The Bechdel Cast - Poor Things with Amanda Montell

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

This week, poor things Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Amanda Montell discuss Poor Things! Here's the link to the Polygon piece "The book Poor Things is based on is even stranger than the film" -- https://www.polygon.com/24093718/poor-things-hulu-oscars-book-differences   Follow Amanda on Instagram at @amanda_montell and @soundslikeacultpod, and order her book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Magical-Overthinking/Amanda-Montell/9781668007976 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos,

host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. Listen on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, Bechtelcast listeners. We're going on tour, baby. And it's not just any tour. It's the Shrek-tanic tour. That's right. Shrek and or Titanic are the movies we're

covering on this tour at the demand of us and you question mark see you there we'll figure it out yeah our first leg of the tour is in london on may 22nd there are two shows that night, a 6.30 show on Shrek and a nine o'clock show on Titanic. Next on May 24th, we are going to be in Oxford as a part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival. Then we're scooting up to Edinburgh on May 26th. We are covering Shrek. Then on May 28th, we are in Manchester, once again covering Titanic. And finally, a show that we recently added in Dublin on May 29th. That is also a Titanic show. We're so excited to meet everybody. We chose two of our favorite movies so that we could celebrate the community and just have a good time. So please come out. You can get all of the tickets over at our Linktree,

which is in the description, Linktree slash Bechtelcast. And we hope to see you there. We have such ridiculous outfits. Oh my gosh. And exclusive merch and everything else. All right, we will see you there. See you there. On the Bechtelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them.

Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Goo goo ga ga. I'm horny. Hi, Caitlin. Daddy God. are you there? It's me, Bella Baxter.

Yes, it's me, God. Let me rationalize why I'm going to be treating you this way for the whole movie. Oh, my God. When you entered with Goo Goo Gaga, I thought since we had just done a sync that required us to count to five I thought you'd just like run out of numbers that you know and started entering sounds oh no that was me starting the podcast cool I'm so glad you said that because this is actually how we start every episode we always start with a goo goo gaga just to make everyone feel safe I I mean, a Goo Goo Gaga is kind of one of the great equalizers we still have. We've all been there.

True. That is so true. We all are just human beings during the babbling stage. It's true. I mean, what is a podcast if not a whole bunch of Goo Goo Gaga? Oh my god, we are just in a prolonged babbling stage. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the

Bechdel test as a jumping off point. I'm like sort of over explaining what the Bechdel test is. I feel like people can just look it up. I'm just tired. Wow. Caitlin is taking no prisoners today. Goo goo ga up. I'm just tired. Wow. Caitlin is taking no prisoners today. Goo goo ga ga. I'm tired.

Goo goo ga ga. Look it up. Read a book. I guess this is an aggressive way to start the show. There are like 300 episodes. So if you don't know, you can listen to the beginning of a different episode. We're really eager to get today's episode started as the thing yeah and also we talk about the Bechdel test basically not at all so right and there's so much else to talk about with this

movie which is poor things yes that we just have to save all the time we can yeah cut the foreplay right the only quick disclaimer we want to give at the top is that if you're listening to this, I feel like when we cover a movie shortly after it comes out, it always ages a little weird because it just came out. So if you're listening to this, it just came out. We're recording it the day after Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar. Chances are if you listen to this episode a year from now, I at least will probably feel different about this movie. Same, yeah, probably. So yeah, if you go back and listen to us talk about a movie shortly after it comes out, usually our feelings change.

But we've decided today in two hours or less, we are going to be the three people to crack this movie. God damn it. You know, our takes will age. I'm not going to say like a fine wine and i'm not gonna say like milk i'm gonna say like a cheese because you know like a fresh gouda it tastes different than like a 24 month age gouda i don't know how long you should age gouda i was like wow a lot of knowledge yeah so much fucking cheese knowledge. I do love dairy, despite what my tummy tells me. But I do think that like, you know,

this is just like the fresh Gouda version of an opinion about poor things. That's all. I think that's a beautiful way to put it. Yes, this is the poor things episode. Literally hundreds of you have asked for this episode. Okay, here it is. Hope you're happy. You're really doming your listeners today. I know, I don't know. I think it's when we record more than one episode in a day,

the second episode gets like needlessly aggro. But you can say that of this movie as well. Okay, we're covering Poor Things. It just came out and we have an incredible guest to figure it out with us. Yes, we do. She is the author of Cultish and the forthcoming book, The Age of Magical Overthinking. She's the host of the podcast, Sounds Like a Cult. It's Amanda Montell. Hello.

Hello. Welcome. Before we get into it, tell us a little bit about the new book. Oh gosh, that's so nice of you to ask. Okay, it's called The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and it's about cognitive biases in the information age, modern day DeLulu. So every chapter of the book is dedicated to a different cognitive bias confirmation bias sunk cost fallacy these are some of the most famous but there are some other really interesting ones called like the ikea effect and the halo effect and i use each of

these as a lens to explore some mysterious irrationality plaguing the zeitgeist and my own life from celebrity worship to weaponized nostalgia to Instagram manifestation gurus. So check it out. Amazing. That is so exciting. Huge fans of your work here on the pod. We simply are so excited that you're doing the show. Mutual fandom all around.

Yippee. Goo goo gaga. Goo goo gaga. We're just like excited little babies. That's my favorite part. I started going to yoga classes in the last year. Whoa, brag. Yeah, not to flex, but almost every morning I like go.

And then at the end of class, you get to be a little baby. Happy baby. I know that one. Yeah. You just get to roll around on your back and goo goo gaga and some beautiful person teaching the class comes in like moves your foot a little bit and it's like a little horny but you're like, whatever I'm a baby. That's my poor things is beautiful yoga teacher adjusting my foot while I'm a little baby. Well, let's get into it, folks. Amanda, what is your really? I mean, the movie just came out. Did you see it in theaters? Preliminary thoughts? Yeah, yeah. I saw

it under really iconic circumstances. I was living in the woods and I watched it in like the one room movie theater that they have in this tiny woodland town. They pour like the most generous movie pours of wine I've ever seen in my life at this tiny woodland movie theater. Amazing. They were just like, you know what? We're going to even give you a little extra because this film is a wacky girlfriend.

Well, I mean, poor things, generous pour. Heavy poor things. Hello things hello yeah they poured things they did they poured things i love that system of like we'll give you as much wine as the movie requires yeah exactly it was very that which i appreciated so much and they also like provide blankets at that movie theater so in case you get a little chilly you can cozy on up so i was cozy as hell watching this film and buzzed and i went in with low expectations just because like your ghost is a masturbatory fellow and like i don't love masturbatory fellows so i was going in with low expectations but high high hopes. A good attitude. I also have a slight bias against Emma Stone as an ingenue, which we can get into.

I don't love her in an ingenue role. I like her as a character actor. And this was kind of both. So I loved that. I mean, this is the whole point of this podcast and this episode is to talk about it and get into it. But I felt like I went in with the right attitude to enjoy the film. I saw it in theaters. And I don't know, I think that in part, like this was a movie where I saw it, I think the week after it came out. And almost certainly the discourse that I was avoiding still ended up coloring my first viewing of the movie because I like Yorgos. I haven't seen all of his work. But he is hit or or miss for me and there's certain I think just in general

and we've talked about this on the show for years at this point there are a lot of movies that I think are like technically good but I it's always going to be hard for me to be sold on work from a man adapted from another man's work about a woman discovering and being liberated by her body. Like it always just feels, even when it's really well done, it's like hard to get me in the door for that. That was like a big conversation we had around Carrie, a movie I quite like, but it's like a man adapted by a man, viewed by a man, like, you know,

it doesn't mean you can't get something good out of it, but like I always come in a little bit leery on it. And so the first time I saw it, I left really conflicted, like conflicted leaning on not enjoying it. And then the second time I watched it, I had done some research on the author. I learned a little bit more about the adaptation and the second and third viewings,

I'm liking it more and more each time, which turns out I have a very complicated relationship with this movie. I think that there's a lot that it's doing that's really interesting. Not all of it hits for me. And then there's like Gerard Carmichael's performance. There's just like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm hoping to figure out how I feel about this movie today.

I have thousands of words of notes and I feel no, I know that when I first saw it, I didn't like it, but I felt that way about almost every Yorgos Lanthimos movie that I end up coming around on, except for the favorite, which I just liked every single time. Yeah. Actually your story of your journey reminds me of the most important piece of backstory that I failed to mention, which is that I wasn't even going to see the movie because I felt already like it was so fucking proud of itself, which irked me. Right. But then several people who I know to varying degrees of well, if that sentence computesutes independently texted me being like Amanda you must see it because of the clothes oh I mean yeah yeah and everybody should see it because of the clothes but I mean it was like a perfect manifestation of what I aspire to dress like

I was shook by it and and people who don't even know me very well were texting me like Amanda this movie's clothes it's you it's you especially because like I'm recently engaged I did the proposing which I always feel the need to oh I love that disclaim and I want to wear like a super colorful surrealist look on my you want a bella baxter dress like yeah so people were like watch the movie for your bridal inspo basically and not her bridal gown the rest of it like the mini butter yellow shorts and the puffy blue the blue dress nonsense yeah unbelievable i mean yeah the technical elements of this movie i really love like the movie is beautiful yorgos lanthimos knows how to make a gorgeous movie i don't know i i feel bad now being like i didn't come in on this movie side because i just get so

i was talking about it with my boyfriend afterwards. Like I just get so irked at going into a movie and having mostly male critics say like, this is the feminist movie of the year. And it's like, well, how would you know that? And then it's made by like 700 men. I think what I've come around on, and this is something that I feel like has not been super discussed, I guess, with this and with Barbie, because also this movie was existing in conversation with Barbie which I'm like just let them be separate movies but a lot of the things I had concerns

about with this movie I was put more at ease with upon learning that Emma Stone was an executive producer on the movie and so she was very much in control of every high level decision. And that made me feel better about a lot of stuff that seemed to be an ongoing discourse, which we'll get around to. Anyways, I think I like it. I don't know. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie? I also saw it when it came out in theaters, maybe like a week after it opened, and then watched it twice to prep for this. I've also seen it three times. I would say I think I like it less and less every time I see it. Wow, we all have different trajectories. The things I like about it,

I maintain liking about it. For example, a lot of Bella's dialogue and the way she speaks and just kind of her general character arc I enjoy for the most part. There are certain scenes that I think are really funny, just like the shot where it's a close up of Bella Baxter, a close up of Max McCandles, and then a close up of a goat is the funniest thing I've seen in a movie in a while. I think the movie is like very well cast and well acted. Like, oh my gosh, Mark Ruffalo's performance. Hello? I loved it. He's goofed around. Obviously his character is despicable, but everyone's doing a great job acting. The production design is interesting the fisheye lenses sure but generally i hate yorgos lanthimos i don't like his movies he's so polarizing yeah dog tooth and the lobster and a handful of others generally i don't mind the favorite but like a lot of his earlier work really upsets me and he has this fixation on showing cruelty to animals and he does it in every single one of his movies yes i mean that is the lobster that's the whole movie of the lobster and then it also just appears in all of his other movies either as like

a joke or as just something that's there for no reason yeah Yeah. And I can't stand it. And it makes me hate him. It is very contrarian because I don't know if anyone else received this as a literal piece of like creative advice, but I remember a college writing instructor sort of problematically announcing to the class that a way to make a character in your writing more likable was to have a scene where they're nice to an animal. Oh god yeah that's the whole premise of the screenwriting book save the cat oh okay got it all right so that's like conventional wisdom but i feel like your ghost this is a part of what makes him frustrating and like masturbatory and all of these things that irk us is that he's performing so many stunts and he's doing it with

like extreme pride in himself right and i think the animal cruelty as like a bit it's very much like a little kid who might grow up to be a sociopath setting caterpillars on fire but like make it chic sid from toy Story coded behavior yeah exactly yeah fortunately the animals are CGI and I do think that the freaky like at least there's like a narrative place of why he's doing it in this movie because yeah like when it's for no reason it feels kind of like self-satisfied and edgelordy which i think edgelordy yes a lot of his movies can feel anyways like i don't know i almost like hesitate to say that because i just know that that causes an avalanche of similar people to be like no but like it's just how i feel i don't know

yeah there's caitlin i feel like we've talked about this before, but it's now more common for like male O2s to center women in their work. I think this has been an increasing trend of the last 10 years. But there's like, when it's done in a certain way, it feels very, like you're saying, like very self-satisfied and very like, well, I get it, ladies. And it's like very self-satisfied and very like well i get it ladies and it's like self-congratulatory and it's just like let women make movies please and thank you yeah so i am put a little ideas that emma stone had a huge creative voice in this you're right that makes a difference you know if i could make a prediction i'd say that if i were to see this movie thrice the way that you each have and forgive me for my underachievement but i think i would probably

like it less well i would like it less in some ways and more in some ways i think i would like it more because like again i just want to keep seeing that fashion and like force feeding it to myself like fucking fashion foie gras but I think I would like it less because I would start to like actually scrutinize it whereas when I saw it the element of surprise was really a factor for me because I hadn't read much about it. I was just like, based on vibes, I don't want to go. And so there was so much novelty. There was so much surprise. Again, I was tipsy. I was letting it wash over me. I was giggling. I mean, there are some like really funny frames, as you were mentioning. You know, I like laughed so hard at certain points. Like there's this one just like very quick cut of Bella going from like partying to like passed out drunk in a corner.

That's just like the timing of it was so funny. And like those sort of like silly self unserious moments just like cued my little laughing machine. I was just like tee hee hee all the way through. But I think if that element of surprise and the novelty were not there anymore, I would actually start to apply my slow thinking to the film. And in those ways, I would like it less. That's what we're here to do. Yeah, wreck it for you. Yeah, that's what I'm starting to say that like the things I like about the movie, I think I'll like stay liking but the things I don't like about it the more and more i see it the more and more i'm really that makes sense by them yeah learning more about the production of this movie made me feel both better and more ambivalent but the thing that i was yelling at my boyfriend on the phone

about when i was taking the bus back at like one in the morning after seeing this damn movie. Oh, God. Look, I'm committed to seeing this movie for some reason. But my favorite Your Girl's Land, the most movie is probably the most accessible of his, the favorite. I really loved the favorite. And it's like the movie of his that centers women that tracks for me. I think the reason that may be is because it is, we talked about this when we covered The Favorite. It's based on a story written by a woman, Deborah Davis, and she adapted it with Tony McNamara. This movie is based on source material by a man and adapted by just Tony McNamara, which

I think was a mistake. Yeah. Yeah. No, like when I think about the gaze of those two movies, it really manifests so clearly in the film itself because I feel like The Favorite is a movie about women from at least somewhat of a female gaze and this movie feels like a movie about a woman from a male gaze with the female gaze like trying so fucking hard to bust out you know yeah it's weird yeah it's weird i'm excited to talk about it but first we should talk

about what happens in the movie after this break. Yes. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that?

You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance.

It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask.

Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. I'll place a content warning here at the top for yeah everything there's suicide there's sexual and domestic abuse that will get brought up either in the recap and or the discussion there's a lot of stuff going on in this movie. Okay. We are in Victorian era London. We see a woman from behind who jumps off a bridge, presumably to die by suicide.

Then we meet Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone. Goo Goo Gaga. Goo Goo Gaga. But then I'm also like, okay, Bella. Bello. Bello. Minions. Exactly. We're back. Wello minions exactly we're back we're back we're back so bella baxter is acting like a baby she's speaking in gibberish she's walking around erratically she doesn't

have motor skills she spits out her food she pisses herself etc her caretaker slash father figure is Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by Willem Dafoe, also called God. He is a surgeon and professor at a medical school. He's like this kind of Dr. Frankenstein type of doctor where he seems to have Frankenstein various animals together. There's like a dog's head on a chicken body. There's a duck head on a goat's body, things like that. God asks one of his students, Max McCandles, played by Rami Youssef, to assist him with monitoring Bella's progress. God explains to Max that she had suffered a brain injury and her mental age and physical body are not synchronized. And that's why she's acting like a baby. But she's progressing very rapidly. And Max is enthusiastic about this project. He also thinks

that Bella is very pretty. Yeah, I think even before Max is like, I'm interested in this project. He's like, wow, she's hot. And like, this is gonna go well. I can just tell. And then we see her progressing where her speech and motor skills improve, but she's still acting very childlike for a while. Bella asks God who she is, where her parents are. He's like, oh, you're an orphan. And we just generally see her be inquisitive and curious about the world. She asks Max to teach her about different places on the world map. She's never been outside and she wants to go out and explore. So God reluctantly takes her to the woods, but she wants to be where the people are and she starts acting out she like wants to go into town and stuff and he's like no that's not possible so he chloroforms her yeah and max

is like what the fuck is going on and dr god reveals the truth that bella had died she was the woman we saw jumping off the bridge at the beginning. And she was also very pregnant at the time. Yes, heavy with Greg, very heavy with Greg. So God took the brain from the baby and surgically put it into Bella's head and then reanimated her, which is why she's been acting so baby like. Now I have a quick question and it is disgusting but they go out of their way to be like a living baby as they're like so he did canonically instead of raising the baby kill the baby to steal its brain right yes yeah i think so yeah okay so i'm now remembering that I actually hated like the first

15 minutes of the movie, the whole first black and white bit. I was just like, here we fucking go. And I had a negative reaction to it in part because of my own conditioning. I am the daughter of research scientists, like laboratory scientists. And I grew up with a certain amount of disdain in the household for the trope of the evil, unethical scientist. Because my parents felt like it soiled the already sort of fragile reputation of scientists in this culture. Like it's not cool to be a scientist. It's not cool to be smarter than everyone else because that's suspicious you know so like this trope of a scientist using his powers for evil it's just like not something that we actually see in real life and so when i was noticing that in the beginning of the film i was

just like this is corny this is damaging this is cheap and it's in black and white I thought there were colors in this movie wow that is really interesting like that's something I'm aware of that sort of stock character and like to I don't know encourage like in curiosity and yeah like being smart is evil and like knowing things that other people don't know yeah or don't want to know is evil like i actually do bump up against that fair in large part because i was brought up too but like yeah i didn't like that well i'll just point out that bella baxter is not unlike adam frankenstein of i frankenstein fame our favorite bad movie yeah it's true well she can't do nunchucks like adam frankenstein which is actually my biggest criticism of the movie

exactly there's no nunchuck sequence where's the war of demons versus gargoyles i was sort of waiting for that to start same i don't don't know. Ultimately, I would. Would I rather watch I, Frankenstein than Four Things? Probably not. But like, I don't know. When Friends are over, I'm turning on I, Frankenstein every time. Absolutely. And that's misogynist of me.

Have either of you seen the film Franken-Hooker? No. No. What's that? That's a really good bad movie. That movie came out and i want to say 91 perfect and i think you both would like it it's really it's so bad it's good for sure but it's about um this aspiring mad scientist whose girlfriend is tragically killed in a lawnmower accident. So he goes and he blows up a bunch of sex workers

and uses their parts to assemble a new girlfriend. Holy shit. Okay. It's really camp. It's really wacky. It's a pleasure to watch. And it's like a tight 90. Oh, wow.

Oh, love that. I'm looking at just just the poster i'm like yeah i would watch this i would watch this okay yeah and the frankenhooker in the film has some things in common with bella baxter now that i think about it okay i'll watch it oh yeah bella baxter is a part of a long legacy of frankenstein's of fucked up experiments yeah yeah oh this is so i'm excited to talk about the science angle of it i haven't seen that written about at all all right sorry true continue okay so we left off where god reveals to max what he actually did with bella as far as like surgically putting the

baby brain into her adult body and bella has no idea about any of that. And when she wakes up after being chloroformed, she discovers masturbation. And she starts doing it all the time. But other characters have to be like, no, in polite society, we do not do that. And then God is like, hey, Max, you should marry Bella and he's like yeah great idea I love my baby girlfriend and I'm the nice guy somehow and I'm actually nice yeah so Max asks Bella to marry him but God has some conditions mainly that Max and Bella live at God's house and always like be under his supervision, which would essentially make Bella a prisoner, which she already is. And then God hires a lawyer to write up a legal agreement to this effect. The lawyer is Duncan Wedderburn, played by Mark Ruffalo, who immediately takes a liking to Bella. And he's very horny and he wants to free Bella from this imprisonment. So he invites her to accompany him to Lisbon. And she recognizes that Duncan is pretty

sleazy, but she wants to go and explore the world and explore her blossoming sexuality. God is not happy about this, nor is max but bella goes on this trip nonetheless so she and duncan arrive in lisbon he introduces her to new food and sites and experiences and they have a lot of sex yeah she goes full hedonist in Lisbon. Yes. Which is fun. I feel like there's a lot made of the emphasis on sex that this movie has. But she is truly like pleasure chasing. Hell yeah. In every conceivable way.

Like she's pleasure chasing with clothes, with her body, with food, with everything. And then eventually with books. And thank God we're in color by now. Yes, we're finally in color it's true so you know they're traveling together but they're soon getting on each other's nerves duncan is annoyed by bella's behavior and that it like doesn't line up with polite society and he's annoyed that he can't seem to like control her he's getting jealous meanwhile bella just wants to be able to go off and explore and have adventures. And he's like trying to prevent her from doing

that. At some point in the trip, a woman comes up to Bella being like, Victoria Blessington, I haven't seen you in years. And Bella is like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Bella Baxter, which is going to pay off later. Then Duncan, who is becoming more and more possessive, abducts Bella by putting her in a trunk and bringing her on a boat. The only thing you can say for that is he does ultimately admit that he did it, which is more than most men who kidnap women in movies usually do. That is true. Yeah. How's that for a yardstick? Do we like that yardstick? Oh, the bar is so low. So she is understandably

upset by being abducted, but she makes the best of it, I guess. And she makes a couple friends on the ship, Martha and Harry, which Duncan doesn't like. And he's basically like, Bella, you have to marry me or I'll throw you overboard. And also Duncan doesn't like that Bella is less interested in having sex with him. And she has taken more of an interest in reading and learning about different philosophies and expanding her mind. She's uncertain how to view the world and the people in it. She's talking to Harry about it and Martha, but Harry is a cynic. He keeps saying that life and people are cruel and Bella doesn't want to believe it. But when the ship

docks in Alexandria, Harry shows her people who are living in poverty and who are suffering and starving, and she's devastated and she feels compelled to help them. So she takes all of Duncan's winnings from him gambling at the casino on the ship, and she tries to give them to the poor, but she unknowingly gets swindled by a couple sailors who take the money whoops the cynic okay the cynic is my least favorite character and i love gerard karmichael yeah oh yeah the cynic cracks me up because it feels like this is like a pretty solid adaptation just from like translating from book to movie but the cynic feels like such a bookie character that you're just like oh my god like do we have to call him the cynic because it just feels very no offense Caitlin it feels very

grad school to have a character named the cynic oh yeah no no offense taken but thank you for mentioning you basically mentioned my master's degree in screenwriting I know you don't like to bring it up but I like to bring up that you and maybe I'm just resentful because it's kind of beyond me. What's going on with the cynic? Yeah, sorry. You don't have a master's so you wouldn't really get it. I also famously do not have a master's degree despite the number of blazers I wear. No, but anyway, so either way, Duncan is furious that Bella took his money and now they have no money

and they wind up in Paris and Bella tries to procure a hotel room for them and she approaches a woman outside a hotel, which turns out to be a brothel and the woman, Madam Swy played by katherine hunter offers bella work i didn't realize at first until my second viewing that katherine hunter plays the witches in the new coen brothers macbeth oh i didn't see that one it's really good yes denzel washington macbeth and she plays all three witches and i only recognize her voice

because she's like shape-shifting like no one's business in that but would recommend she's so good it's wild yeah i like her character a lot in this one yeah anyway she offers bella work and so bella has sex with a man for money and this makes Duncan furious and he leaves to go back to London. Bella continues doing sex work. She's repulsed by most of her clients but she also tries to make the best of that situation. She befriends another woman at the brothel, Twinette. They eventually develop a sexual slash romantic relationship i think it's important representation that she starts having sex with the person who introduced her to socialism i felt seen by that i like that a lot who can resist also twinette is played by suzy bemba

one day bella hears yelling outside the brothel and it's duncan who never left and he's there to quote unquote save her he's literally a streetcar named desiring which i foolishly did not pick up until my third viewing which is brave of me to admit but he's at the bottom going bella right because instead of saying Stella, he's saying Bella. Wow. So for everyone else listening with three brain cells, that was a reference. Oh, yeah, that was the movie pour.

I missed that one. Yeah, that was, yeah. I'm happy to blame it on my previous movie pours, but on the third one, I was like, oh, okay, okay. Yorgos seen another movie. Yorgos has watched a movie other than his own. Wowie.

So Duncan like wants to save her from this life that she's living. And she's like, go home, you loser. back to god and max in london and they are back on their bullshit because they have made a new baby lady and named her felicity played by margaret qualley another raven haired hottie it's true it's true all the greats they got the gen z raven haired hottie is she properly gen z i don't know i feel like she's gen z marketed she's cuspy yeah i just found out that she's andy mcdowell's daughter because i went to go see driveaway dolls and i was like she's gen z marketed she's cuspy yeah i just found out that she's andy mcdowell's daughter because i went to go see drive away dolls and i was like oh the fact that they've masked that well enough for you to miss it reflects well on the like anti-nepo baby sort of like pr campaign right it is interesting that it's like nepo baby praxis that appears to take the last name of the less famous parent oh yeah that's why i'm like there

are netball babies where you're like you know what good for jack quaid although dennis quaid is somehow his less famous parent wait who's his mom meg ryan oh shit but then his name would be jack ryan and that would suck oh yeah you know um not to get too far away from the topic at hand but i actually was in class my freshman year of college with jack quaid in an essay writing class oh no yeah we were paired once wow i didn't know who the fuck he was i had no idea it's probably because his last name wasn't ryan now that i'm thinking about it jack ryan would actually like fly under the radar a little better. But either way. Yeah.

If you're Nepo, you got to have the obvious last name. You have to. You have to. Anyway, so God and Max make Felicity presumably because they were trying to fill some void when Bella left. Also, we learn that God is dying and Bella receives a letter about this. So she returns to london and bella has noticed a c-section scar and so she asks god about it and he finally tells her that technically she is her baby she is both her own mother and her own daughter and she's like um what the fuck i hate that that's like her the talk yeah i know right that's the birds and the bees for melo baxter

she figures out the birds and the bees on her own like many of us right i also like that like i am my own baby completely sounds like the name of a tLC special I would watch. And totally dumb. Yes. Or just like a true life episode. Like there's so many delicious, exploitative media. I mean, I've definitely watched a TLC special called I Am My Own Twin, which brings me to another point that I wanted to make, which is like, despite disdaining the evil scientist trope, I love any scene that takes place in an operating theater. Oh, yeah.

Yes. I remember I first learned of the operating theater from a series of unfortunate events. Nice. And I was like, now they were on to something there. It's fun. It's a perfect set piece. So spooky and cinematic.

I like that Bella thrives in the operating theater how scary i love it yeah because it's right around this point of the movie where she says that she plans to become a doctor following in her daddy god's footsteps anyway so she confronts god and max about lying to her and trapping her and to God for creating her in the first place. And they're all like, whoopsies. But then Bella goes forward with marrying Max. And during the wedding, a man comes in and interrupts to be like, below Victoria. This man is her husband in her former life his name is general alfred blessington and duncan had helped the general find bella because duncan is very bitter and he thinks

that bella is a succubus from hell and stuff like that now if you think you've met patriarchy the guy in this movie you haven't you haven't yet he shows up at the very end but bella is intrigued by the general and wants to go with him so she returns to his estate only to discover that the general is horribly abusive and cruel And apparently so was she in her former life. And he wants to hold her prisoner and he threatens to shoot her if she tries to leave. And he intends to have a doctor remove her clitoris that night. So she fights back. She manages to chloroform the general and shoot him in the foot. And then Bella has Max perform surgery on the general. And it is revealed that the brain of a goat was put into the general's head.

And so that's like the big cathartic end of this movie. Also, God dies. Antoinette comes to live with Bella and Max. It's a very clean, good for her ending to the movie that deviates significantly from the book. Right. So that's the story. And let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

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that will break my brain? And there's so much to talk about. Just a fun fact really quick. So Tony McNamara, he also collaborated with Mr. Yorgos on the favorite, but his credit before this was a different Emma stone vehicle. He also wrote the screenplay to Cruella.

So he also kind of is now a specialist in good for her style Emma Stone movies of varying quality. So that's just a fact about Tony. I don't know. Should we start with talking about the source material a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Please educate me because I did not deep dive into the source material and I'm so curious to know. That's what we're here for. So yeah, this is based on a 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. Okay, 92, birth year. Yes. You're the monkey. Solidarity baby. Okay, young people. Yes, the youth. I am my own baby. Ultimately, we are all baby. At the end of the day, we're all baby. Ultimately, we are all baby. At the end of the day, we're all baby. Honestly, I bravely had no idea who Alasdair Gray was.

Turns out he's very famous. He is a Scottish or was a Scottish writer who is, I don't know, a postmodern writer. That could mean anything. He wrote weird speculative novels. He also did a lot of painting. He was also a visual artist. Very well loved. And also in a way that the movie sort of scales back a little bit, was also famously a socialist and put socialist themes and ideas in basically all of his work. So that's sort of the overarching what you need to know about him he passed away in 2019 but met Yorgos Lanthimos and like had his blessing to make this movie I don't think he ended

up seeing the script before he passed but I do always kind of like that when it's possible to happen when there is like a nice two writers usually men hanging out love that so you know your ghost got the blessing and went ahead to make the movie the main differences and Caitlin please let me know if I missed anything oh okay yeah I have the book on my Libby app wow for all you Libby heads out there I have it but i have not read it yet well that's because we don't read books on this podcast famously i know but then i'm trying i'm trying you're trying to read books jamie what the heck and even though people seem to like the general consensus is this movie is good the also general consensus is the book is better. Differences between the book and the movie

include that all of the book takes place in Scotland, in Glasgow specifically. This is changed to London. I don't really know why. The book is far more overtly socialist, which I kind of alluded to. I'm pulling from a piece from Polygon that sort of breaks this down. That Bella, which we see it in the movie, we see Bella's political awakening when she goes to Alexandria and basically just witnesses capitalism. I don't like the visual choices made here.

I think it like really leans into some like savage tropes that like really don't sit well with me agreed in the book Bella talks to people and that scene is far longer is it better I don't know I haven't read it but you know what is basically reduced to a shot for the movie is a whole sequence in the book and so it is clearer even though I think it is clear in the movie that like Bella's political awakening becomes increasingly important as the movie goes on it's far more explicit and specific in the book and that sequence in Alexandria is far longer Lanthimos gave an interview to Polygon and was asked about this and said the following, quote, I didn't find that it could be as much of a part of the film we were making,

which is following her story, that story about a woman, which is a much more universal thing than political awakening. I disagree. But anyways, he says the book is also a huge essay about a lot of political things and especially about Scotland and its relationship with the rest of the world. And so, yes, that aspect couldn't be an equal part in the film, which does make more sense to me. I don't know. I feel like every Russian novel includes 300 pages about, like, agrarian law of that decade. And you're like, yeah, I don't want to see that. in any case the final large change is the ending which instead of the kind of the ending to this movie is so weird to me where it's like i'm not upset that she you know fucks over her former

husband great but this whole very complex weird movie coming down to like a wine glass clink like dun dun and like i didn't really love it yeah it just felt like very neat and it's because it's not the end right yeah no it was very much like a 90s rom com based on a shakespearean play kind of ending it felt like fried green tomatoes almost like it just felt like from a different movie i don't. I'm just going to read directly from this Polygon piece here. And I want to shout out it is written by Oli Welsh. We'll link to it in the description of the episode. Through its extended coda and framing devices, the book presents a much more ambivalent account of the rest of Bella's life. She and Archibald, I guess he's not Max, McCandandles put their medical skills to better use in the book

serving the people of glasgow with a women's clinic and a public health initiative but mccandles is ineffectual and bella's socialist ideals are eventually thwarted by political reality she's last seen as an eccentric old woman whose only patients are dogs it's a much sadder but arguably a less bitter one so yeah yeah, very, very different ending, which I kind of think I prefer the book to the kind of prescriptive movie ending. So that's adaptation stuff. Yes, I have a couple additional things.

I also saw the polygon piece. These are a few examples of differences between the book and the movie from a people.com piece wow yeah watch out that's the grad school bump okay masters great exactly i only find the best sources so this one is called poor things the biggest differences between the book and the Emma Stone movie iconic wow okay such things as the wedding plays out a little differently the novel includes a variety of characters who don't make it into the movie such as an American professor named Dr. Hooker I don't know exactly where Bella meets him on her travels, but there's this American professor guy. We also meet her father, or rather like Victoria

Blessington's father. I think he shows up in the wedding scene, stuff like that. The movie eliminates those characters, but it adds the character of Felicity, the woman who God and Max like Frankenstein together while Bella is traveling. So there are those examples. And then the novel is structured in such a way where it's like letters. It's a memoir from the Max character, right? From the Max character. Yeah. And he's like talking about his friendship

with the scientist godwin baxter and his creation bella so it's like more from his point of view whereas the movie largely focuses on bella and her point of view and her view of the world and things like that works for me right i also feel like historically like unreliable narrator novels are not usually well adapted I'm like yeah just give us a streamlined version yes yes indeed so yeah that's the book versus the movie so let's get into the movie Amanda is there anything that stands out to you that you want to get into right away oh gosh, gosh. I mean, like something that I thought was very unique about this movie and that was just like candy for me personally was the evolution of Bella's language skills

and her idiolect, as it's called, her very unique and personal way of speaking I don't think I'd ever seen like a real-time representation of someone's like totally wacky mastery of the English language from goo goo ga ga to you know like multi polysyllabic words but i was like thoroughly entertained by the way that she spoke and i think caitlin you mentioned that being a highlight for you as well because i could just really relate as an extremely like verbose lover of ten dollar words for no actual reason i loved how quickly she went from actual goo goo gaga bella hungry to i mean i don't have like one of her lines memorized and at the ready but but she's like quoting like political theory. She has a master's degree, basically.

She does. Yeah. She has a PhD even. But the way that she talks is like so authentic to her. Like it's so bananas. No one talks like that. No one that she meets talks like that. You know, like nobody in her world talks like that.

And I thought that and her style were like true individuality to me. And I really I felt very seen by it because like I feel like I talk funny. My word choices are funny. That's pointed out to me from time to time. So I felt like the representation for like girlies who talk funny was like really appreciated even though i said earlier that i was like frustrated by the comparisons between poor things and barbie i did enjoy it someone like was like poor things is sort of like if weird barbie had her whole movie that happened in the victorian era i was like yeah i kind of see it i mean emma stone

won the best actress oscar yesterday at the time we were recording this and it is like an incredible performance like she's yeah she like really goes for it her performance is so good and i like that they give her the space to kind of cook yeah I mean not to be bitchy but Lily Gladstone should have won but I mean sure I mean no I mean I think everyone agrees that right but I know what you're saying like she gives an excellent performance I think they're both incredible performances and very different performances and for sure the Oscars are racist and it's not a meritocracy yeah yeah yeah but it's a great performance from Emma Stone I like that I mean I'm glad to hear that you like as someone with a

background in linguistics like that you like it I loved it it's cool and it does still feel like particular to that character one of the things that I liked about the movie because I do feel like the criticisms around the emphasis and some people have like said over emphasis on sex with men as a way of understanding yourself like I understand why those are I feel like that has a lot more to do with the visual choices in the movie than the story itself because for me at a story level like she is growing constantly at a rate that makes sense and so much of the story or like where we end up is influenced by like like you do in your coming of age where you're like trying to understand your body you're trying to understand like what are the rules i think like the big thing we come up against is that the thing that is gross and

unavoidable in this story is that she has a baby brain and a grown woman's body which comes up against a version of a trope we've discussed a million times, like the born sexy yesterday, which has been around forever. But I do think that Bella is an interesting variant of this trope because I feel like a lot of the like baby lady tropes that we get are still somehow intuiting the make yourself smaller rules and defer to men rules that exist within society that takes years of conditioning to sort of soak in for a lot of people but Bella is fully a blank canvas and like if a social norm doesn't make sense to her she says it and does not abide by it and I feel like that is far rarer. And it almost like challenged how I understood that stock character because you're like, it's not a baby lady really

because babies say what's on their mind. And those characters very rarely say what's on their mind. Or if they do, it is like in a very particular way that is still deferential to the man that is teaching them what the world is so i do feel like she is different in that way yes your cat has arrived into the chat casper's in the mix he's got thoughts oh my god he's so cute talk about a little baby with big ideas oh he just fell oh my god he's good he's good yeah i agree that the

because the first time i saw this movie and you see her with her baby brain and her adult body and she's having sex with adult men with adult brains and i was so grossed out by it it's gross and then i started to realize that oh okay it seems like the director is making some intentional commentary that seems to suggest that like men are so preoccupied with their own sexual desire that they don't even notice that the woman they're physically attracted to has the mind of a small child. Or if they do notice, they don't seem to care. And so I was like, OK, that seems to be what Yorgos is getting at. Including the guys that were like theoretically rooting for. seem to care and so i was like okay that seems to be what your ghost is getting out including the guys that were like theoretically rooting for like that yeah i think like max is a tricky character for me in that regard because i feel like the movie in the way that it ends ends up being like

max is a pretty good guy yeah sure he made some choices that weren't the best and he justifies that usually by being like you know how charismatic willem dafoe is i'm like that doesn't mean that you should have sex with a babe marry a baby you can't just be like well you know he's just like when you're in his orbit it's hard to not marry a baby and you're like i just don't believe that's true i am always sort of responsive to like even the quote-unquote good guy that you're told is the good guy is still you know adhering to this fucked up logic yeah i think um he is very much to make a sex in the city reference the burger the jack burger in the equation you know like maybe um the evil general that's maybe you know that Mr. Big a little bit.

And who is Mark Ruffalo in the Sex and the City universe? You know, maybe. God. Fortunately, I don't think she fucks anyone like that. Good for her. I think he has. But yes, obviously there is something sinister that I don't know if the movie itself recognizes about treating that character as a

good guy in the end however my experience of the movie and I was fully done with my movie poor by this time so my opinion can't entirely be trusted I was like so team Bella Baxter by the end of the movie that I was just like whatever she wants, you know, like, yeah, she was so smart and badass by that point. I was just like, they'll probably get divorced later. It's clear that this movie is just like trying to wrap itself up because it's 20 minutes too long, like most movies. yeah and so like I'm just gonna kind of gently ignore this ending slash take it with a grain of salt because I'm still looking at Emma Stone's outfits and I love her character period yeah I think the ending just like felt weird yeah like by the ending I wasn't like I wish the spoofy was still happening but it like just feels funky because I also am like fully team Bella Baxter and I don't know I guess just like sort of close the loop on the extensive criticism of this movie's sex scenes I don't think

that it takes up undue narrative space I think that visually it feels like it's obsessed over more so than any other developmental stage she has. I think that that's like where that controversy comes from. No matter where you land on it, you can't argue that the movie is more visually interested in her mental awakening than her physical one. It gives a lot of real estate to her physical awakening but doesn't that just make for like a more fun sexy interesting movie yeah well i'm not even saying that i don't like that but i think that that's like why because as i was like watching it i was like i do think that it is like fairly well paced and like where her priorities are and where her developmental stage is but like visually the like

really intense visual scenes are when she's having sex and not when she's reading a book because that's technically more interesting to watch so that's sort of my theory on that but i also think that like that is a perfectly fair criticism to have of this movie because it is objectively like icky that she's a baby fucking adult yeah yeah i don't know but when i think of like the best sex scenes in the movie what does she call it vigorous jumping furious furious jumping i mean that's a great example of like i love the little constructed phrases that she comes up with they're so funny and like visceral but i don't know like the sex scenes that i remember the most are i guess ones where she's maybe in the like slightly post-adolescent phase she's not literally a baby anymore so she's like furious

jumping right it's not great but i i don't know we're all just like going on intuition when we're trying to figure out how creepy any one of these given sex scenes are and like yeah at a certain point pretty soon into the movie actually but once thank god we transitioned into the colors i was like i am not so creeped out on this anymore like i i think i really believe that like this woman is horny well i think that that's what helps is like she does initiate most of the sex in the movie so i have two problems with the way like the exploration of female sexuality is handled. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that this movie is, again, adapted from a book by a man, screenwriter, man, director, man, because the things that it mishandles, and I'm

sure I could come up with more if I watched the movie again, or mauled on it longer but two things that really bugged me was that the movie equates sexual curiosity and sexual feelings with being emotionally ready to have sex with other people because like children can feel sexual feelings they can masturbate they do masturbate but it doesn't mean that they are emotionally mature enough to start having sex. But the story suggests that Bella, when it's like, that doesn't track with how children actually cognitively and emotionally develop. So it's one thing if she just like masturbates a lot, and she's exploring her sexuality with herself. But I was just like, why are you equating that with her being ready to have sex with other people and like adult men? So that's one thing that really bugged me. And then the other thing was that the more mature and like intellectually enlightened Bella becomes, the less horny she becomes, which kind of suggests like, oh, well, smart and educated women will not be horny.

They'll cease to be horny because this is also reinforced by the Martha character who's like I haven't had sex in 20 years and I never masturbate hardly and she's like I'm more concerned with what's you know between my ears her brain than what's between my legs her sex organs so but could that be like a menopausal thing I mean maybe sure but also I'm just like smart women can be so horny i was sort of thrown by that shift it felt like weirdly conservative yeah right yeah and what the movie is saying otherwise and that is before she starts working as a sex worker which i think that that is like this movie's attitude towards sex work is better than most movies attitudes towards sex work is the only thing I wish and I don't know if this is more fleshed out in the book but like I do wish that we got to know the women who work there better

it felt like they were very like there at the last second and they are it seems like very important in Bella's developmental growth that is like where I start to understand the criticism even though I don't totally agree with it that like there's quote-unquote too much sex in this movie it's like you see a lot of the sex you hear that she's going to these meetings you hear that she is like doing a b and c you hear that she's connecting with the women who work at the brothel but you don't really see a lot of it you just know that it's happening but when it comes to having sex with men you see it and you hear about it so it does feel like it ends up being like more emphasized by the movie even if it's not more important in the story i don't know it's like it is tricky but i love that that happens and in the story. I don't know. It's like it is tricky.

But I love that that happens. And I love that like, I don't know. I mean, you think about how sex workers are stereotyped in movies in any number of ways that we've talked about on this show over the years. And for the most part, that is pretty swiftly avoided in this movie where the only shame put on to sex workers in this movie where the only shame put onto sex workers in this movie are by characters we don't like I mean Bella is very frank in her like even when she's like not loving her job she's like I am my own means of production like she's like very clear about like why she does what she does she likes it even on the days she doesn't. She's not unhappy to be doing it. It's not made out to be coercive. It's like it's a job. It's presented as a job, which I feel like sex work almost never is in movies. It's always like bogged down by

shame. And I love that about Bella. I love how she like at any turn when someone tries to entrap her or like project shame onto her she's like that doesn't make sense to me so I reject it yeah you're right that we hear from her lover her female lover I forget the character's name twinette yeah twinette significantly less than any of the male lovers which it's true I didn't love but in the grand scheme of things like what a treat for her to like have that character in her life at all yeah i'm thinking back on like some of the exchanges we've just had about like her mental age and how that may or may not be treated appropriately by these men in her life and in this moment blaming

yorgos once again for this like edgelord fuckery because like frankensteining a character that is like provoking us to have this conversation about like when a woman is old enough to be able to like give sexual consent by like putting a baby brain in the body of an adult person it's just like it's such fuckery you know what i mean it's like what a stupid conversation whose like resolution will not be applicable to literally anything else ever you know right it's like we will spend like the next however long figuring out how we really feel about this and then we won't be able to use that consensus about anything else because women grown women don't have baby brains famously and babies don't have grown women bodies like yes except in the movies where they do there

it is weird i don't know like i can see a lot of different i don't know this movie does feel unique in like it seems like a lot of people's takeaway it is like very entrenched in personal experience there are certain things where like kayla and i agree with you like that implying that thinking about sex and discovering your body means that you are ready and able to consent to sex is like a really really slippery slope that right this movie i think takes several steps back from it doesn't even really want you to think about because i don't think it's like prepared to engage with that question right but also it's like i don't know the sex scenes that are there are centered on her you do see men but they're not focused on but i still like maybe i'm a fucking prude and i know like yorgos lanthimos is like contemporary audiences are prudes and I was like

maybe you're just European I don't know like maybe I am like an American prude a question as old as time truly like maybe I'm an American prude like I didn't need all of it but like I wasn't outside of this I don't know it's so tricky because it's like in the criticism you're describing Caitlin like it is gross in terms of like do I have an issue with seeing a naked actor if they are fully consenting and fine with it and Emma Stone was because she is an executive producer in the movie then yeah I don't really care I just wish that there was if I could have the exact perfect movie that I wanted, I wouldn't have minded sacrificing some of those sequences in favor of like, even if it's like sex in the context

of her intellectual awakening. Cause I like how like, I mean, we were joking about it earlier, but like fucking the first person you meet who has good politics, like that's cool. Like I would have liked to see more of that relationship in her life because it seemed like for Bella it was really important but it for the movie it wasn't really important right I think the movie handles some things well in its examination of things such as

male fragility and how men perceive and treat women and other things it doesn't handle so well, such as its exploration of female sexuality, for example. So it's almost like maybe a woman should have co-written or directed the movie. I really think that that would have helped a lot of the problems. I agree. i think we

wouldn't feel such cognitive dissonance about like enjoying aspects of the movie and cringing at aspects of the movie if simply the female gaze were prioritized on the back end when it obviously wasn't you know right yeah because it's like i think like that the male fragility plot stuff is handled really well probably because it's written and adapted by people who have that experience like clearly that makes sense like i think it works really well and like mark ruffalo is like really good in that role of like the more Bella rejects you know falling into these like various traps he's presenting whether it be being kidnapped or on a boat getting married like whatever Victorian trap he's trying to get her in the more she outsmarts him the more he becomes a baby I

like that like sort of parallel when she's maturing he's devolving and like that all works I think one thing that we haven't gone to yet that I want to talk about because I don't know how to feel about I wasn't thinking about it as much on my first viewing but the way that she relates to God is really interesting to me and I want to hear your thoughts on it Amanda talking about the sort of scientist trope where I wasn't honing in on this, I think because I was annoyed with other stuff on my first viewing. Where we see that God is disabled as a result of abuse he experienced being experimented on by his own father. And he is then perpetuating similar abuses onto people and animals instead of processing his own pain and anger and resentment, which is really interesting. But like, I feel like the movie kind of bails on dealing with it. Like it's not nothing because Bella does return to say, I am upset with you for deceiving me

about the circumstances that I was born. It's so weird. I feel like everyone has a more normal version of this conversation with their parents where you're like, well, I didn't ask to be born, but being alive is pretty sick. But I truly didn't ask to be born, you know, like that whole thing. But she does like, you know, pretty clearly say like, I'm angry with you. But like hating your parents for certain things that are totally fair, but wanting a relationship with them anyways is a very common experience. I thought it was like well handled. But I still get I can't shake on every viewing that like Willem Dafoe's character ends up like getting off too easy. Like he does.

Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah i gotta say i found that stuff harder to take than the sort of queezifying sexual dynamics that we're discussing because yeah it's the thing that i've said where like i don't appreciate this god complex mad scientist trope i like i literally think it's like not good for the culture um but uh yeah like i just don't buy it i like don't buy perpetuating that kind of mad scientist abuse because you experienced it like i don't i don't buy it as an excuse and i certainly don't buy it as an explanation so yeah i think we were supposed to we were supposed to say like oh all this makes sense because of what he's been through and like he's not as bad as these other motherfuckers

so like now we're supposed to re-embrace him by or embrace him at all by default. But I couldn't I couldn't get there. Yeah. Glad that Bella was able to forgive him. But like I personally was not like that didn't work for me. And I feel like going into this last viewing with that on my mind, it made me dislike the ending even more because the Bella of the book breaks that cycle of abuse and uses what she's learned in medicine to help people which ties into her socialist awakening of like take what you have and distribute it to other people but the Bella of the movie does what

her father did and continues this cycle of abuse and you know is her target far better chosen like yeah like she's like dexter that guy is the most evil guy in the world so she's not a villain but i just felt like she was participating in the cycle of abuse in a way that the movie was like this is awesome it just felt like a little overly simplistic. And once I found out how the book ended, I was like, yeah, that does seem more in line with like what she's been building towards in her development. It almost feels like a step backwards

to do exactly what her father was doing because she spent all this time finding out who she was and wanting to be different. Yeah, I mean, do i find it cathartic to see the general bleeding like a goat hell yeah yeah i do but also it's like you could have just let him bleed out from his wound and die like it's so much extra effort to perform surgery turn him into your chihuahua yeah right you Right. You know, sometimes death is too kind. It's true.

My mom says that all the time. Your mother? Some people deserve a freakier fate. Yes. Life sentence of being a goat. Honestly. It sounds better. In this day and age, I'm like, someone goat me.

Honestly, I want to walk around and ble age. I'm like, someone go me. Honestly, I want to walk around and bleat and eat grass and just not worry about shit. I know. Seriously. But I think that speaks to the strength of this movie or one of the stronger aspects of it, which is the examination of the way and I'm speaking generally here, you know, hashtag not all men, but the way that like men tend to perceive women the way, and I'm speaking generally here, you know, hashtag not all men, but the way that like men tend to perceive women, the way men tend to deceive women, what men tend to value in women, how men want to control women physically and or behaviorally, how men resent women having

free will and minds of their own and sexual autonomy and sexual desire, all that kind of stuff, because we see that displayed in one way or another in each of these men, where, like, with God, it's, like, an extreme example of a man, like, taking away slash manipulating the autonomy of a woman as far as, like, bringing her back from the dead and then putting her own baby's brain in her body and then not telling her he did any of that until the end of the movie you've got max as we've discussed a little bit already like knowing pretty early on that she has the mind of a child and also doesn't tell her that and falls in love with her despite you know knowing

that she is a baby right then you've got duncan which is a whole smorgasbord of stuff where like the first time he meets her he assaults her he grows increasingly jealous and he's trying to control her constantly control her behavior he resents that she has sexual desire outside of him all this stuff and then he's like driven to the brink of madness because of his resentment toward her all of this is like there is a really like wide gradient of like types of fragile men available in this movie. And I feel like they're all, you know,

they're like over the top because it's a fantasy movie, but it feels distinct. It feels like recognizable. Oh, for sure. I just wish that you got like more of a gradient outside of Bella with women. Like there's just not as much, not that I necessarily have confidence in this specific team

to like show a wider gradients of women but I did like the sort of running theme of like Bella is a person when it behooves a guy and then she's property when it behooves them too where she like has to shout at the captain at the end like I am not she doesn't say property what does she say territory I am not territory yeah like she has to remind different men in different ways that she is a person and I feel like that plays really well and anytime she reminds someone she's a person, generally something bad happens to her, which is, I mean, even more typical of that time,

but still obviously happens. I thought, yeah, this movie does really well with showing like all of the different ways that male possessiveness and insecurity can manifest. But there's just really the one woman which is like the problem of so many movies it's so weird i know because you do have these different relationships that she forms over the course of the movie you know martha is like teaching bella to enrich her mind and that there's more to life than satiating our

most carnal desires which is like i guess true but like you can also be horny and read about philosophy martha there's twinette who becomes bella's ally and then later lover and she like helps bella learn about socialism and stuff like that but we kind of learn next to nothing else about twinette and yeah i do appreciate representation on screen of like you know a queer sex scene but i'm like who is this person again like can we learn more about twinette and then madam swiney there's a number of scenes that are pretty significant between bella and madam swiney where you know she's admiring bella for wanting to carve her own path to freedom and she's like let me help you on that journey but then she's also like but i need money and i need you to make money for me because

that's just how it works i think she's interesting for that reason. Yeah. I'll go to bat for Madame Swiney. I feel like she's like this weird socialist writer stock character where she's like, yeah, my politics are great, but you got to play the game, Bella. You got to play the game. And she's like, do I? And then at the end, she's like, I do. A relatable internal battle we all fight

every day yeah it felt at least like intentionally dissonant like that was part of why she was there yeah true and then there's finally mrs prim the like housekeeper at god's house and at first she hates bella and thinks she's a nuisance. But then at the end, she's like, no, I'm cool with you. Now that all these men are dead or goats. You know,

what's weird about these men too, is that why are they all identical? Like it's insane how their shade of black hair is all exactly the same. Yeah. They're all very similar. It is fascinating to me that they're all just these like identical horrible dudes who are like a slightly different flavor it's like rocky road and then i don't know whatever whatever is a similar flavor to rocky road i don't eat that

much ice cream my tummy can't handle it i eat cheese though we went over that. But yes, I did think that it was funny that like I almost like scramble the male characters because they all look the same and they're all awful. But I couldn't forget Bella if I tried. To be optimistic about this whole thing. The one place where Bella and all these men can absolutely agree there is no fighting. Everyone has the same take on it is her fashion. True. Everyone's like the looks are solid. Yeah. Like no one's trying to control what she wears. They're like she can clearly handle that. She looks great.

And again, the movie just won best costume design yeah earned fully because i love that about the looks because they are sexy but they're wacky they're like wackadoodle dandy which i really i really appreciated that. Again, I will forgive so much about this movie because of what she wore. Fair. The last thing I have, I think, is just a little more in the way that the source material kind of shines through

is on the idea of labor and what constitutes labor and how Bellalla's view on labor evolves over time because i do feel like miss prim is connected in that conversation even though i don't think the movie really sticks the landing on it but like bella doesn't understand a world in which she her needs are not constantly met because she grows up with this immense privilege in her like question mark who knows the amount of time this movie is supposed to take place over i have no fucking clue but like it's not until she has her political awakening and which again i think is really badly done in this movie with just like a shot of poverty the cinematic shot or whatever

but like that shot that like changes her view of labor moving forward and like i feel like that culminates in like she has a job she's a sex worker uh she understands the highs and lows that comes with working in the service industry and that culminates to like when she sees her mom's ex-husband question mark her father her father when she's married to her father again yeah her husband father there's a lot of daddies in this movie yeah but like her husband is also her daddy and yeah her daddy is also god so there's a lot of daddies in this movie yeah but like her husband is also her daddy and yeah her daddy is also god so there's like there's a lot going on the tlc specials a tale as old as time when your dad is your god and your dad is also your husband who among us and you are also your baby and you are also your own baby and your own mother

but when her biological dad technically captain blessington whatever the fuck is davis is like holding his employees at gunpoint and essentially torturing them and then she learns that her mother in her body did the same thing like i think that is like a full circle on the labor discussion and I thought like in general like it wasn't super dwelled on but I I liked it on like further viewings it's like over the top and ridiculous but you know her views on labor definitely evolve and change along with everything else which is again like why the more the more I watch the movie the more I'm like I don't really agree with the sex criticism i could see a lot of the visual criticism like i get it if it's uncomfortable and like you think that that

time could be better used elsewhere but like she's on a lot of journeys i just they're not all visually as interesting as yeah sex and naked bodies yeah yeah i do think that the movie and we i think already said this to some extent but that the movie spends too long on that chunk because there's no forward momentum for a while it's just like her learning about sex and exploring her sexuality and then by the time she starts to like learn about philosophy and learn about socialism and has her like political discovery it's like 200 books later but you see every sexual encounter right i'm just like uh why spend so much time on that because to me it would make sense if it was like not in montage necessarily but a few minutes are spent on her sex life and then a few more minutes like it but it just again that momentum

comes to a screeching halt for like 20 minutes while she's like out there fucking a bunch of people or i guess mostly just the one guy but in any case i just i feel like there was a better way to use that time and i wish that there was more about her arc that has her learning about other things and expanding her mind starts happening sooner. But instead, it's like, no, she's having sex with a shitty person, which also relatable. Who among us hasn't? That's what I was going to say. It's like, weirdly, I felt fine with the amount of time that was spent on her fucking this awful person. Because, like, it's fun to watch people have sex. It's even fun to watch people have sex that they probably shouldn't be having within certain boundaries. Of course.

Right. Which is, like, debatable within this movie. Yeah. Which is debatable within this movie. Yeah, which is debatable with this movie for sure. I didn't long to spend more time with her like book in hand. Like here's a montage of her like reading. I don't know if I necessarily would. I mean, sure. Actually, like that sounds aesthetic and amazing.

And I would love to see like her reading outfits. But I do think that more time could have been spent kind of confronting head on the stuff with god and like the stuff with her ultimate husband and how again we mentioned that we just like forgave all those people so immediately we were expected to so if anything i think we could have cut away some of that stuff not because it's like offensive or whatever but because like there was so much that went unaddressed again despite the movie being 20 minutes too long yeah yeah like it's not that I want to see montages of her reading it's that I would have preferred like more scenes where you see the result of that reading because that felt way more rushed.

Yeah. No, you're right. I mean, I heard it linguistically and I wasn't mad at it. I was like surprised and delighted by it. But with more thought and indeed, I am becoming madder at it. It's like she went overnight from Goo Goo Gaga to like, I read Nietzsche. And, you know, I am incorporating that vernacular into the way that I talk every day. It was, yeah, it was overnight in the movie. Also, to speak to the like, why does she so readily forgive these awful men, namely God and Max, to the point where she agrees to marry Max. And there is that exchange of dialogue where she says something like, I've been a whore, you understand? Cocks for money inside me,

which is a hilarious way to phrase that. And she's like, are you okay with that? Does that challenge the desire for ownership that men have? And Max responds, I find myself merely jealous of the men's time with you rather than any moral aspersion against you. It is your body, Bella Baxter, yours to give freely. And I'm like, OK, good, good attitude to have. But that doesn't mean you have to marry him because you said that. But it's kind of suggested that that's her train of thought because the scene after that is them getting married. So I'm like, um, right.

You don't have to marry him i can get on board with that as far as like the first time that marriage is floated she has no say in it right she's presented with like the illusion of choice because she is not able to consent to marriage nor sex because she's like five a toddler but when it comes back around yeah I think that there could have been another way to get that across and ultimately she doesn't go through with it but like I do like that the second time it is very firmly her choice that's true but again it is like choosing something somewhat conventional but again it makes more sense for me in the book ending where like the advantage of being married to him in victorian times is that he is also a doctor and they can

work together and like just based on what we see of bella baxter i'm assuming that any marriage she's in would not be monogamous i don't think that she's the closed marriage type so like I wasn't super bothered by I just was more like bumped out by but also felt like oh yeah that's the thing where it's like you marry the first person who like kind of respects you which totally you know like that certainly does happen oh my god yeah it Yeah. It's happening left, right, and center. Yeah, it did give Stockholm Syndrome a little bit. Another B protagonist, Miss Bell from Beauty and the Beast. It was a little bit that. But that dude was less hot than the Beast.

So anyway. I think Max, like God, is also sort of let off the hook. We were talking about this earlier where he's just like yeah you know right right but like i feel like the movie forgives him for willingly and with full understanding participating in trapping her and treating her like property yeah and lusting after her when she was a baby it doesn't just feel like bella says i forgive you it also feels like the movie is like and this is the guy for her and i just like again i'm like i just think maybe if you have a woman co-writer that is not the result agree

yeah i also wish that because we see felicity at the end too when they're like in the little courtyard and right the general goat man is like bah general goat man is a great character name yeah and then mrs prim is being nicer and max is there just sort of like chilling and then felicity was also there. And I'm like, okay, well, what's going on with Bella and Felicity? Are they friends? Is Bella Felicity's mentor? Like, I want to know a little bit more about that, too. Anyway, is there anything else anyone wants to talk about? I feel like we cracked it. We figured it out. We cracked it. I also feel like we've barely scratched the surface of this very complex movie. Actually, the last thing I wanted to say is like I tried to research.

I mean, it would be an infinity project to try to track down all of the analysis of this movie. And there's just too fucking much of it like we've talked about there was a fair amount of backlash to the protracted sex scenes with a presumably underage character and all of the stuff that came with that i also found a number of trans writers that were very pro this movie reading it as a resurrection within a familiar but new body and like navigating identity inside of a new body and a new identity inside of a body that is familiar but new and like so I just wanted to like acknowledge that read of the movie which I had heard about but I hadn't like actually spent any time reading before prepping for this episode so we can link to several of those essays as well i like knowing

that because i don't know if i'm just in my like optimism era or what but i think it's nice to find excuses to appreciate a piece of art that like a fuck ton of work went into even if there are critiques better yeah yeah you know what i mean like i think for me the bottom line of this movie is like yorgos lanthimos is a little jerking off little boy he loves a stunt he is an edgelord for me he loves to like provoke but not in the way that he thinks he's provoking and he's asking us to forgive a lot of nonsense because we're so like caught up in that provocation and at the end of the day like it worked because i am actually at the end of the day like it worked because I am actually at the end of the day forgiving a lot but not for the reasons why he wants me to make those pardons if that makes sense yeah art is so up to interpretation like because there was no woman in the room I don't think the movie he

intended to make is a landing in the same way on all the women viewers who are going to see it yeah i mean there was emma stone as an executive producer for sure but i'm talking about like in the writing of it and such still like overwhelmingly men yeah yeah yeah and so like in spite of all that i do like that there's so much to find in this movie that is positive empowering stylish feminist etc and that reflects well on the viewers even if the people who made it didn't engineer those things if that makes sense yeah yeah for me the bottom line is the movie would have benefited from more perspective from women on the storytelling and creative end of things, because the things that I think this movie mishandles are things that if a woman creative was involved, she would have been like, no, no, let's not do that. Or let's like, you know,

make this adaptation change to kind of modernize this or make it more intersectional or, you know, whatever needed to happen. And instead, it was just so many men making choices. And in some cases, like, they handled things well, again, like the way that many of the male characters are behaving and their conduct as it relates to their interactions with women. I think that all tracks very well, but other things, not so much. I will say that, and I think we touched on this a little bit already, but something I really appreciated is that because of Bella's baby brain, she moves through the world with this like sense of adventure and wonder and like shamelessness and willingness to indulge that most adults, especially women, are sort of like conditioned and societally forced to unlearn because of like propriety and politeness, especially in this like Victorian era. So the

fact that you see this woman, or even though she's like, again, baby brain for a lot of this, but someone who appears on the surface to be a woman, You see her, you know, eating whatever delicious things she wants whenever she wants. You see her fucking whenever she wants and whoever she wants. You see her just being curious and asking whatever questions she wants and rejecting the notion of the status quo a lot of the time and challenging the power and behavior of men. And all of these things were just very refreshing to see because i too like to eat delicious things and speak my mind yeah exactly there's like something to learn from baby brain and it's like is it baby brain or is it just unmitigated brain you know like yeah

and that's an interesting question to ponder i think that yeah like where i divert from the baby brain critique is that this movie is very much for adults i don't think that this is a movie that is being marketed at kids or young people i mean not to say that like people coming of age won't find this movie that almost always happens but it's an r-rated movie i think it is like safe to assume that the target audience of this movie knows not to fuck a baby but if that creative choice is removed from the movie everything changes and a lot of the commentary becomes impossible i think like what bugs me about this i think there's a lot to love about this movie i ended up liking it I like the first time I watched it I didn't like it now I'm like will I watch it again anytime soon no I've

seen it three times I'd like if there's anything else to be had from this movie it will never reach me but I ended up liking it more than I originally did but I think like the big thing for me here that I stand by of original viewing Jamie is that there is a clear example within this director's body of work that when he is centering women, he needs a woman in the writing room for it to translate. And that's very clear between his last movie and this movie. I think the favorite in general is a stronger work and has more to say about women. Very likely because of the one differential, which is that it was adapted by a work from a woman by a woman. Not saying that you have to be a woman to have something interesting to say, but it certainly doesn't hurt and i think your ghost slayed the most and tony mcnamara need a woman in the room to maximize their joint male slay okay that's all i had to say about this movie i refuse to say another word it passes the bechdel test for sure yes quite a bit between a number of different combinations of characters.

Bella and Martha are talking about masturbating and philosophy. My two favorite things. Bella and Twinette are talking about socialism and their C-section scars. Bella and Madame Swiney are talking about various things. Yeah, so there are many conversations that pass the pectal test although so many of the interactions are between bella and men so there's that but it is cool that when those conversations aren't happening and she's talking to women they're not talking about men mostly they almost never are yeah yeah the second men are gone bella is not thinking about them. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yeah, truly. Bella Baxter, ultimately, like, an amazing character. I love her. I love her. And that out of sight, out of mind thing reflects another thing that's great about her, which is she is so present. Yes. Yeah. Which is aspirational.

She's noticing things. She's realizing things. When women realize things, it's beautiful. It's noticing things. She's realizing things. When women realize things, it's beautiful. It's huge for us. As far as our nipple scale goes, so rating the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I'll go, I'm somewhere around like a four nipple rating. I think the movie does accomplish a lot. I think its shortcomings are fairly obvious to me. And again, wouldn't have to be shortcomings if they had more meaningfully included more women in the creative and storytelling process. But the movie has a clear agenda, which is to show the kind of

growth and liberation of a woman and to comment on toxic male behavior, especially the way they perceive and treat women. So I think the movie is doing a lot of those things pretty well. And I'll give it four nipples. Brave. Brave. Thank you. My nipples are going to Susie Bumba, who plays Antoinette, or just Twinnette. Twinnette is probably a nickname for Antoinette, I'm guessing I'll give one to Martha I will give one to Madam Swiney and I'll give one to Emma Stone the end I'm gonna get fractional I'm gonna do 3.75 partially just to kind of be a bitch I think that like I'm gonna go 3.75 just because I don't want to give four men navigating their way around telling a story about Woman's Awakening 4. I refuse to do it. I cannot. That's fair. But I think with that limitation there is still a lot going on in this movie that most movies don't even bother with and I think

that Emma Stone's performance and involvement in production I think we should always mention when the star of a movie is also a producer because I feel you can really feel it in the movie and it answers a lot of questions about like we know that Emma Stone would not be put into a situation to do a sex scene she didn't want to do because she is in charge you know and that's an oversimplification but stuff like that i think that this movie has a lot going for it and you know a woman's socialist awakening you know i can't hate that movie and i won't true so i'll go 3.75 and i'm gonna just make it clean i'm gonna give all of my nipples to Catherine Hunter who plays Swinney just because I think she is such an incredible character actor and you should watch the Joel Cohen Macbeth where

she plays the witches oh yes Amanda how about you one of my best friends has a third nipple so i think i'm gonna give three full-size nipples and one third nipple nipple if that's okay yeah yes please and i'm gonna give them all as well to one single person holly waddington the costume designer yeah oh yes oscar winner holly waddington yeah like truly life-changing for me she did a great job well amanda thank you so much for joining us for this discussion what a blast we did it we figured it out we cracked the code oh my god what a distinct pleasure thank you so much. Where can we find you online? Where can we buy your new book?

Tell us everything. Oh, that's so nice. So my book is available April 9th wherever you buy books and hardback, ebook, audio book. I read it myself. And you can find my podcast, Sounds Like a Cult on all major podcast platforms. Episodes come out on Tuesdays. And stay tuned because these two right here are going to come on for an episode on Sounds Like a Cult,

whose topic we're still noodling. It's a show about the modern day cults we all follow. And we're still debating between the cult of Shrek and the cult of Leo DiCaprio. There is a right answer. So far, the listeners have voted for the wrong answer. It was wrong. But I got so many DMs specifically requesting the right answer that who knows, we might have to stop in the middle of the episode

and end up doing both, who knows? So anyway, that sounds like a cult. And then I am reluctantly on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montel. And I have a sub stack. Very good. You can find us on Instagram and sometimes still Twitter at Bechtelcast. Individually, we are at Jamie Christ Superstar and at Caitlin Durante on Instagram. Wow.

And you can join our Patreon aka Matreon where for $5 a month you can get two bonus episodes and access to over 150 episodes of Backcat at all. Sway. That's right. You can buy our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast

and you can see us live on our Shrektanic tour in May in various cities abroad for us yes in the uk and dublin oh that's huge so go to our link tree link tree slash spectral cast for tickets to those shows and with that a goo goo gaga bye bye goo goo gaga wine Bye bye. Goo goo gaga. Wine glass clink. We did it, ladies. The man's a goat. Let's go, goats. Bye.

The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan, with vocals by Catherine Voskrosensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, podcast. date. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do.

What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.

We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.