Noominated a 11 Oscar awards, Poor creatures! (Golden Lion and Volpi Cup to Emma Stone a Venice 2023) was finally released in cinemas today January 25th. Directed by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, the film is based on the novel of the same name by Alasdair GrayEnglish cult writer of famous dystopian and fantastic volumes.
Poor creatures! – released in 1992 and winner of the Whitbread Novel Award – is a complex book, a phantasmagoria that is very difficult to adapt for the big screen. Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara they had to change something from the novel. So here’s how it went for her.
Poor creatures!the book by Alasdair Gray
The first Italian PC version arrives two years after the English release thanks to Marcos y Marcos, the title is Poor things!. It can now be found in bookstores in the edition edited by Safarà Editoreedition that recovers the literal translation of the title.
The book is a “fake” memoir written by the doctor Max McCandlesshusband of Bella Baxter (in the film Emma Stone), a woman whose identity is shrouded in mystery. Max writes “his” version of the story, telling that the woman had been found dead by a colleague: the scientist Godwin Baxter. Which to revive it implants the brain of a fetustherefore an adult woman with the mind cleared. Who has to learn everything.
Destined to become Baxter’s partner, Bella however rebels progressively and begins to weave promiscuous relationships. Together with the lawyer Duncan Wedderburn leaves Glasgow and travels around Europe, North Africa and Central Asia. Until when, a London, she meets a guy who claims to be her previous version’s husband.
Poor creatures!: the differences between book and film
First of all, in the novel Bella’s adventures begin in Glasgow, in the film they begin immediately in London – and then, after his travels around the world – to return. A change due to a question halfway between identity and fantastic needs.
Lanthimos, went to Gray’s house (in Glasgow) in 2011 to obtain the rights to the book, he understands that – as a Greek – it would be totally incongruous for him to shoot the film in the real locations described in the book. Furthermore, it needs to make everything more fairytale-like. Therefore, over ten years after meeting Alistar, with whom he began a close correspondence, he began the production of Poor creatureAnd! in Hungary, where he reconstructed his surreal versions of London, Paris and Lisbon.
The cover of “Poor creatures!”. (Safara Publisher)
A new point of view, all female
Another difference between the book and the film is in the perspective of the characters. The novel is composed from letters, diary entries, footnotes, portraits, maps, anatomical drawings and handwritten notes. That is, contributions from different hands and thoughts intertwined with each other: an architecture defined by Alasdair as “multimodal” and one of its peculiarities (also present in other books).
Lanthimos instead preferred to focus only on Bella Baxter’s point of view. “We made a change from the novel since the film is exclusively from his perspective,” he told al Guardian“I thought such an adventure could only be told through Bella’s eyes».
Emma Stone in “Poor Creatures!”. (Searchlight Pictures)
The alternative ending of the film (SPOILER WARNING)
Scripted by Tony McNamara, the film extends the narrative beyond the ending dictated by the book, creating something completely new. In the novel, in fact, Bella’s events ended with the return of the woman with Alfie Blessington, abusive husband who led her to suicide when she was still Victoria. That is, the woman found dead to whom the brain of a newborn is implanted and she is reborn as Bella.
Alasdair Gray at his home in Great Britain in the late 1990s. (Getty Images)
A pessimistic and dark ending that the screenwriter considered inconsistent with a film halfway between drama and surreal comedy.
So McNamara wrote new scenes that they see Bella and her beloved Max take revenge on Alfie and replace his brain with that of a goat. Then move to the countryside and live happily ever after together with Toinettethe prostitute friend that Bella met in Paris.
Another peculiar characteristic of Gray is the borderline experimental use of typography: with graphics and illustrations designed by him and used to replace the classic layout.
His best known work is Lanark – A life in four booksnovel written over almost thirty years. Published in 1981, it is considered a classic of world literature.
Far from Gray’s classic imagerywhich has always outlined a contemporary world that is both real and imaginary, Poor creatures! However, he revisits themes dear to him. Like the social inequalitiesthe weight of relationships, the importance of memory and the search for personal identity.
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