{"id":42221,"date":"2024-01-05T00:06:54","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T05:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=42221"},"modified":"2024-01-04T13:08:52","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T18:08:52","slug":"poor-things-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/05\/poor-things-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Things (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Emma Stone is an actress that has continued to challenge herself time and time again with roles that we\u2019d never expect her to take on. Originally beginning her career in a teen comedy, she\u2019s managed to really escape pigeonholing by exploring new and interesting roles. Bella Baxter is probably one of the best performances of her career, one even better than her turn in \u201cBirdman.\u201d As Bella, Stone is remarkable in the way she evolves, and develops and grows in to something that we never quite recognize when the film has ended. Although \u201cPoor Things\u201d will get so many interpretations, I pegged Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 film primarily as a statement about the illusion of bodily autonomy.<\/p>\n

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Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist named God, a young woman named Bella Baxter who was revived with the brain of a baby, runs off with a seductive lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times and the control of her master, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and\u00a0liberation as well as sexual freedom.<\/p>\n

Although Bella Baxter\u2019s journey is about seeking bodily autonomy, claiming it, and then growing from it, her big revelation is that bodily autonomy doesn\u2019t exist. It\u2019s a fa\u00e7ade in where we\u2019re all constantly beholden to urges and lusts and hungers that we can\u2019t really control. Baxter uses sex as a means of garnering power over her own body and then learns that sex can also be used as a method of control. Once that startling revelation looms over her, the idea of sex isn\u2019t so appealing, anymore. Bella is a victim of her own sexual appetite from the very beginning even indulging in a scene that will likely be mentioned for many years.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say it involves her genitals and various pieces of fruit. In either case, Yorgos Lanthimos leans very heavily in to the themes about the god complex and seeking a life without the means of being under the control of any creator. From \u00a0her creator \u201cGod,\u201d she\u2019s sough to be controlled by God\u2019s assistant Max, and even the enticing Duncan Wedder who whisks her away, only to find that he feels entitled to rein her in when she dabbles too much in the idea of experimentation. The movie\u2019s centerpiece of the twisted dance between Duncan and Bella is marvelous in that it also acts as a means of conveying how Duncan tries to keep her at bay despite her insistence on literally dancing to her own drummer.<\/p>\n

But in the end, a lot of our lives are still dependent on what our body signals what we might want, or need, or desire, or hunger for. Lanthimos\u2019 \u201cPoor Things\u201d is a remarkable and stunning piece of art, one that mixes fantasy, Victorian Gothic horror, dark and eroticism to build this \u201cFrankenstein\u201d tale. It\u2019s so utterly twisted and revels in being as disgusting as it is erotic. Stone could have easily been lost to Lanthimos\u2019 penchant for aesthetic and mood, but she rises above the wonderful costume design (kudos to Holly Waddington), immaculate supporting performances, and twisted themes to really deliver a pretty epic journey of self discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma Stone is an actress that has continued to challenge herself time and time again with roles that we\u2019d never expect her to take on. Originally beginning her career in a teen comedy, she\u2019s managed to really escape pigeonholing by exploring new and interesting roles. Bella Baxter is probably one of the best performances of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,259,349,1401,2123,874,906],"class_list":["post-42221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-dark-comedy","tag-fantasy","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbtq","tag-romance","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42223,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42221\/revisions\/42223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}