Poor Things – Screenplay by Alasdair Gray and Tony McNamara, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos – the latter worked on The Favourite https://realini.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-favourite-by-deborah-davis-and-tony.html - 8 out of 10

 

Poor Things – Screenplay by Alasdair Gray and Tony McNamara, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos – the latter worked on The Favourite https://realini.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-favourite-by-deborah-davis-and-tony.html

8 out of 10

 

 

Poor Things is one of the best films of 2023, at least if we look at the number of Academy Awards Nominations – eleven, including for Best Motion Picture of The Year, Best Achievement in Directing, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Best Adapted Screenplay and more – Golden Globe and other wins and nominations

 

However, this cinephile was much more enthused by The Holdovers, Oppenheimer and the less known Reality https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/01/is-this-room-adapted-as-reality-for-big.html than by this acclaimed feature, this being clearly an issue with Yorgos Lanthimos and his outré style of film making…

It is on the audience, the viewer, we could say, because if one has the needed Character Strengths – appreciation of excellence and beauty, open mindedness, curiosity, love of wisdom, judgement, fairness and a few more – then Poor Things and some, or all of the other works of the famous director will exhilarate

 

Dogtooth aka Kynodontas was the first film by Lanthimos that I had seen, and it is probably the first to launch his career, already a very original, bizarre motion picture, which takes place in Greece, the film maker if Greek, where a family with adolescents experience the challenges of growing up and learning about sex

Incidentally, sex is one of the main themes of Poor Things, where the protagonist starts to see that she can make herself ‘happy’, by using her own fingers, kind as she is, she offers the maid to show her this source of pleasure, which is obviously (seeing as this is happening in the past, maybe more than one hundred years ago) shocking the older woman, and other figures that populate this narrative, on the ship and elsewhere

 

Then she embarks of a voyage of discovery, she will have intense sexual encounters – what is it she calls it, furious jumping – even passing through a brothel, where she tries to revolutionize, asking why is it that men make the choice, when it would make sense for the females to pick their man, avoiding nausea in this way…

Bella Baxter aka Emma Stone (winner of an Oscar, and nominated for this role again) is dead when Doctor Godwin Baxter called God by Bella finds her – this is clearly a challenge to think about God, religion, creativity, and why not, creationism, which is doing so much damage to faith, by insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible

 

The place is crawling with fantastic beasts, a hen with the head of a pig, a duck with four legs, and Bella is progressing slowly, adult as she is in shape, she wets herself for some time, and then moves to the next stage, when she wants to see the world, and Duncan Wedderburn aka Mark Ruffalo is there to help her

That is, offer himself pleasure, because this is what he is, a selfish individual – though not as abominable as Orange Jesus, which is the name given to the devil by republican leaders, one of the most atrocious creatures I have seen – who wants to have sex, and profit from Bella, being honest about it, however shortsighted this is

 

He takes Bella to Portugal, when she is supposed to marry Max McCandles, ignorant as she still is at this stage, she has a feeling that to be the wife of Max might be a good idea still, because Duncan is superficial, and attractive, but not there for the long term, so she starts having sex with him, and we see her naked…quite a lot

Duncan is very active and proud of his energy, even expressing some pity for his lover – Milan Kundera https://realini.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-9-put.html wrote that there is a difference between compassion, which we fell for somebody at ‘our level’, and pity, which we feel for those lower

 

The beings that we see as situated on a lower rudder, and Duncan is sure he is such a stud, nobody will come close to his sexual performance, so he feels sorry for Bella, who asks for another round, and the man says that even he has some pauses, which leads the woman to conclude that men have this flaw, and he is pensive

They get on a boat – a strange type of thing, which is meant to be a fiction, though the significance escapes me – and as Bella starts to elude him, meeting new people and getting closer to them, one is a cynic, Duncan shows jealousy, and whereas he had declared himself autonomous, a free spirit, he now wants to tie Bella

 

Marcel Proust https://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/un-amour-de-swan-by-marcel-proust.html is the greatest writer for me, and he wrote in the greatest novel of all time, A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, that when he was in love, he wished that there would be a time when he could show his pride, that he would not care about, say Gilberte, only with time passing, we become someone else, we do not feel anything, anymore for Gilberte, or a past infatuation, but also, we do not care about her knowing it, we do not have the urge to show it

Bella sees from the boat a land with very desperate, destitute people, she wants to help, the cynic says that if we were in their place, we would want to strangle them, and vice versa, we can do nothing, but she gets money and tries to send it, which makes them penniless, and they are thrown off the boat, and she becomes a…whore, or a sex worker, in the language of our times, and she has some weird experiences…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”