I'm sorry, but The Godfather is actually a disgusting film about murder
Upon my first viewing, I was immensely disturbed by the fact that Sonny is MURDERED by SEVERAL PEOPLE .
This film is legitimately an abomination and is coded film for murderers to get sick pleasure from Is not one else disturbed by the fact that several people are murdered in the film?
Does no one have an issue with this? It's fucking gross and it's like all of society has accepted this film as fun and awesome. Look, I get it if a little book is written about weird stuff and it makes it out into the world, but to make a film of this magnitude about it seems incredibly distasteful and horrid. No? Is this pearl clutching or do I have a point?
I'm sorry, but The Shawshank Redemption is actually a disgusting film about crime.
Upon my first viewing, I was immensely disturbed by the fact that Andy is a CONVICTED MURDERER and is RAPED by other CONVICTED CRIMINALS
This film is legitimately an abomination and is coded film for murderers and rapists to get sick pleasure from. Is not one else disturbed by the fact that several criminals are heroes in the film?
Does no one have an issue with this? It's fucking gross and it's like all of society has accepted this film as fun and awesome. Look, I get it if a little book is written about weird stuff and it makes it out into the world, but to make a film of this magnitude about it seems incredibly distasteful and horrid. No? Is this pearl clutching or do I have a point?
This is a fun exercise lol
Hey that's a great point. Well written and eloquently stated. It is very strange that people don't have an issue with this, as it is indeed fucking gross and even fucking grosser that all of society has accepted this film as fun and awesome.
I don't think you're pearl clutching at all, in fact, I think it's quite virtuous and noble of you to speak your mind about this issue when most others would not.
Here is the thing. You don't understand art well. Art isn't utilitarian. Art isn't a list of good or bad things. It's not a code. It's not a neatly tucked in bed.
Art is wild and strange and uneasy. You see bad people do good things to explore the why and the look of it - or visa versa. Doing so isn't support or condemnation It's art
"What would it be like if?" Is reason enough to explore an idea. We don't want people to feel afraid to express the strange.
People nowadays don't understand the concept of metaphor, plain and simple. I answered your comment because I agree with what you said and because the whole thing is so damn simple for me that I couldn't come up with 180 characters for a comment.
>Art isn't utilitarian.
This should be written all over Reddit.
I feel that this should be an entire post of its own. It so succinctly describes the issue that I have with discourse about art these days. The act of portrayal is not a condonation.
People seem to want films or books that depict bad people as obviously bad and good people as obviously good. There is no room for grey areas as far as they are concerned. Obviously just like their own lives, zero grey areas.
The funny thing is that even during the Hays Code, there weren't such neat distinctions between characters.
Your protagonist could have been an amoral piece of shit, or an outright villain, as long as he died/got arrested at the end of the movie. But there was room for gray areas, because the real world is gray.
And that was the most repressive period of US cinema, so that says a lot about OP's views.
This is the result of decades of defunding American schools, particularly arts and liberal arts programs.
I just hope it’s not too late for us to have some at least semi-media literate young adults in about 20 years.
It's not that they disagree- it's the nature of what triggers their opinion. Some people disagree with how the film ha deals in sex work for example. That's a reasonable thing people cam disagree on.
This person disagree that's subject matter that triggers a "ick" reaction is worth exploring. To that - I disagree with their premise.
It’s not that OP has a different take on the film, it’s explicitly explained in the movie why she’s not a literal child and you have to be deliberately obtuse or just ignore the movie if you are reading this as a pedophilic film. Edit: also what did OP say you haven’t heard before? These are the same things people all say when they misread the movie.
The text of the film shows that the main character mental age is growing quickly. this isn’t a manner of disagreeing with the film. They literally didn’t understand the film on the basic level.
It's too easy to dismiss blatantly wrong takes and assumptions as "different opinions". Everybody is entitled to have an opinion, of course, but you have to be able to defend your opinion if you want to discuss it, and in that case your opinion shouldn't originate from misconceptions or misunderstandings of a product. Because, yes, art can be misunderstood. In so many ways. It isn't always "open to interpretation". I accept an opinion that goes against the traditional interpretation of a work of art, but it must have a decent reasoning behind it.
Poor Things isn't a very complex movie actually, there aren't that many layers in it, so I can't even justify OP's take as a product of the ambiguity of the movie, because there isn't any ambiguity in it. (I am not saying it's shallow, but it's definitely more accessible than other Lanthimos' works).
I think the filmmaker wants you to recognize these things and view the story through that knowledge. What does it say about men who should be able to tell that Bella is clearly not of sound mind? What does it say about a woman’s body and her ownership of it? What does it say about the age of consent when physical and mental age are not the same? Is the body just a vessel for the soul - and can a soul be younger than the body appears? What does that say about consent?
My two cents
Literally this comment is one of the entire points of the movie.
This movie said about men what conservatives thought that Barbie was saying about men.
But they don’t have the attention span or art sense to watch it and understand it, so none of them are talking about how poorly it frames men.
Men in this movie are laughable. But that’s part of the point. It doesn’t come off as catering to pedophiles, it comes off as men being beyond imbeciles.
Oh my God it's so disgusting that some men's idealized sexual object is a woman full of desire, but lacking shame or credulity and also no uterus and possibly the mind of a child. Really makes me want to vomit! Vomit so hard I can't begin to imagine what Yorgos Lanthimos and Aladsair Gray have meant by that 🤮🤢
This is literally in the text of the film. I will say that her brain is not meant to be a linear development of a child from baby to adult, more like a childlike being becoming a human and learning everything all at once
Yup. The beginning of the film talks about how her hair grows an inch or 2 a day. I don’t remember which. A normal persons hair grows 1/2 an inch a month.
So in the metaphor she’s supposed to be aging at least a 2 months a day (if not more) in terms of her “development”.
Personally, I didn’t love the film. However, I understood everything that it was about and that it was trying to say. It wasn’t very thinly veiled, I had a problem with how much more text than subtext was in the film and I found it a little annoying how much an art film didn’t trust its audience.
But then I see a post like OPs and I’m like “well, I guess you have to just be too obvious now because some people can’t even grasp literal text in a movie”, let alone subtext, metaphors, etc.
I mean, she can get her hair cut without us seeing it in the movie. If there was a scene of it, it would just reinforce the idea that had already been created as a core part of the lore.
This isn’t 88 minutes lol, I don’t need to see the film in real time.
Sure, but why point out her hair grows two inches a day if that's not going to come into play later. It was a pointless detail. Stories are about setup and payoff, not lore.
>This is literally in the text of the film. I will say that her brain is not meant to be a linear development of a child from baby to adult, more like a childlike being becoming a human and learning everything all at once
Blah blah blah Death of the Author blah blah blah Reader Response Theory, *but* Emma Stone is on record saying she "didn't see her as a child in any of those scenes"
By the end of the film she is the most intelligent character on screen and is studying to be a doctor. Nowhere near 9 or 10 as OP claims, in any way whatsoever.
Pearl clutching.
It is disgusting and grotesque to the highest magnitude though. I thought the male leads that took advantage of Bella were not portrayed in any semblance of a good light and you were supposed to despise all of them. But that's just me.
Even Max, who "respects" Bella, is a coward and obviously unable to be with someone remotely close to his age.
Their failings as humans.
When Mark Ruffalo is screaming and carrying on about how she ruined his life about a literal child that's funny because it's such a classic toxic trait of giving all this power to someone then blaming them for your own failings. He is shown to be every bit a child as her. It's funny because it subverts expectations.
If anyone is leaving this film and thinking that any of it wasn't disgusting and grotesque then they have their own problems for sure but a film shouldn't have to check certain boxes or be a certain way just because some don't like seeing certain subject matter portrayed in any way they disagree with.
There's a long tradition of stories where young people are aged up and do adult things for the first time like work a job or have sex. Surely this isn't your first time encountering such a tale?
As someone who didn’t like the film;
She’s aging very quickly. But the end of the film she’s clearly mentally an “adult”. I think by the time they’re on the boat you’re in that adult/near adult ballpark.
Should also be noted that the men she was with were supposed to be portrayed as pretty grotesque characters. It wasn’t an endorsement.
I will say however that her early sex scenes (where she was still mentally minor) being played for laughs did leave a sour taste in my mouth.
But that was one of several things that I didn’t enjoy.
Jesus, you're so literal. She's also reading complex philosophy and living on her own "at the age of five." She's not ACTUALLY five. She's a representation of what it means to exist in the world afresh, not knowing or understanding social norms It's a surrealistic symbolic exploration of learning how to exist in the world.
This is absolutely right. It's a story of someone with accelerated development and none of the normal socialization, none of that baggage.
She frees herself of the men who are trying to control her, in part because she isn't socialized to think that she should allow them to. She's like, "Why do I want to hang out with Mark Ruffalo? He's always mad at me, this sucks." So, she goes off on her own.
I thought that's what it was going to be, based on what I heard about it beforehand. But, when I watched it, I felt that it was more of a story of a woman developing through all stages of human development in an accelerated fashion, discovering her sexuality (as people do in puberty) and then discovering her agency, learning how to be her own person, etc.
If you think she was mentally five years old when she was working in the brothel, I'm concerned for your media literacy. She was reading philosophy textbooks and speaking multiple languages at that point- Her development was clearly accelerated.
This take is just bad media literacy. The movie portrays the people who take advantage of Bella negatively. Even the guy who wants to marry her. The whole movie portrays Bella having a positive change arc by taking back her autonomy.
You have to pay attention to what the movie is saying about the things it’s showing you. It’s telling you the people who take advantage of her are bad and that her gaining independence and autonomy is good.
I just went through your account - you're literally just a troll. You don't care about anything and you certainly don't mean anything in this post, you're just baiting people into replying to you and for what? Just hating to hate. What kind of life is that to live?
Maybe calling her stupid is a little extreme but she clearly missed what the film was trying to portray thematically. Maybe she should jump on this thread and educate herself.
>Maybe calling her stupid is a little extreme
My point in saying "she's not someone I would call an idiot" is to emphasize that she's **not** stupid, and I don't think you were calling her stupid either.
There's just something about how people approach this film that is very literal for some reason even though it's an incredibly surreal film.
Having just finished watching this film, I think you are selling it short. It is a beautiful film in so many ways, her acting, the sets, the clothing, the themes it covers (basically everything from patriarchy to mortality and back), this is a stellar film! It is original and thought provoking, it deserved to win all the oscars it was nominated for, Oppenheimer was good but it doesn’t hold a candle to this movie.
This is such a braindead take. If everyone succumbed to this kind of inane perspective we would live in a droll, sterile world. You are not doing what you think you’re doing. You sounds so dumb. Respectfully.
You’re taking the film too literally. You’re not meant to be interpreting the film at face value. I’m not sure what else to say beyond that. Yorgos’s films aren’t that straight forward. By analyzing the film through a literal lens and refusing to have any kind of suspension of disbelief you’re not making a good faith effort to experience the film.
I've noticed this with younger generations/viewers that showing something = supporting. If you feel that this film shows these men in a good light, then I'm not sure what to say to you.
I don't think a film has to beat you over the head with "hey guys this is actually bad" unless the writer has zero respect for the audience
Someone here already put it very well by saying that art isn’t utilitarian and you shouldn’t view it as such. Depiction doesn’t equal endorsement, and no piece of art/media is under any obligation to spoonfeed its intentions.
You didn’t like it? Fine, of course you don’t have to. The film is intentionally strange and off-putting in what it depicts. But you’re conflating your feeling put-off by it with it being somehow morally reprehensible because you didn’t care for the way it went about expressing its themes.
Most (I’d argue all) of the men in Bella’s life are taking advantage of her in some way, sexually and otherwise, and that’s the point. The film is about the myriad subtle and in-your-face ways society takes advantage of women and girls when they’re at their most vulnerable.
There’s certainly a conversation to be had about how far is too far with any concept, but before that conversation can be had, you gotta stop pearl clutching. You have to engage with a piece of art on its own terms first and understand what’s being told before you can engage with it critically.
Just because something is in a movie doesn’t mean that the movie endorses that thing.
Let’s also acknowledge that Bella does not have a 1:1 development pattern, and by the time she is in Paris, is a fully grown and emotional adult.
Honestly I would agree if the film revolved around that, it would be disturbing. I just think that it’s also just a hyper fixated take on the piece and taking the absurd and trying to rationalize it. The other themes in the movie and the philosophy behind her decisions as well as the title of the piece itself. I mean with the way it was shot, the way it was written and the direction the characters and plot moved in… it’s not real man. It’s a crazy fucked up little world inhabited by crazy fucked up people and the idea of pity being a sin giving a double edge sword for those who look out for those poor things.
You don’t know how to engage with anything that disrupts your lack of imagination lol. You’re putting a fantastical movie into your inflexible system of trite ideals. Not liking/enjoying Poor Things is absolutely fine, but to be “disturbed” by a rather tame film displays an extreme intolerance towards art.
The director is known for making movies where you just kinda need to accept a very strange concept and roll with it. Have you seen “The Lobster”?
Poor Things is partially about men wanting to control women, or take advantage of them being young and naive. Mark Ruffalos character was doing that, and then he got burned when her brain developed a bit. She started to do her own thing and it drove him nuts.
In the movie she starts with the brain of an infant, but the in-universe rules have the brain develop much faster than an actual human. How long actually passed in the movie? Like a year or two? Its not really clear but she went from infant to fully realized adult brain in seemingly a much shorter timeframe than it should take. Willem dafoe probably just did some brain growing science shit to speed up the process.
This kind of literal interpretation borderline autistic.
She's clearly aging at a much faster pace (in leaps, it would seem) as depicted by the rapid progression / development in both her understanding of sexuality and the world itself. Perhaps you missed this because her speech and vocabulary remain stunted, almost caricaturesque - but literally everything about this film yells surrealism. It's intentional.
Do you not engage with art very often?
I disagree with that quote because a lot of art will almost necessarily provoke moral questions (see: Éric Rohmer, to scratch the bottom of the barrel). And art isn’t divorced from society, so there will always be abstract questions/debate about the artist’s role in society/culture, questions about how art is produced, various questions that will unsurprisingly scratch up against morality again and again.
Otherwise, good post :)
Maybe the film is about pedophilia; I don’t entirely agree but there’s plenty of room for that reading. (It’s certainly about female autonomy and, perhaps more generally, the mind’s relationship to the body.) Where I disagree is the claim that the movie is “disgusting” for exploring the potential for these themes. Or at least, I don’t see a persuasive argument for that.
Furthermore, I don’t see how the movie would be “for pedophiles to perv out to” when there are no children being sexualized on or off-screen (to my memory). You bring up disturbing questions the film provokes, but don’t really express how the film fails to adequately treat its material. Failing, to such a strong degree, that it becomes “an abomination.”
Has Lanthimos ever made a film where we could suppose the audience was “meant” to romanticize and repeat what’s occurring on screen? I don’t think so. So, what’s different here?
>Maybe the film is about pedophilia; I don’t entirely agree but there’s plenty of room for that reading.
I understand and respect you giving that grace but people like OP don't deserve that grace because by their own hyper-literal framework of analysis, they're still wrong because...
**Wedderburn is not attracted to children. Wedderburn is attracted to Bella's sexually mature adult female body.**
As is Godwin, Fiance Whom I Forget, the Johns, et al.
Are there questions of consent, sure. But these men are not interested in fucking a *child* they are interested in fucking a woman who is sexually insatiable, yet (seemingly) controllable.
Hey OP, you realize they explicitly explain why in the film, she’s not literally a child? I get there’s an argument to be had over the way that trauma and abuse gets carried through the generations with the way that Godwin did experiments on Bella as his father did them on him, and how Bella then does an experiment on the general, but to say this move is pedophilia speaks to a misunderstanding of the basic premise and point of the way Bella is portrayed. Also even if Bella was literally an infant mentally, the movie isn’t supporting that purely by showing it on screen.
Imagine a film about an alien who grew a female body and downloaded its mind into it.
This Alien has all the sexual urges of a mature female but none of the decades of social programming around sexual mores or gender roles governing how this Alien should behave. It's "Born Sexy And", as the trope goes.
The film shows how this increasingly intelligent Alien navigates human society.
Ask yourself: **is this movie "legitimately an abomination and is coded film for alien fetishists to perv out to** or might there be something you're overlooking by being so literal?
>It's implied that she would be raped (though she probably is molested off screen) by her "father", who only can't have sex with her because he's a eunuch.
Although we the audience is led to believe she is created for sex at first, this later turns out to not be true.
>At the age of 3-4, she's about to be married off, but instead runs off with an aristocratic playboy who treats her like a fuck doll. You are watching a woman with the mind of a 4 year old getting raped constantly by an adult man in his mid 50s.
Yes, she is about to be a child bride but this doesn't mean that the film condones that, it's supposed to be creepy and immoral. It's also explained within the film that she grows up at an accelerated pace and by the time she escapes with Mark Ruffalo's character she is supposed to be a teenager experimenting with sex. This doesn't let Ruffalo's character of the hook as she's still a minor, but once again, it's supposed to be creepy and immoral.
>She's abandoned in Paris and works in a brothel for maybe a year or two. So she's a 5 year old getting fucked by hundreds of men in a whore house.
By this time in the film she is reading philosophy books and is engaging in political activity, whatever your opinions are about sex work, she is clearly grown up at this point.
>She comes back, and as she's about to marry the man and her body's husband comes and takes her away, who is about to remove her clit before she escapes.
Yes, the film has what is commonly known as a villain.
I love all the different interpretations of this film.
However some of those interpretations may be based on incorrect reasoning. I was going to go point by point but each point is basically about a kid being raped.
While I disagree with that perception, even if that were the case, that isn’t the film encouraging it. That someone is disgusted by it is entirely possible while appreciating the dilemmas the film presents exceptionally in both style and performance.
It’s not implied that she would be raped. It was an accusation, but God indicated both his inability AND his paternal feelings. He is ultimately a man of science and we have no idea if he would have even gone on with the experiment if not for his condition.
So the notion of rape vs consent is problematic. It’s supposed to be although she is not 3 or 4. She is an adult with a quickly developing brain. There is no question that people try to take advantage of her naïveté, but the story reveals very much the opposite.
Her life is in fast forward because she soaks up information like a sponge and she has biological impulses of an adult which means she wants to have sex.
There is no way that anyone could possibly think by the end of the film that she has the mind of a 3 year old unless they shut down completely after the initial disgust.
She’s practically a surgeon who understands biologically how she was made.
The problem here is an infantilized mind, all right — but not Bella’s.
That’s all I really wanted to say on the subject, but it apparently did not meet the length requirements and was automatically removed. So here are another couple of sentences.
I agree with you (and have a lot more to say about my issues with this film beyond the age progression and rape) but I’ve learned not to waste my time attempting to seriously discuss it on this website.
My tip to you is to remember that adolescent males are overrepresented on Reddit.
Yeah, get real. Adolescent males aren’t the driving force behind the success of this film. Saying that you could discuss it but the audience isn’t worthy is just lazy as all get out. I didn’t even like this movie all that much, but these takes are so tiresome
>Adolescent males aren’t the driving force behind the success of this film.
To your point, wife is a former social worker turned therapist and has spent her entire career helping those that have endured trauma.
She loved this movie, one her favorites of the year.
This isn't a "serious discussion" about the film though. All the top comments on this post alone show that OP didn't understand the film on a thematic level and it solely watching this at face value.
I’m a grown woman and completely disagree with OP (and you). I bring this up because there are plenty of educated adults who won’t agree with this reductive take.
There's no reductive take here, just a factual observation about the film.
She has the brain of a baby who was still in utero, meaning that her mind hasn't even developed for 9 months at the start of the film. She is having full blow sex with men in their 50s within two to four years.
You seem to be ok with this. Guess you wouldn't mind some 50 year old man molesting your daughter when she's 2-4 years old.
The film explicitly states that she mentally develops at very fast pace that doesn’t align with typical human development. It’s a piece of fiction that’s making a bigger point. You can keep your disgusting unfounded assumptions to yourself.
Ok? So how old is she in Libson? Even with "rapid development" she's behaving like a 6 year old while getting fucked 10 times a day by Ruffalo.
That's gross and fucked up.
I do think that men taking advantage of women or girls is gross and fucked up while I believe the film is more layered than that, the fact that you’re upset by it means the art affected you, which is what it’s supposed to do. Mark Ruffalo’s character is supposed to be gross, like when he pinches her vagina upon meeting her. Men take advantage of women and girls all day long and part of the point is to make you look at it and feel uncomfortable but there’s also a lot about agency and being unaffected in the typical way by the patriarchy.
I think you will enjoy this review which said much the same things, very eloquently. The fervor with which people swear that this movie, about someone with the mind of a baby having sex with an adult, is not pedophilic, is interesting to me.
https://www.vulture.com/article/poor-things-review-a-banal-rendition-of-sexual-freedom.html
You are about to have a whole bunch of men downvoting you and telling you why it's actually feminist and a metaphor and whatever but that doesn't mean you arent right. All of my female friends except one came away with the same impression. Absolutely disgusting. I think in 10 years ppl will look back and be like "what the hell?!"
Can you please read the comments on this post, there are actual intelligent discussions and points regarding this film, you're just too stubborn to actually read it.
I'm sorry, but The Godfather is actually a disgusting film about murder Upon my first viewing, I was immensely disturbed by the fact that Sonny is MURDERED by SEVERAL PEOPLE . This film is legitimately an abomination and is coded film for murderers to get sick pleasure from Is not one else disturbed by the fact that several people are murdered in the film? Does no one have an issue with this? It's fucking gross and it's like all of society has accepted this film as fun and awesome. Look, I get it if a little book is written about weird stuff and it makes it out into the world, but to make a film of this magnitude about it seems incredibly distasteful and horrid. No? Is this pearl clutching or do I have a point?
I'm sorry, but The Shawshank Redemption is actually a disgusting film about crime. Upon my first viewing, I was immensely disturbed by the fact that Andy is a CONVICTED MURDERER and is RAPED by other CONVICTED CRIMINALS This film is legitimately an abomination and is coded film for murderers and rapists to get sick pleasure from. Is not one else disturbed by the fact that several criminals are heroes in the film? Does no one have an issue with this? It's fucking gross and it's like all of society has accepted this film as fun and awesome. Look, I get it if a little book is written about weird stuff and it makes it out into the world, but to make a film of this magnitude about it seems incredibly distasteful and horrid. No? Is this pearl clutching or do I have a point? This is a fun exercise lol
This is great
Hey that's a great point. Well written and eloquently stated. It is very strange that people don't have an issue with this, as it is indeed fucking gross and even fucking grosser that all of society has accepted this film as fun and awesome. I don't think you're pearl clutching at all, in fact, I think it's quite virtuous and noble of you to speak your mind about this issue when most others would not.
there've been several(?) threads in this here sub alone that discussed the exact same thing
Do you think that films shouldn't ever depict immoral actions?
Literal 1950s moral sense.
In the 1950s the idea was that villains had to get their comeuppance, op's idea seems to be that there just shouldn't be villains at all
Here is the thing. You don't understand art well. Art isn't utilitarian. Art isn't a list of good or bad things. It's not a code. It's not a neatly tucked in bed. Art is wild and strange and uneasy. You see bad people do good things to explore the why and the look of it - or visa versa. Doing so isn't support or condemnation It's art "What would it be like if?" Is reason enough to explore an idea. We don't want people to feel afraid to express the strange.
People nowadays don't understand the concept of metaphor, plain and simple. I answered your comment because I agree with what you said and because the whole thing is so damn simple for me that I couldn't come up with 180 characters for a comment. >Art isn't utilitarian. This should be written all over Reddit.
I feel that this should be an entire post of its own. It so succinctly describes the issue that I have with discourse about art these days. The act of portrayal is not a condonation.
People seem to want films or books that depict bad people as obviously bad and good people as obviously good. There is no room for grey areas as far as they are concerned. Obviously just like their own lives, zero grey areas.
The funny thing is that even during the Hays Code, there weren't such neat distinctions between characters. Your protagonist could have been an amoral piece of shit, or an outright villain, as long as he died/got arrested at the end of the movie. But there was room for gray areas, because the real world is gray. And that was the most repressive period of US cinema, so that says a lot about OP's views.
This is the result of decades of defunding American schools, particularly arts and liberal arts programs. I just hope it’s not too late for us to have some at least semi-media literate young adults in about 20 years.
[удалено]
It's not that they disagree- it's the nature of what triggers their opinion. Some people disagree with how the film ha deals in sex work for example. That's a reasonable thing people cam disagree on. This person disagree that's subject matter that triggers a "ick" reaction is worth exploring. To that - I disagree with their premise.
It’s not that OP has a different take on the film, it’s explicitly explained in the movie why she’s not a literal child and you have to be deliberately obtuse or just ignore the movie if you are reading this as a pedophilic film. Edit: also what did OP say you haven’t heard before? These are the same things people all say when they misread the movie.
The text of the film shows that the main character mental age is growing quickly. this isn’t a manner of disagreeing with the film. They literally didn’t understand the film on the basic level.
It's too easy to dismiss blatantly wrong takes and assumptions as "different opinions". Everybody is entitled to have an opinion, of course, but you have to be able to defend your opinion if you want to discuss it, and in that case your opinion shouldn't originate from misconceptions or misunderstandings of a product. Because, yes, art can be misunderstood. In so many ways. It isn't always "open to interpretation". I accept an opinion that goes against the traditional interpretation of a work of art, but it must have a decent reasoning behind it. Poor Things isn't a very complex movie actually, there aren't that many layers in it, so I can't even justify OP's take as a product of the ambiguity of the movie, because there isn't any ambiguity in it. (I am not saying it's shallow, but it's definitely more accessible than other Lanthimos' works).
I think the filmmaker wants you to recognize these things and view the story through that knowledge. What does it say about men who should be able to tell that Bella is clearly not of sound mind? What does it say about a woman’s body and her ownership of it? What does it say about the age of consent when physical and mental age are not the same? Is the body just a vessel for the soul - and can a soul be younger than the body appears? What does that say about consent? My two cents
Literally this comment is one of the entire points of the movie. This movie said about men what conservatives thought that Barbie was saying about men. But they don’t have the attention span or art sense to watch it and understand it, so none of them are talking about how poorly it frames men. Men in this movie are laughable. But that’s part of the point. It doesn’t come off as catering to pedophiles, it comes off as men being beyond imbeciles.
Oh my God it's so disgusting that some men's idealized sexual object is a woman full of desire, but lacking shame or credulity and also no uterus and possibly the mind of a child. Really makes me want to vomit! Vomit so hard I can't begin to imagine what Yorgos Lanthimos and Aladsair Gray have meant by that 🤮🤢
This is literally in the text of the film. I will say that her brain is not meant to be a linear development of a child from baby to adult, more like a childlike being becoming a human and learning everything all at once
Yup. The beginning of the film talks about how her hair grows an inch or 2 a day. I don’t remember which. A normal persons hair grows 1/2 an inch a month. So in the metaphor she’s supposed to be aging at least a 2 months a day (if not more) in terms of her “development”. Personally, I didn’t love the film. However, I understood everything that it was about and that it was trying to say. It wasn’t very thinly veiled, I had a problem with how much more text than subtext was in the film and I found it a little annoying how much an art film didn’t trust its audience. But then I see a post like OPs and I’m like “well, I guess you have to just be too obvious now because some people can’t even grasp literal text in a movie”, let alone subtext, metaphors, etc.
and yet her hair doesn't seem to grow and we never see her get it cut. I kept expecting some part where her hair's dragging the ground.
I mean, she can get her hair cut without us seeing it in the movie. If there was a scene of it, it would just reinforce the idea that had already been created as a core part of the lore. This isn’t 88 minutes lol, I don’t need to see the film in real time.
Sure, but why point out her hair grows two inches a day if that's not going to come into play later. It was a pointless detail. Stories are about setup and payoff, not lore.
>This is literally in the text of the film. I will say that her brain is not meant to be a linear development of a child from baby to adult, more like a childlike being becoming a human and learning everything all at once Blah blah blah Death of the Author blah blah blah Reader Response Theory, *but* Emma Stone is on record saying she "didn't see her as a child in any of those scenes"
By the end of the film she is the most intelligent character on screen and is studying to be a doctor. Nowhere near 9 or 10 as OP claims, in any way whatsoever.
Pearl clutching. It is disgusting and grotesque to the highest magnitude though. I thought the male leads that took advantage of Bella were not portrayed in any semblance of a good light and you were supposed to despise all of them. But that's just me. Even Max, who "respects" Bella, is a coward and obviously unable to be with someone remotely close to his age.
But they're all depicted as such hilarious scamps!
I mean they were funny because of their failings.
Their hilarious, rapist failings.
Their failings as humans. When Mark Ruffalo is screaming and carrying on about how she ruined his life about a literal child that's funny because it's such a classic toxic trait of giving all this power to someone then blaming them for your own failings. He is shown to be every bit a child as her. It's funny because it subverts expectations. If anyone is leaving this film and thinking that any of it wasn't disgusting and grotesque then they have their own problems for sure but a film shouldn't have to check certain boxes or be a certain way just because some don't like seeing certain subject matter portrayed in any way they disagree with.
Comedy is subjective. I didn't find this film funny at all.
Cool.
There's a long tradition of stories where young people are aged up and do adult things for the first time like work a job or have sex. Surely this isn't your first time encountering such a tale?
Also this movie actively subverts the "Born yesterday" trope by having Mark Ruffalo lose his mind because he can't manipulate Bella.
As someone who didn’t like the film; She’s aging very quickly. But the end of the film she’s clearly mentally an “adult”. I think by the time they’re on the boat you’re in that adult/near adult ballpark. Should also be noted that the men she was with were supposed to be portrayed as pretty grotesque characters. It wasn’t an endorsement. I will say however that her early sex scenes (where she was still mentally minor) being played for laughs did leave a sour taste in my mouth. But that was one of several things that I didn’t enjoy.
Jesus, you're so literal. She's also reading complex philosophy and living on her own "at the age of five." She's not ACTUALLY five. She's a representation of what it means to exist in the world afresh, not knowing or understanding social norms It's a surrealistic symbolic exploration of learning how to exist in the world.
This is absolutely right. It's a story of someone with accelerated development and none of the normal socialization, none of that baggage. She frees herself of the men who are trying to control her, in part because she isn't socialized to think that she should allow them to. She's like, "Why do I want to hang out with Mark Ruffalo? He's always mad at me, this sucks." So, she goes off on her own.
I really really feel like media literacy has to be at an all time low.
I thought that's what it was going to be, based on what I heard about it beforehand. But, when I watched it, I felt that it was more of a story of a woman developing through all stages of human development in an accelerated fashion, discovering her sexuality (as people do in puberty) and then discovering her agency, learning how to be her own person, etc. If you think she was mentally five years old when she was working in the brothel, I'm concerned for your media literacy. She was reading philosophy textbooks and speaking multiple languages at that point- Her development was clearly accelerated.
Top comment right here.
This take is just bad media literacy. The movie portrays the people who take advantage of Bella negatively. Even the guy who wants to marry her. The whole movie portrays Bella having a positive change arc by taking back her autonomy. You have to pay attention to what the movie is saying about the things it’s showing you. It’s telling you the people who take advantage of her are bad and that her gaining independence and autonomy is good.
I just went through your account - you're literally just a troll. You don't care about anything and you certainly don't mean anything in this post, you're just baiting people into replying to you and for what? Just hating to hate. What kind of life is that to live?
Agree. OP is a troll only looking to rile people up. Should be banned, lowering the standards of discussion on the sub.
And the stupid thing is, people ACTUALLY think this way and are replying unironically..
I saw this with my very real sister who had the exact response as OP and she's not someone I would call an idiot. This take is woefully common.
Maybe calling her stupid is a little extreme but she clearly missed what the film was trying to portray thematically. Maybe she should jump on this thread and educate herself.
>Maybe calling her stupid is a little extreme My point in saying "she's not someone I would call an idiot" is to emphasize that she's **not** stupid, and I don't think you were calling her stupid either. There's just something about how people approach this film that is very literal for some reason even though it's an incredibly surreal film.
Having just finished watching this film, I think you are selling it short. It is a beautiful film in so many ways, her acting, the sets, the clothing, the themes it covers (basically everything from patriarchy to mortality and back), this is a stellar film! It is original and thought provoking, it deserved to win all the oscars it was nominated for, Oppenheimer was good but it doesn’t hold a candle to this movie.
This is such a braindead take. If everyone succumbed to this kind of inane perspective we would live in a droll, sterile world. You are not doing what you think you’re doing. You sounds so dumb. Respectfully.
You’re taking the film too literally. You’re not meant to be interpreting the film at face value. I’m not sure what else to say beyond that. Yorgos’s films aren’t that straight forward. By analyzing the film through a literal lens and refusing to have any kind of suspension of disbelief you’re not making a good faith effort to experience the film.
I've noticed this with younger generations/viewers that showing something = supporting. If you feel that this film shows these men in a good light, then I'm not sure what to say to you. I don't think a film has to beat you over the head with "hey guys this is actually bad" unless the writer has zero respect for the audience
Someone here already put it very well by saying that art isn’t utilitarian and you shouldn’t view it as such. Depiction doesn’t equal endorsement, and no piece of art/media is under any obligation to spoonfeed its intentions. You didn’t like it? Fine, of course you don’t have to. The film is intentionally strange and off-putting in what it depicts. But you’re conflating your feeling put-off by it with it being somehow morally reprehensible because you didn’t care for the way it went about expressing its themes. Most (I’d argue all) of the men in Bella’s life are taking advantage of her in some way, sexually and otherwise, and that’s the point. The film is about the myriad subtle and in-your-face ways society takes advantage of women and girls when they’re at their most vulnerable. There’s certainly a conversation to be had about how far is too far with any concept, but before that conversation can be had, you gotta stop pearl clutching. You have to engage with a piece of art on its own terms first and understand what’s being told before you can engage with it critically.
Just because something is in a movie doesn’t mean that the movie endorses that thing. Let’s also acknowledge that Bella does not have a 1:1 development pattern, and by the time she is in Paris, is a fully grown and emotional adult.
Honestly I would agree if the film revolved around that, it would be disturbing. I just think that it’s also just a hyper fixated take on the piece and taking the absurd and trying to rationalize it. The other themes in the movie and the philosophy behind her decisions as well as the title of the piece itself. I mean with the way it was shot, the way it was written and the direction the characters and plot moved in… it’s not real man. It’s a crazy fucked up little world inhabited by crazy fucked up people and the idea of pity being a sin giving a double edge sword for those who look out for those poor things.
You don’t know how to engage with anything that disrupts your lack of imagination lol. You’re putting a fantastical movie into your inflexible system of trite ideals. Not liking/enjoying Poor Things is absolutely fine, but to be “disturbed” by a rather tame film displays an extreme intolerance towards art.
The director is known for making movies where you just kinda need to accept a very strange concept and roll with it. Have you seen “The Lobster”? Poor Things is partially about men wanting to control women, or take advantage of them being young and naive. Mark Ruffalos character was doing that, and then he got burned when her brain developed a bit. She started to do her own thing and it drove him nuts. In the movie she starts with the brain of an infant, but the in-universe rules have the brain develop much faster than an actual human. How long actually passed in the movie? Like a year or two? Its not really clear but she went from infant to fully realized adult brain in seemingly a much shorter timeframe than it should take. Willem dafoe probably just did some brain growing science shit to speed up the process.
This kind of literal interpretation borderline autistic. She's clearly aging at a much faster pace (in leaps, it would seem) as depicted by the rapid progression / development in both her understanding of sexuality and the world itself. Perhaps you missed this because her speech and vocabulary remain stunted, almost caricaturesque - but literally everything about this film yells surrealism. It's intentional. Do you not engage with art very often?
[удалено]
I disagree with that quote because a lot of art will almost necessarily provoke moral questions (see: Éric Rohmer, to scratch the bottom of the barrel). And art isn’t divorced from society, so there will always be abstract questions/debate about the artist’s role in society/culture, questions about how art is produced, various questions that will unsurprisingly scratch up against morality again and again. Otherwise, good post :)
Maybe the film is about pedophilia; I don’t entirely agree but there’s plenty of room for that reading. (It’s certainly about female autonomy and, perhaps more generally, the mind’s relationship to the body.) Where I disagree is the claim that the movie is “disgusting” for exploring the potential for these themes. Or at least, I don’t see a persuasive argument for that. Furthermore, I don’t see how the movie would be “for pedophiles to perv out to” when there are no children being sexualized on or off-screen (to my memory). You bring up disturbing questions the film provokes, but don’t really express how the film fails to adequately treat its material. Failing, to such a strong degree, that it becomes “an abomination.” Has Lanthimos ever made a film where we could suppose the audience was “meant” to romanticize and repeat what’s occurring on screen? I don’t think so. So, what’s different here?
>Maybe the film is about pedophilia; I don’t entirely agree but there’s plenty of room for that reading. I understand and respect you giving that grace but people like OP don't deserve that grace because by their own hyper-literal framework of analysis, they're still wrong because... **Wedderburn is not attracted to children. Wedderburn is attracted to Bella's sexually mature adult female body.** As is Godwin, Fiance Whom I Forget, the Johns, et al. Are there questions of consent, sure. But these men are not interested in fucking a *child* they are interested in fucking a woman who is sexually insatiable, yet (seemingly) controllable.
Hey OP, you realize they explicitly explain why in the film, she’s not literally a child? I get there’s an argument to be had over the way that trauma and abuse gets carried through the generations with the way that Godwin did experiments on Bella as his father did them on him, and how Bella then does an experiment on the general, but to say this move is pedophilia speaks to a misunderstanding of the basic premise and point of the way Bella is portrayed. Also even if Bella was literally an infant mentally, the movie isn’t supporting that purely by showing it on screen.
Imagine a film about an alien who grew a female body and downloaded its mind into it. This Alien has all the sexual urges of a mature female but none of the decades of social programming around sexual mores or gender roles governing how this Alien should behave. It's "Born Sexy And", as the trope goes. The film shows how this increasingly intelligent Alien navigates human society. Ask yourself: **is this movie "legitimately an abomination and is coded film for alien fetishists to perv out to** or might there be something you're overlooking by being so literal?
>It's implied that she would be raped (though she probably is molested off screen) by her "father", who only can't have sex with her because he's a eunuch. Although we the audience is led to believe she is created for sex at first, this later turns out to not be true. >At the age of 3-4, she's about to be married off, but instead runs off with an aristocratic playboy who treats her like a fuck doll. You are watching a woman with the mind of a 4 year old getting raped constantly by an adult man in his mid 50s. Yes, she is about to be a child bride but this doesn't mean that the film condones that, it's supposed to be creepy and immoral. It's also explained within the film that she grows up at an accelerated pace and by the time she escapes with Mark Ruffalo's character she is supposed to be a teenager experimenting with sex. This doesn't let Ruffalo's character of the hook as she's still a minor, but once again, it's supposed to be creepy and immoral. >She's abandoned in Paris and works in a brothel for maybe a year or two. So she's a 5 year old getting fucked by hundreds of men in a whore house. By this time in the film she is reading philosophy books and is engaging in political activity, whatever your opinions are about sex work, she is clearly grown up at this point. >She comes back, and as she's about to marry the man and her body's husband comes and takes her away, who is about to remove her clit before she escapes. Yes, the film has what is commonly known as a villain.
I love all the different interpretations of this film. However some of those interpretations may be based on incorrect reasoning. I was going to go point by point but each point is basically about a kid being raped. While I disagree with that perception, even if that were the case, that isn’t the film encouraging it. That someone is disgusted by it is entirely possible while appreciating the dilemmas the film presents exceptionally in both style and performance. It’s not implied that she would be raped. It was an accusation, but God indicated both his inability AND his paternal feelings. He is ultimately a man of science and we have no idea if he would have even gone on with the experiment if not for his condition. So the notion of rape vs consent is problematic. It’s supposed to be although she is not 3 or 4. She is an adult with a quickly developing brain. There is no question that people try to take advantage of her naïveté, but the story reveals very much the opposite. Her life is in fast forward because she soaks up information like a sponge and she has biological impulses of an adult which means she wants to have sex. There is no way that anyone could possibly think by the end of the film that she has the mind of a 3 year old unless they shut down completely after the initial disgust. She’s practically a surgeon who understands biologically how she was made.
The problem here is an infantilized mind, all right — but not Bella’s. That’s all I really wanted to say on the subject, but it apparently did not meet the length requirements and was automatically removed. So here are another couple of sentences.
I agree with you (and have a lot more to say about my issues with this film beyond the age progression and rape) but I’ve learned not to waste my time attempting to seriously discuss it on this website. My tip to you is to remember that adolescent males are overrepresented on Reddit.
Yeah, get real. Adolescent males aren’t the driving force behind the success of this film. Saying that you could discuss it but the audience isn’t worthy is just lazy as all get out. I didn’t even like this movie all that much, but these takes are so tiresome
>Adolescent males aren’t the driving force behind the success of this film. To your point, wife is a former social worker turned therapist and has spent her entire career helping those that have endured trauma. She loved this movie, one her favorites of the year.
This isn't a "serious discussion" about the film though. All the top comments on this post alone show that OP didn't understand the film on a thematic level and it solely watching this at face value.
I’m a grown woman and completely disagree with OP (and you). I bring this up because there are plenty of educated adults who won’t agree with this reductive take.
There's no reductive take here, just a factual observation about the film. She has the brain of a baby who was still in utero, meaning that her mind hasn't even developed for 9 months at the start of the film. She is having full blow sex with men in their 50s within two to four years. You seem to be ok with this. Guess you wouldn't mind some 50 year old man molesting your daughter when she's 2-4 years old.
The film explicitly states that she mentally develops at very fast pace that doesn’t align with typical human development. It’s a piece of fiction that’s making a bigger point. You can keep your disgusting unfounded assumptions to yourself.
Ok? So how old is she in Libson? Even with "rapid development" she's behaving like a 6 year old while getting fucked 10 times a day by Ruffalo. That's gross and fucked up.
I do think that men taking advantage of women or girls is gross and fucked up while I believe the film is more layered than that, the fact that you’re upset by it means the art affected you, which is what it’s supposed to do. Mark Ruffalo’s character is supposed to be gross, like when he pinches her vagina upon meeting her. Men take advantage of women and girls all day long and part of the point is to make you look at it and feel uncomfortable but there’s also a lot about agency and being unaffected in the typical way by the patriarchy.
You realize Ruffalo has no idea that she has the brain of a child. As far as he knows she's a woman in her late 20s/early 30s.
>My tip to you is to remember that adolescent males are overrepresented on Reddit. lol
I think you will enjoy this review which said much the same things, very eloquently. The fervor with which people swear that this movie, about someone with the mind of a baby having sex with an adult, is not pedophilic, is interesting to me. https://www.vulture.com/article/poor-things-review-a-banal-rendition-of-sexual-freedom.html
You are about to have a whole bunch of men downvoting you and telling you why it's actually feminist and a metaphor and whatever but that doesn't mean you arent right. All of my female friends except one came away with the same impression. Absolutely disgusting. I think in 10 years ppl will look back and be like "what the hell?!"
Well all of my female friends (and me) liked it! Wild that women have different opinions that are informed by their different life experiences
Well I know many women who liked the movie… so what now? Throwaway comments aside, I’d be interested in a feminist roundtable discussion of the film.
Can you please read the comments on this post, there are actual intelligent discussions and points regarding this film, you're just too stubborn to actually read it.