Emma Stone is one of the most successful actresses in Hollywood nowadays, it’s a fact that she’s the movie star that never disappoints. From being the rebellious teenage girl in Easy A to one of Disney’s most famous villains, the infamous Cruella, she has played strong women in most of her works, which inspire the audience and young people in so many ways.
When she won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 2017, by playing the inspiring actress Mia in the musical comedy-drama, La La Land, we thought that this was going to be the best role and performance of her career.
The project, which marked her third collaboration with Ryan Gosling, explores life and love with the amusement of jazz music by telling the story of a young couple pursuing their dreams in the city of stars, Los Angeles, and how it can be difficult to climb up the career leader and still being around the people that you love.
Her latest work has been the center of attention of the public since it came out. Poor Things has changed the way that some people perceive Emma Stone, it’s been evaluated as one of the best cinematographic works from 2023.
The movie has a total of 11 Oscar nominations, including the categories: Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Picture. Considering all these nominations and the Academy Award Ceremony approaching, we cannot leave this discussion behind: Can Poor Things be considered Emma Stone’s great film of the career?
The movie based on the 1992 novel by Alasdayr Gray tells the story of the curious Bella Baxter, the young woman that, after a brain transplant, has the curiosity that only a child can have and ends up putting herself in an endless adventure of self-discovery.
Throughout Bella’s adventures, we can see her evolving as a human being, what it is like to discover yourself when you’re young, and all the struggles that you pass through during your lifetime as a female. She begins her story as an innocent child in an adult’s body and finishes as an empowering woman who has her own opinions and can already take care of herself.
Starring Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, Mark Ruffalo as the hideous Duncan Wedderburn, and Willem Dafoe as the brilliant Dr. Godwin Baxter, the director Yorgos Lanthimos did an excellent job by bringing this story to the eyes of the public.
Between some of Yorgos’s inspirations for this project, we cannot stop from noticing the similarity to Frankenstein (the novel by Mary Shelley), and also some visual parallels to Metropolis (1927), the Fritz Lang film.
Even though there are a lot of factors that make some people love Poor Things, there are others who judge it as pretty much “inappropriate”.
This film involves a lot of physical acting, watching it we can see that Emma performed with her whole body as well in a very accrued way, giving the idea that the whole thing had its purpose and aesthetic it’s something that can shock people because we rarely see it in modern cinema.
The majority of comments say that the movie exaggerates the nudity since it’s filled with sex scenes. There are also some people saying that the film objectifies the women’s body because it was written and directed by men and there is an awful and unnecessary amount of full-frontal female nudity.
In a recent interview, Stone revealed that “The male gaze in this project didn’t take my agency away”. What people don’t know is that not only did she play the lead role, but she also produced the film, which according to her “ It wasn’t like I was just there following the rules, but I was aware of what was happening and also wanted to tell this story”.
The movie is definitely a highlight in Emma Stone’s career and it will always be a project that it’s special in her eyes. She did outstanding work as Bella Baxter and we can’t wait to see her being part of more projects like this one.
Poor Things has got the creativity and the amusement that we haven’t seen that much lately in cinema. It’s a piece that makes you dive into the story and have fun with the complexity of it, without making it boring or tedious. It’s one of Emma’s best acting, if not the best.
The article above was edited by Larissa Buzon.
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