Having already seen the show in London, I just had to gleefully stride into the lobby of Calgary’s arthouse cinema, The Plaza, and proclaim at the counter, “One adult for Bella Baxter!” They knew I meant the controversial movie Poor Things, which several female journalists at a certain British well known progressive newspaper had all disparaged as being for the male chauvinist gaze: Not feminist.
But of course it is feminist! I said so in a previous post. As for how some paid reviewers could be wrong, I answered that too, in a footnote to my essay where I said:
“As for film critics, I once saw the forgotten film Butterfly Effect where the audience, and the hero, wait with bated breath each time as the character periodically sends messages through time to change history. In other words, a suspenseful series of events. The reviewers who hated the film all made a point of writing, apparently without having themselves had any hint of suspense, that each change makes things worse… as if they had guessed in advance. My conclusion is the critics “had joined the dots” in a way that earnest viewers like me, perhaps from being less film jaded, would not do.
To apply this concept to Poor Things, I wouldn’t trust those critics who say this film is about a character’s conscious journey into learning about sex. That’s wrong, because Bella, like the viewer, does not connect any dots as she is living them, and is not on any conscious knowledge path… except for learning of books and laboratories, of medicine and science—a path unmentioned by the critics!”
…
In my essay I advised against seeing the trailers. (previews) Suffice it to say the movie, with the literally and figuratively scarred scientist played by William Dafoe, is indeed about a product of a laboratory of glass and electricity, but it is not, as lazy critics reaching for the nearest word will claim, “a Frankenstein” movie—Although Emma Stone did win the Oscar this year for her lurching about. No, Poor Things is a “man from Mars” movie, seeing our society with fresh eyes. To be sure, normal folks of my acquaintance might all totally agree that a Victorian Age woman is inferior, prone to fainting and horrified of sex, but would a man from Mars know that?
Two or more critics said Bella goes on a journey to learn about sex. Not so. But why does she travel away from a perfectly good mansion? Why would any Martian, or any male, not be like a good Victorian woman? Why would Bella not be content with a domestic life, a life constrained to glimpses from Dafoe’s roof and peeking past Dafoe’s carriage curtain? I will let a person answer, a person who also reported herself gazing in longing from a roof:
QUOTE
“…I longed for… the busy world, town, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in (Dafoe), and what was good in (fiancé); but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.
“…It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it…but women feel just as men feel… and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex…”
UNQUOTE
As for Bella, I will neither condemn nor laugh. I respect her too highly. Raised by a reclusive bachelor during the Victorian age, in a culture where only males could work in manual labour, without having any training in sewing or cleaning or cooking or Early Childhood Education… she surprises me by swiftly finding her way to making an honest-for-her income. I don’t feel sorry for Bella, but I do for any newspaper critics who have overspecialized in a Journalism Degree, poor things, without realizing that for writing about humans and Martians their best degree would be in The Humanities, complete with the above quoted Jane Eyre.
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Sean Crawford
Already booked to Return to Bloomsbury,
Near the Curzon arthouse theatre,
For January and February 2025,
To escape a Canadian winter,
April 2024
Footnote: My other essay defending Poor Things is posted on January 30, 2024, titled Could the Film Poor Things be Feminist?
Footnote for young film critics: To learn how to be a reviewer, Matt Zoller Seitz has some inspiring advice—and he echoes my essay’s last line!
QUOTE
6. Read about history and psychology, because so much art draws from those two areas. If you don’t have some passing familiarity with history (recent and ancient) and psychology, your inferences about an artist’s point-of-view will draw almost entirely upon second- or third-hand attitudes: i.e., you’ll be critiquing film and TV based mainly on what film and TV you’ve seen. This will make your work shallow and prevent you from connecting the art to life.
UNQUOTE
