away from a negative experience that provokes disgust and pain. Spit out that disgusting thing. Yet she continues, even though she has the means to leave or work in literally any other field or explore any other part of society. She's supposedly wise enough from exposure to those two or three books, the token black person explaining suffering for a quick 2 minute aside, and that noble street performer's song, to understand socialism, but she doesn't understand the realities of prostitution? And why prostitution? If she's evolved to the status of a grown woman capable of consent, she should be able to function in society in any number of ways that are more enjoyable. Yet she chooses prostitution even though these experiences are not pleasurable or even consensual, and she vocalizes that multiple times. There's also never any concern for pregnancy, menstruation, disease, assault or really any female pleasure. Even the slightly more consensual (felt more like a pedophilic grooming fantasy to me...) scenes with Mark Ruffalo felt like anything I'd see in regular heteronormative p0rn - a distinctly male gaze with zero attention to the mechanics of female pleasure or orgasm. And if her goal was solely sexual pleasure, why not experiment as she does in the book, with partners of her choosing, instead of partners she openly finds disgusting? I reject the character motivations on face value because she contradicts her own stated instincts, feelings and logic. If this were a critique of how society, specifically patriarchy, funnels women into these situations and treated it with the seriousness sex work deserves, including the many potential harms to vulnerable women, then perhaps I could buy an attempt at a feminist message. But she insists that she likes it and suffers nothing, after describing her utter disgust. The lush setting almost glamorized the lifestyle of a sex worker and implied this somehow led to her self-actualization and freedom. But how exactly? And can we really even call these actions free if she's being physically and psychologically coerced by the madam? If not for God's illness, she would have continued as a prostitute and I still have no idea why - except to showcase more nudity and "shocking" sexual situations. Funny that the male author, male screenwriter and male director would believe that a woman's unsocialized, pure response to sexual awakening would be to focus it all on male fantasies and desires rather than her own. Ultimately, the initially promising premise of an unsocialized female being exploring the world without social constraint became an exploitative exercise in the male gaze where a woman's base instinct is to have unpleasurable sex with men for money. Poor Things reduces a woman's journey of self-actualization to twenty minutes of ''learning" and an hour plus of unenjoyable sex she doesn't fully consent to, with a tacked on faux feminist ending to absolve itself. Only with the threat of the (sadly, once real) clitoridectomy solution to her supposed mental health issues by her cartoon villain of a husband are we faced with a worse villain than the film itself - I guess I can praise it for pointing out that tragic historical fact. But it also weirdly positions this as the alternative to the much better life of "whoring." I think everyone is loving the pretty, shiny packaging, but even from a technical standpoint, the film feels all over the place. The cinematography is novel, but it's also inconsistent and gimmicky - throwing in every cinematic trick in the book, the black and white to color cliché, the fish eye lens, the peephole, the title cards, the actually-not-original-at-all steampunk aesthetic. I've seen it before and this feels very much style over substance, with an everything but the kitchen sink approach. Even Emma Stone's performance felt forced and over acted due to this screenplay's more childish cruel portrayal rather than the books more cheerful and loving persona of Bella which didn't feel anymore believable as she uneventfully matures towards the dreadful ending. I just wish the story was worthy of her talent.
So well said! Being a woman is to preform and this movie totally embodies that in the worst way! I wish they would have kept the ending epilogue as the ending for the movie especially because I feel as though it’s the only way to really redeem the sex scenes and also goes perfectly with the feel and look of the film! Just because it’s supposed to be empowering doesn’t mean it is! And as we’ve seen this time and time again where people WILL misunderstand and misuse a piece of literature as this to justify a sick fantasy and desire! I will never forget being in school and sooo many people HATED Daisy from the Great Gatsby because she didn’t send flowers to Gatsby’s funeral ☠️. When Nick clearly is just also an unreliable narrator whom is a man from the 1920s!
It is not, it is an apology for pidofilia.
Dangerously naïve
Bella Baxter, feminist and trans icon!! 🤩🤩😁😁
you are asking 20 oscars for this movie ?? lets see even it gets one ?? it could only get for her acting but her acting is nothing but normal compared to other foreign or indian actresses... RIP
You may not have taste but nobody would dare say you’re not passionate
womp womp
I just came out of watching this movie thinking “I think that was my favorite coming of age film”