Movie Dialogue: Poor Things

 I have rich conversations about films every day. I figure today, I can just transpose one of them word for word here. I haven't yet checked with the friend over permission to use her name, so I'll just label her as friend. We used to write for the same publication.

Friend: Well, I watched Poor Things

Me: What'd you think?

Friend: I was disappointed

Me: Why?

Friend: It was too male gazey. Like some things shouldn't be lamp shaded.

Me: It definitely felt extremely voyeuristic. What did you mean by lamp shading

Friend: Like, it's bad these men want to exploit the "women-child" and then the director show it gratuitously. Basically, when a director or narrative says "I know I'm doing this thing, I am calling attention to it so we all know it's happening", that still doesn't chance that he's gratuitous.

Me: I can see that. I think it helps that Emma Stone was very enthusiastic about this acting exploration and seemed to be working with the director on this vision from interviews I've heard. Some guy I don't much care for said I don't trust straight males to shoot those scenes, and that's just plain discriminatory and disenfranchises the women and others who might have also been a partner in the art.

Friend: I think they could have gotten the poihnt across with much less gratuity. Sure, but women can be complicit in these things. I'm not erasing her involvement! She was there!

Me: And Emma hasn't historically been a nymphomaniac who loves to bear all in movies. I'd read interviews with her, she loved the acting challenge. I found Willem DeFoe's face and the metal bubbles he formed to be the grossest part.

Friend: No issues with her acting. She was very good, as was Ruffalo and the others. See, I'm usually worse with body horror but it wasn't that bad for me.

Me: What did you think of Ramy Yousef's attraction to her?

Friend: It was the most honest

Me: Do you think it was pedophilia? I thought it was shallow at the very least. But yeah, he was a good guy

Friend: Still gross. And he recognized that it was wrong.

Me: At the start of the movie, when he said he was in love with her or attracted to her. I was like "she has the IQ of a lower level primate." How can you be attracted to her other than her looks?

Friend: Yeah exactly. But that's like The Fifth Element or Splash or any of those born sexy yesterday movies. It's a squicky trope.

Me: So maybe he's insincere when he's like "I'm in love with her." Oooohhh, good connection!

Friend: But I liked that he seemed almost relieved at the end. Like, oh good, she's caught up. And he was happy to go along with whatever she wanted.

Me: I mean, I think if the movie has its disturbing elements, it's also what I'm looking for. I think the movie is a think-y one where we can debate a lot.

Friend: Yeah, like honestly removing the sex scenes would have made it a Top Ten for me, easy. Maybe even my fave of the year. And I'm not a prude, honestly!

Me: And it had some very funny moments. I loved the scene where Mark Ruffalo tried to push that woman off the edge of the ship. Whoever that actress was, who was just humorously going along with the man wanting to kill her, she was so enchanting.

Friend: Yes, the whole boat sequence was great. I think the Alexandria bit was too short though. I like that the movie (and book, I suppose) could have gone in such a different direction.

Me: I didn't like that element, because the shot of Alexandria was so CGI-heavy. Aesthetically, that was a part of the movie that took me out of it a lot.

Friend: I can see that. I mean more about what it was trying to say.

Me: How so?

Friend: Rich people are self-centered and they just throw money at poor people and then don't think about it anymore, like "my work here is done."

Me: And it was imperfect? I think that's where the film is great because it leaves room for debate. There is tremendous thematic depth over how to grow, how to be happy, how to give. You have to give credit for the film for being thematically ambitious. I think the film was also largely positive about prostitution, she was in control of the situations, she was voluntarily there, and learning and empowering herself from it.

Friend: I do appreciate the presentation of sex work and the reclamation of power in that regard.

Me: It's a rosy picture of prostitution outside of, say, Amsterdam. I'm curious if it's an overly rosy picture of prostitution in the period in which the film was taking place.

Friend: Thematically again very rich, but I think undermined itself with the gratuity and graphicness of the sex. Even if it had saved all the sex until that prostitution sequence, that would have been better.

Me: I agree a little too. I thought some of the sex was gross but I also heard it was supposed to be gross and unglamorous.

Poor Things Review

Saltburn has intrigued me this awards season because people who feel obligated to follow Oscar bait and people caught up on the grotesque buzz (masquerading as something worth seeing), are experiencing something far more horrific than they bargained for with that film.

Similarly, Poor Things has some truly icky scenes (there's lots of nudity, graphic scenes of surgery and eye stabbing, just be prepared to close your eyes at the right moments) that might generate enough cringe to get people into the theater out of morbid curiosity. And then there's Willem DaFoe's grotesque face and the way he burps liquid mercury. As opposed to Saltburn, this delights me because Poor Things is a beautiful unconventional film, but leaves the same meaningful emotional payoff as you hope most love stories would do. Willem Defoe plays a Frankenstein-type, Dr. Godwin Baxter, who re-animates a pregnant suicide-by-drowning victim. His solution is to put the fetus's brain into the grown Emma Stone's body (again, yes, it's very icky, just move past it, people). As such, she starts out like a version of Beck Bennett's baby boss on SNL with a lack of mental acuity to compliment her lack of motor movement. A large through line of the film is all the subtle ways in which she grows into an adult over the course of the film. Without seeing this films, it might seem ludicrous to award a 35-year-old actress who already has an Oscar over someone who seems as worthy as Lily Gladstone (partially because it feels right to give it to a Native American, partially because it's the right type of role, and partially because Gladstone makes a lot out of being passive), but the way Emma Stone's performance is simply too good to ignore. If she wins, it would mark one of the rare moments where a comic performance wins anyway. Godwin wants his character to marry his protege Max, (Ramy Yousef), and while Godwin genuinely cares for her in a paternal way. it's also uncomfortable: She's still pretty close to having the mentality of an infant. Max's earnest declarations of love for her, don't erase the logistical obstacle of connecting with someone who's psychologically a child. Issues of consent aside (I generally don't police fictional works from earlier eras for age-consent issues), there's not really much convincing that Max initially loves her for anything other than her looks? Her next suitor, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), is a total sleaze but he is at least transparent of his lust for her because of her virginal qualities. In the film's second act, Duncan takes her out and the classic virgin/slut dichotomy comes into play: Duncan's carnal desire for her is because she's virginal, and he goes insane with jealousy at knowing that she shares her sexual exploration with others. Cleverly, the film implies that it's a literal form of madness and then shows him actually going mad. As this is a story of what it means to be human and how one grows into it under conventional circumstances, the central characters we care about (Godwin and Max, in addition to Bella) arrive there as well. Like some of the biggest names of the year (Alexander Payne, Todd Haynes, Greta Gerwig, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan), Yorgos Lanthimos is not a man who makes movies that are ordinary. He will reinvent the wheel each time out. Sure, there are flaws in his style. Like Todd Haynes' May December, the string score can be obnoxious, the film can overly indulge in the gross, and there is way more CGI than needed. But he's always original and in a film like this, it's a story that works beautifully. This might also be the best ensemble of the year despite the way that Holdovers deserves credit for such fully realized characters, and films like Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, Asteroid City, and Oppenheimer crammed such an impressive number of high-profile actors onto the same set. Aside from the performances of Ramy Yousef (a comedian who has his own show, this is his coming out performance in someone else's film), DaFoe, Stone, and Mark Ruffalo in the lead, there's a lot of smaller parts to appreciate. Margaret Qualley cameos as the mad scientist's replacement experiment, Christopher Abbott is an able villain and then there's the delightful Martha. Played by Hanna Schygulla, Martha should get a scene stealer of the year award: She lets a developmentally disabled person ask to touch her hair (resembling Effie in the Hunger Games) and probe her sexual history, then being such a good sport about Duncan wanting to drown her in a fit of rage.

If I picked the Emmys 2018 to 2019 (Drama)

Drama Shows (in order):
1. Daredevil
2. Maniac
3. Lodge 49
4. Sneaky Pete
5. Orange is the New Black
6. Dead to Me
7. Ozark

Actor:
Charlie Cox, Daredevil*
Giovanni Ribisi, Sneaky Pete
Jonah Hill, Maniac
John Krasinski, Jack Ryan

In truth, I wasn't that impressed by anyone in this category except for my across-the-board admiration at the "Daredevil" cast and that extends to Cox who doesn't come off as an action star but channels the ferocity needed for the emotional climaxes when he faces King Pin. Though not a humongous fan of "Jack Ryan", I think Krasinski's doing great work and part of the reason to tune in to the show is that it's interesting to watch Krasinski do that same screen persona . Jason Bateman was considered but he deserves more credit for creating and directing the show than he does for doing an extremely slight variation of Michael Bluth.

Actress:
Emma Stone, Maniac
Laura Linney, Ozark
Sonya Cassidy, Lodge 49
Christina Applegate, Dead to Me
Linda Cardinelli, Dead to Me*

Linda Cardenelli's Judy is so needy and desperate to connect, she's possibly the clingiest character on TV and it's hard to take your eyes off her.

Supporting Actor:
Wilson Bethel, Daredevil
Brian Cox, Succssion
Kieran Culkin, Succession
Nick Sandow, Orange is the New Black*
Brandon Flynn, 13 Reasons Why
Vincent D'Onofrio, Daredevil

I'm gonna go with Nick Sandow here because it's not easy to love Caputo on paper and yet you end up with such admiration for the guy because he's credibly the very definition of a dynamic character. Justin Foley's arc (coming back from heroin addiction, facing his actions as a bystander to rape, abusive parents, etc) is definitely a demanding role for a teen (or 25, whatever) actor and Flynn's a close second. I didn't even know D'Onofrio could get that big, what a physical transformation!

Supporting Actress:
Julie Garner, Ozark
Sally Field, Maniac
Deborah Ann Woll, Daredevil
Danielle Brooks, Orange is the New Black*
Libe Bearer, Sneaky Pete
Kelly Reilly, Yellowstone

Woll and Garner have been great among multiple seasons, but Brooks had the best character arc and proved once and for all this past season that Taystee is the show's lead character. Libe Bearer plays 16-year-old Carla who has a guarded skepticism well beyond her years. She's on a show with Margo Martindale and supplanted her. I was tempted to put Parker Posey from "Lost in Space" but it was a competitive category.

Guest Actor:
Matt Peters, Orange is the New Black
Michael Lee Kimmel, Lodge 49
Ethan Embry, Sneaky Pete*
Jacob Pitts, Sneaky Pete
Michael Mosley, Ozark
Trevor Long, Ozark

I couldn't even think of that many guys here and certainly not a lot of names. On Ozark, Michael Mosley was the pastor who went psycho on and Trevor Long is Ruth's absuvie dad. Michael Lee Kimmel was the good-looking Asian guy who kept trouncing Ernie in the sales department on Lodge 49, Matt Peters is the iconic source of comic relief on OitNB known as Luscheck, and Jacob Pitts is Marin's oily ex-husband Lance. Ethan Embry, the category winner, is the original Pete Murphy. 

Guest Actress:
Allison Wright, Sneaky Pete
Jordana Spiro, Ozark*
McKenzie Phillips, Orange is the New Black
Henny Russell, Orange is the New Black
Emily Tarver, Orange is the New Black
Jocelyn Towne, Lodge 49

Spiro plays a fiesty bar owner who starts to get entangled between multiple forces wanting different things from her in the same way that all characters in hyper-tense dramas do these days. She makes a romantic spark that's mostly off-limits between Jason Bateman and herself halway believable and her few scenes tell a story of a woman trapped by circumstances I wanted to know more of. Emily Tarver (Artesian McCulloch) is such a tragic character I want to jump into the TV to give a hug to (and that's saying something since the prisoners are so much more in need of help) but her biggest arc is Season 7. Russell and Phillips played the two feuding sisters in OitNB. Jocelyn Towne is the executive in the empty office who looks like Angela Kinsey that had a May-September romance with Dud.

Best Dialogue:
Dead to Me*
Maniac
Orange is the New Black
Lodge 49
Succession

Writing for characters with more inner monologue than outer monologue is the kind of challenge that Lodge 49 and Maniac (with Jonah Hill and Justin Thoreaux's characters face primarily) face the most. Orange is the New Black has to cover a lot of different dialects and subsets of people and Succession is pretty much all dialogue and no plot. Dead to Me has a lot of misdirects layered in the dialogue to keep the mystery secure and there's a lot of nuance in the way Jen and Judy express themselves

Best Dramatic Art Direction:
Umbrella Academy
Maniac*
Daredevil
Supergirl
Lodge 49

Umbrella Academy gets the most points for effort but it's a bit too much of a sensory overload pastiche to feel organic. In contrast, Maniac doesn't go overboard in its sleek and overly sterlized futuristic world but conveys the visuals well. Daredevil is probably at its best in Season 1 establishing the claustrophobic spaces of its universe and, I give Lodge 49 points for the unenviable task of trying to portray a general spirit of abandonment.


Best Dramatic Cinematography:
Yellowstone
Lodge 49
Ozark*
Jack Ryan

Yellowstone is scenery porn but Ozark feels like the camera and its subjects are a labor of love.