Another ‘Poor Things’ is Possible
by David Archibald

As Emma Stone picks up an Oscar for Best Actress in Yorgos Lanthimos’ film of Alasdair Gray‘s novel Poor Things, people are dancing in the streets of Glasgow! David Archibald reviews a film that coulda, shoulda, woulda...

Poor Things secures Academy Awards but Glasgow is the big winner on the night.

The camera glides gently over a soft, white quilt, embossed with a hand-drawn map of the Clyde. The black lines stand out clear and bold, imitative of the style of the artist on whose work this enigmatic film is based.

The film cuts to a young, dark-haired woman atop a bridge overlooking an expanse of water before she hurls herself downwards into the depths below. Then, as we contemplate her deathly dive, the words ‘Glasgow’ appear in spindly, white letters across a dark, silvery screen.

Viewing the opening scene of Poor Things (Lanthimos, 2023) quickly dispels any fears that the celebrated Greek director would set this adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel in a city other than the one in which its literary origins are so firmly rooted.

The plot is well established: a young woman (Emma Stone) attempts suicide by drowning. She is rescued by a scientist Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who, when he discovers that she is pregnant, saves her life by implanting the brain of her unborn baby in her head. The young women, reborn as Bella Baxter, is re-educated into bourgeoise life but is free of bourgeoise morality, particularly in relation to bodily matters. Bella is betrothed to Baxter’s assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) but embarks on a tour of Europe (and sexual discovery) with an unscrupulous lawyer, Duncan Weatherspoon (Mark Ruffalo) who proves no match for young Bella.

Tony McNamara’s screenplay takes the reader on the lengthy journey to Lisbon and Paris where Bella’s liberation take place, with the trip sandwiched between extended opening and closing scenes shot in Glasgow. The film is at its strongest, though, not in the more pacy, sex-filled romp across Europe, but back in its home city, where the human relationships that develop between Bella, Godwin, and her would-be husband take place.

Robbie Ryan, who covered Glasgow’s streets in somewhat different cinematographic fashion when he shot The Angels’ Share (Loach, 2012), has brought to the screen a dynamic Glasgow. It is of the Victorian era, for sure, and the city’s West End is present in all its finery: the Lansdown Church in which the happy couple (eventually) marry; the resplendent residences of Park Circus; and the nearby steps (which the novel likens to the Odessa Steps in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin) are also present. With the latter, though, Lanthimos has brought an imaginative twist on the classic but overused ‘baby in the pram’ shot.

It’s not simply Victorian Glasgow that’s so imaginatively on display: at one point the Kingston Bridge pops up in the distance, conjuring a vista which seems to be beyond time, in keeping with the film’s comic book rather than realist aesthetic. This is an old Glasgow, and a new Glasgow.

The city has increasingly been used as an ‘everycity’ in film production, standing in, for example, for Gotham City in Batgirl (El Arbi and Fallah, 2022) – now shelved according to press reports – and The Batman (Reeves, 2022). Glasgow has also been utilised to represent numerous other locations, including in The House of Mirth (Davies, 2000), World War Z (Foster, 2013), Baar Baar Dekho (Hehra, 2013), 1917 (Mendes, 2019) and Indiana Jones 5 (Mangold, 2023).

These productions might well bring jobs to the struggling Scottish film industry, but they cannot be used, as they have been, by politicians as evidence of an effective film policy.

In the absence of other home-grown production in which the city features as itself, these films have also increasingly contributed to the erasure of an actually existing Glasgow.

Glasgow sorely needs films which reflect the city back to itself and this adaptation of Poor Things goes a long way to filling that gap.

There’s much in Gray’s novel that is only dealt with in passing – socialism and critique of British colonialism are barely present; however, any adaptation will only be able to deal with a slice of its original material rather than the whole. And, of course, what’s omitted and dealt with differently will open rather than delimit debate. All the better.

Of its eleven Academy Award nominations, the film picked up four; Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Make Up and Styling and Best Actress. Surely, though, the city authorities should add an additional gong to the pile: as a matter of urgency we should award Lanthimos and the whole team the freedom of the city.

(Ed. – for an analysis of the differences between the book and film of Poor Things -see also https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2024/02/10/being-bella-baxter/ )