Hello movie lovers. Today I want to talk about a very recent movie that perfectly combines science fiction with fantasy, dark comedy and adventure. A film that was one of the most acclaimed, criticized and awarded nowadays, thanks to its fantastic direction, script, characters, visual effects and soundtrack. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring the beautiful and talented Emma Stone, this adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Alashdair Gray is one of the most popular and successful works of the last decade.
Plot
The film begins by presenting a suicide: a pregnant woman throws herself off a bridge into the river, dying in the fall. An eccentric doctor and scientist named Godwin Baxter finds her on the shore with the baby barely alive. With his expertise in amputating and performing unconventional surgeries, he exchanges the brain of the deceased with that of her baby and then reanimates her. This brings a new being to life, a baby in the body of an adult woman. Her name is Bella Baxter and she is raised with him in the same house.
One day, a medical student is hired to be the assistant to the well-known and criticized surgeon, Godwin Baxter. He takes it upon himself to study Bella's progress, who acts like a child, but whose brain develops in an astonishingly fast way. She goes from being a child to becoming a rebellious teenager. As time goes by, her cognitive abilities improve, while her curiosity about the outside world grows. However, a lawyer who is hired to execute a document to betroth Bella to the assistant takes her with him to explode the world.
Trailer & Review
Below, I will leave you with the trailer for the movie:
To begin with, I should mention that this movie is not for everyone. It has been criticized for its many explicit scenes. Of course, it also has a very dark style of humor, being this film for a moderately older audience. Therefore, despite this, it is curious the way of telling us the story of a kind of Frankenstein but in the form of a woman and with the face of Emma Stone. That's right, a curious, but at the same time bizarre way of showing us the darkest of the world, but with a retro-futuristic tone in the Victorian era.
As for the characters, Emma Stone stands out, as always, but this time I consider that she does a job that, while it is understandable that it has been highly criticized, it is also very risky and at the same time fantastic. Said character she plays is so well done that you can feel both wonder and doubt and unease at the way she acts in line with her words or way of speaking. Such discrepancy is merely a way of mocking a completely disruptive time and society. This and many other cues and references to philosophy, science and religion itself is clearly evident throughout the film.
On the other hand, Willem Dafoe also does an excellent job in showing us the typical mad, eccentric and troubled scientist who, at the same time, behaves as a sympathetic and sentimental father. His "father-daughter" relationship with the character played by Emma is fantastic and very touching. Also, Mark Ruffalo, as always, with his unique way of playing a character that you can easily come to loathe until the very end. The way he destroys your mind and your life, the interpretation of good and evil, the "dark side" of the world and much more is what we can see perfectly interpreted in this play.
Last but not least to highlight would be the cinematography and style of cameras and recording that the film possesses. A way to capture the story as if it were a retro tape. The combination of colors, costumes and ways of speaking and acting in keeping with the era is also fascinating. In the end, the soundtrack gives that adventurous yet bizarre and dark touch to the film. With plot twists and scenes that are both disturbing and at the same time absurd. The "fantastic" in all of this work is the very style it possesses in being both a work of fantasy and a raw story not too far from reality.
Personally, I give it a rating of 7.5/10 as far as the science fiction, fantasy and adventure genre is concerned.
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All the best.
By: Nattosheru.