The True Meaning Behind Yorgos Lanthimos' 'Poor Things' Explored | TVovermind (2024)

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What is the meaning behind the movie "Poor Things"? ›

Poor Things is a film about innocence, about discovery, about human nature. It makes us question the way we view things, the way we censor behaviour, the way we impose societal norms upon each other, and how seeing those norms disregarded can be both disturbing and exhilarating.

Poor Things Explained

The most obvious theme in the film is the subjugation women are forced to endure from men. Characters like Duncan are attracted to Bella because of her looks and her willingness to go along with whatever they say. Then, once Bella develops a mind of her own, Duncan becomes insecure and angry.

It focuses on Bella Baxter, a fetus in the body of an adult woman in Victorian London who is saved from her mother's suicide via brain transplant and embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery. Principal photography took place in Hungary from August to December 2021.

When emotion is absent from the faces of the actors, it usually finds its way into the motion and perspective of the camera. With cinematographer Robbie Ryan, Lanthimos conveys various feelings with limited lenses. In their 2023 film Poor Things, fisheye lenses indicate extreme emotion, confusion, and disconnect.

PSA: Poor Things is not a true story | Dazed.

Emma Stone's Oscar-nominated movie is now available on Disney+. At the ending of Poor Things, a character sees his brain surgically replaced by a goat's brain. It's a happy ending, and not even the weirdest part of the movie.

Poor Things is ableist because of its use of prosthetics to simulate facial differences and its explicit comparison of Bella Baxter, who has a baby's brain and an adult's body, to people with intellectual disabilities. Many other disabled people, including Erica Mones and Andrew Gurza, also criticized its ableism.

"They told me he was a physician and a teacher, and also that he was deformed" — his face and body are heavily scarred by a lifetime of experiments inflicted upon him — "so right off the bat, he seemed to share one aspect with the monster in Frankenstein and another with Dr. Frankenstein himself."

The film's themes have led to backlash, with some claiming that the fact it has a male director, and therefore a male gaze, makes it sexist. There have also been accusations that the nudity is exploitative and that, because Bella has the brain of a child, there are consent issues at play.

When the distributor submitted the film for formal classification, the scene had been re-edited, and we were able to classify the film 18.

What are the disturbing scenes in Poor Things? ›

Content warning: the film depicts scenes of blood, interior organs, dead corpses, graphic surgery, suicide, sexual assault, prostitution and nudity. The film “Poor Things” got some of the most mixed reviews that I have ever seen, making it arguably one of the most impactful films of the year.

Emma Stone's portrayal of Bella in Poor Things earned her an Academy Award for daring feats no other actor has attempted. Victoria in Poor Things is estimated to be around 30 years old when she takes her own life, more or less matching Stone's age during filming.

Fisheye is a plantar wart, a small benign skin lesion caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV). It appears on the sole of the foot, usually in areas of pressure, such as the heel or ball of the foot.

: being, having, or produced by a wide-angle photographic lens that has a highly curved protruding front, that covers an angle of about 180 degrees, and that gives a circular image.

Barrel distortion — Photo looks pushed out at the center. For distortion corrections to work properly, the axis of the camera lens must coincide with the center of the image. Fisheye distortion — Photo looks as though it has been pasted onto a sphere or blown up like a balloon. The edges of the photo look compressed.

Part of this is because he, too, was mutilated by his surgeon father (in one of the oddest visuals you'll ever see, he lost the ability to make digestive acids, so a machine creates large bubbles of gas that he “burps” out during meals to keep his metabolic processes going), which extends to a series of Dr.

This is also a movie about cruelty, and Bella has discovered the inherent cruelty that is part of being a human. Saving God would be compassionate and an act of love but turning the abusive Alfie into a goat is a better punchline. Bella's opted for control and chaos which suits her well.

Poor Things is proof that there is room for weirdly wonderful cinema in this world. "Poor Things" coincides with Emerld Fennell's "Saltburn" in confronting Hollywood's gun-happy format with something considerably more grounded, namely the sex urge that drives people, and the social curiosity that comes along with it.

The production design team behind "Poor Things" won the Academy Award for Best Production Design. LOS ANGELES -- Poor Things" is one of the most buzzed about movies this Oscar season, with 11 nominations including acting nods for stars Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo. But that's just the start of this list.