Poor Things: what the movie misses
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- why I think Poor Things by Alasdair Gray (1992) is better than Poor Things dir. Yorgos Lanthimos (2023). it's all in the crucial details and framing devices in the book that the film leaves out, and the failure of Hollywood's attempt at adapting feminist narratives
referenced vids:
born sexy yesterday: • Frankenstein's Lobotom...
book vs. movie: • Poor Things Book vs Movie
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Not getting into the film choices but the choice to play the “account” straight it kinda wrecks the point of the novel. Making a gender swapped Frankenstein where the monster is a beautiful woman also just bores me.
the movie was so unbelievably boring. it was baffling how little conflict there was in it. if they revealed that what was happening was just mccandless' account the movie would have become so much more interesting and bold but they just didnt
this kind of reminds me of the problem of the movie adaptation of the ballad of songbirds and snakes, with viewers believing that snow had great intentions for the majority of the story. whereas readers get his self centered evil internal monologue
Exactly.
"cicadas in the summertime are load as heck" or whatever chappell roan said...
sounds kinda like the lolita adaptations. where the books have a very obviously unreliable male narrator yet the movie takes him at his word. i think it would be interesting to have a movie with continuous male narration over visuals portraying the actual events, to make the dissonance between reality and how he is manipuling it blatant. or just stop making movies based on books whose entire point is that they have unreliable narrators. no matter how surreal you make the visuals they can't lie the same way words do💉
This was an interesting analysis! Considering that both creative leads (the author and the director) were men, it is interesting that the one who published their work in the 90s seems to have a more nuanced view of womanhood than the one who set out to make a "feminist movie". I would be curious to dig into how feminism as an aesthetic goal differs from media that actually has feminist themes.💉
The films hollow feminism paints a portrait of a man’s ideal feminist. The fact that Poor Things the book was written by a man, imo a rare occurrence of real female experience in the perspective of Victoria’s scathing letter, when Lanthimos takes this rare text and cherry picks the sexiest moments of it… it taints the messaging
@@calamari89 man's ideal feminist is one who doesn't take shit from them and finds her interests?
I don't have time to watch this whole video right now, but there are actually more cicadas this year than previous emergence years, because two different broods emerged this year, which is super uncommon
I’m loving them as background noise in this video I won’t lie 💯
@@girlskylark1816 agreed. big summer vibes
Great breakdown! I didn't read the book, I saw the movie and found it soooo reductive regarding the feminine experience, basically just reduced her to her sexuality. Hearing about the book makes me see so much was cut out that makes much more sense.
Listening to the book’s moments cut out in the film make the film’s shortcomings both more visible and more annoying and tragic, because there is a version of this story that isn’t hollow and condescending and that part just wasn’t adapted.
@@calamari89 yes very much so. The movie feels lazy about how it deals with themes where the book does it much more effortlessly. I am actually so confused about just how much they missed the point.
i really enjoyed the film, but as a glaswegian i can’t help but feel disappointed at the change in setting, especially knowing alasdair gray showed lanthinos around the city. i know there are other issues people have with the story, but alasdair gray loved glasgow dearly and it honestly feels like a slap in the face to him. if lanthinos didn’t feel that he could do a story set in glasgow justice then maybe he shouldn’t have chosen to adapt a book written by one of our most important and beloved artists
I really enjoyed your critique of the book and film. If you ever find yourself in Glasgow, I recommend a trip to the Alasdair Gray Archive where Alasdair Gray's (more true to the book) screenplay of Poor Things is on display.
i don't get how this movie got a best adapted screenplay nomination if it misses so much of the point of the book
I read the book but haven’t yet seen the movie - honestly, the fact that it plays it straight instead of adding the bit at the end is kind of a turn off for me.
I've been waiting for a video like this! Only just started but I'm really excited to watch :] thank you for sharing 🖤
putting on a new coat of lip gloss in the middle of your monologue is so real :D (plus it looks gorgeous) I am so glad to have listened to this analysis because after watching the movie, I really didn't feel like it was the feminist masterpiece I had seen it made out to be. I never would have picked up the book if I had based my opinion solely on the movie, but it's nice to know that there is way more to it, and now I might actually read it 💉
You're wonderful at explaining things in a clear and engaging way
Really good video, I loved hearing your analysis despite not having read/watched this before. I found your channel thru the sapphic literature video you did btw!!
I’m sending you love❤
Can we get the link to the vid(s) you mentioned around the 26 minute mark?
One of them was definitely from Final Girl Studios
i actually love the cicada song in the background, ambient bug noises are my favorite LOL thanks for comparing the book & movie, i’ve been looking for a video like this since i read the book!
I really wanna watch it but the noise is so much ! There are free editing software like audacity that can do noise reduction 🙏
super interesting analysis!! (also your eye makeup looks great!!)
This video made me want to read the book
Omggg, girl, you have no idea how much I needed this video. I'm from Brazil and here we didn't have (yet) this in depth, complex, and theoretic perspective of Poor Things (book and movie). I absolutley adored this book and felt such a disappointment with the movie. Thank you so much!! I agree with everything you said. Great job!
Something about your voice is just so soothing listening to you my anxiety melts away idk
great video!! excited to see more analysis of yours
Love this, thank you!
Not for nothing and by the way: Mc-Candles is actually Mc-Cand-less
Out of curiosity, how is it pronounced in the film, given the change in setting and spelling? Is it Anglicized to “Mc-Can-dulls?”
Honestly the movie just inspired me to make a version of Frankenstein where neither the doctor nor the monster are bad guys and it's just a wholesome family story about two women (Frankenstein and Igor, who I have renamed to Flora and Iris) trying to bring back Flora's child, while hiding from the rest of society due their unconventional appearances (the characters all have heavy scarring, other facial and bodily differences and physical disabilities) and it being Victorian England.
Great video, really interesting. I didn't know the book was had such different elements
this is so interesting, i didnt know the difference between the movie and book were so huge.
Cicadas = ASMR = Merci .
As an anime fan, listening to her with the sound, improved the experience
I keep putting off watching the movie, but after watching your video I think I’ll just read the book instead.
1. "Interesting" how the male screenwriters only believed the unreliable male's narrative
2. The text within the book itself is also a Frankenstein of 3 different people's perspectives, which is pretty clever
Well to me it seems that movie decided to merge both their perspectives. I think because of the open-ended ending, they decided that the truth is something in the middle. That she was a beautiful experiment created by a mad scientist who would eventually become the self assured socialist and doctor like Victoria in the book.
❤❤❤ nice!!!
Yorgos Lanthimos is a grown man who didn’t need his hand held by anyone. He made the movie he wanted to make.
First of all, this is a well done analysis. You have a clear argument that I can fully understand. When you compare the book to the movie in this way, the book seems much more feminist. And perhaps it is. However, I would like to suggest looking at it from a slightly different angle.
It would have been perfectly possible to adapt the book including the introduction and the unreliable narrator, in a way Wes Anderson might have done it. However, Lanthimos decided not to do so. Was it his intention to adapt a feminist book into a movie, only to make it deliberately unfeminist?
I can see some parallels with Wes Anderson's films, especially in the fact that in both filmmakers' works, the characters don't really behave or talk like real people. In Anderson's films, this is always justified by a narrator who is shown at the beginning, which gives them a cheerful, fairy-tale tone. The lack of such a narrator makes Poor Things feel unsettling or disturbing instead.
I can imagine that as a woman, one might feel disgusted by the presented image on feminism. But I can assure you that, at least for me personally, as a man, I feel just as disgusted. And in my interpretation, this is intentional.
The absurdity of the setting and the dialog already implies that this plot is not a realistic portrayal of anything. Even the happy ending of the movie leaves you with many questions about the morality of the characters. Why did they transplant a goat's brain into the general and not Godwin's? Even though Max McCandles was nicer than Duncan Wedderburn and the General, didn't he still take advantage of a child's naivety? Godwin and Max talking about the wedding for the first time doesn't make either of them seem particularly ethical. In general, men don't come off very well in the movie.
While the book takes a very openly feminist stance with Victoria's letter, the movie invites you to come up with your own thoughts and communicates emotionally that what is shown is wrong, rather than explicitly. The plot is absurd and takes you off guard so that you can then think about feminist issues in a new way.
I read in the comments here that Lanthimos supposedly took the nuance out of the book and only left the sexually explicit parts in. However, me and my male friends all agreed that we couldn't have imagined sex scenes with Emma Stone any less erotic and I'm also sure that Emma Stone wouldn't have made the movie if she thought it was porn.
Lanthimos' films deconstruct the social behavior of people, and in this one the film deals with the subject of sexuality. However, this does not mean that he reduces the female experience to sexuality. Just because it depicts perverted behavior in a neutral way doesn't mean that the viewer should feel neutral and certainly doesn't mean that the male viewer thinks what is shown is right. This is precisely the nuance of the movie, which displays a subtle feminism, while the book presents a less ambiguous, overt feminism.
And I can get a lot out of both.
This is my personal perspective on the subject and is in no way intended to invalidate your analysis.
the cicadas made the video so relaxing. love it
I love the cicadas....
I personally disagree but I completely see your point.
One of the worst movies I've ever seen. Worse than Gummo
Gummo is the best film of all time
Great video, loved the analysis! 💉💉
Great vid
💉 Made it to the end of the video, liked it.
It's interesting. I couldn't even finish the movie because it was very... very white, Western upper class feminism. I hated everything about it. But the novel seems to be SO RADICALLY different and much, much better. Why even go through the effort of making this very high-budget adaptation if you're going to mess up the source material this badly? :/
I might actually pick up the novel after your thorough review. Thank you.
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Not sure why, when talking about the /book/ you keep describing the character as "Max McCandles" when his name is Archibald McCandless. Last I checked, Max is not a common nickname for Archibald lol
I haven't seen the film but have read the book so I assume they changed his name in the adaption among many other things - but it's very strange to speak of Max McCandles when talking about the book when such a character does not exist in the text.
I enjoyed the movie alright, like 7.5/11 burp bubbles. But thanks to you I learned this was also a book, and apparently a really awesome one. Thanks for this video and comparison, and def gonna pick up the book asap!! 💉💉💉🫧🫀
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