Poor Creatures: The Gothic Novel Behind the Film (review)

In the 90s, Alasdair Gray wrote a masterpiece that was adapted into a double Golden Globe-winning film.

After winning two awards at the last Golden Globes, Poor creaturesthe new film from Yorgos Lanthimos, is about to hit theaters this week. It is a gothic tale, a sort of feminine Frankenstein in which Godwin Baxter, a mad scientist (William Dafoe) manages to resuscitate a young pregnant suicide (Emma Stone) by implanting her infant’s brain. He calls her Bella Baxter and this is the beginning of learning about this child stuck in the body of a young woman.

Treated as a philosophical tale, in which a completely candid character learns the nuances of existence through experience, here through a fabulous journey, the film by Lanthimos owes its depth to its original material, the novel ofAlasdair Gray. First published in 1992, Poor creatures is different from the film in that it is written from a multiplicity of points of view. Unlike the staging of Lanthimos which focuses solely on Bella’s point of view, Alasdair Gray writes no less than three versions of the same story, narrated by different characters.

Poor Creatures: Emma Stone’s Greatest Role (review)

The entire prologue of the novel opens with the point of view of the character Archibald McCandless, played by Ramy Youssef in the movie. This assistant of Godwin Baxter will become the eyewitness and then the reporter of the story experienced by Bella. This story adopts the point of view of the protagonist when she expresses herself in the letters she sends to Archibald and Godwin to recount her journey. In terms of plot, the film is very faithful to the novel even if it once again transforms its narration at the very end in a final letter from the heroine supposed to address her descendants.

There lies all the literary genius ofAlasdair Gray and its gothic tale pastiche. By mixing romantic writing and epistolary storytelling, by involving all the points of view of his different characters, he delivers a protean novel which is the true Frankensteinesque creature. He is the creator and his work is his creature. The writer even goes so far as to play with the reader by introducing his novel with a very “serious” warning in which he tries to convince us that we are about to read a true story, lived and faithfully transcribed by people who existed.

To add authenticity to this supposedly real document, the novel is peppered with anatomical and scientific illustrations, reproductions of the medical notebooks of the characters of Godwin and Archibald. The work benefited from a recent reissue in connection with the release of the film by Métailié editions. Died in 2019 and little known in France, Alasdair Gray deserves attention on his writings. Yorgos Lanthimos was ideal for tackling this unique but already classic work.

After Poor Creatures, Yorgos Lanthimos presents his new film with Emma Stone