Around 20 years ago, while studying in Glasgow, I went to a reading featuring Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Tom Leonard. It was an ordinary event with three iconic local literary icons, definitely not a rare evening in Glasgow, yet it was an intimate night in a pub.
After the reading, while people were chatting and relaxing, I finally found the courage to ask Gray why his novel Lanark, that he had originally published in 1981, hadn't been translated yet in my home country, Italy.
Gray, in his signature baggy trousers and disheveled jumper, ran a hand through his unruly hair, adjusted his glasses on his nose, and simply replied, "Maybe it's not good enough!" Then he shrugged and started laughing loudly in that peculiar and infectious laughter he had. I joined him, but deep down I knew it wasn't true. Lanark was simply excellent as I had discovered at the end of the '90s when a lecturer at Glasgow University had included it in our reading list. But that answer remained hilarious for me – the best reply in the world. An ego-maniacal writer may have answered you with a long tirade, blaming publishers who didn't understand his art, but not Gray.
Time passed, things changed and, between 2015 and 2017 Lanark was eventually translated into Italian and published in four volumes. Gray didn't change, though. He remained a prolific artists and writer. Every time I saw him at readings, he was the same - humble, restless, and generous with his readers (he never behaved like a star, never refused to answer a question you may have had for him or to sign a book). Sadly, he died in 2019.
Gray often claimed in interviews that he was "unfashionable". This definition didn't obviously refer to his attire - his trademark baggy trousers matched with a jumper with a casual hole here and there; his messy hair and crooked glasses. Gray's definition referred indeed to his writing and drawing/painting style.
Yet Gray has become suddenly extremely fashionable: yesterday evening "Poor Things", the film taken from his 1992 eponymous novel, won indeed the Golden Lion at the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the film features Emma Stone as Bella Baxter (Stone is also one of the film producers), Willem Dafoe as Godwin Baxter, Ramy Youssef as Max McCandless and Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn.
Gray's novel revolves around Bella Baxter, a woman with a mysterious past. Her husband, Archibald McCandless, writes a distorted autobiography entitled "Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer" in which he claims Bella was a resurrected corpse with the mind of an infant, a creation of the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter.
Reassembled in a lab with the aim of being turned into Baxter's companion, Bella grows up as a liberated woman. Her sexual adventures lead her into relationships with McCandless and lawyer Duncan Wedderburn, with whom she elopes and embarks on a journey around Europe, Northern Africa, and Central Asia.
However, Bella (writing as Victoria in the novel) refutes these events, suggesting her husband constructed a sensationalized narrative based on the gothic and romantic themes of the era, echoing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
The narrative is constructed from fictitious historical documents discovered by Glasgow-based researcher Michael Donnelly and introduced by Alasdair Gray (his introduction in the book was also a critique of Glasgow City Council's treatment of culture and heritage and briefly mentions Glasgow's time as the European Capital of Culture in 1990).
The book reflects Gray's rich universe in which gender, identity, philosophy, politics, and in particular Scottish nationalism, are combined together, something that truly fascinated Lanthimos.
"Alasdair Gray's novel is immediately something very visually striking and complex – the themes, the humor, and the complexity of its characters and language," Lanthimos explains.
"I've never read anything like it before, I was very taken by it. Gray was a painter and he'd done illustrations with the text. It was, overall, a story about a woman's freedom in society. The path was open to tell a story like this."
Gray's son, Andrew, remembers how his father had turned down other offers to adapt the novel for the big screen, but things changed when he met Lanthimos.
"My father and Yorgos met in Glasgow and toured the city, visiting locations associated with the novel," he recalls. "Alasdair was impressed that Yorgos had taken the time to meet with him personally. It was my dad's favorite way to converse - walking and showing the city he lived in all his life." According to Andrew, it was watching the "Dogtooth" DVD that convinced his father that Lanthimos had the talent to adapt Poor Things.
Lanthimos' film doesn't have strong connections with Scotland as the story re-shifts its attention on Bella. Tony McNamara who penned the script for the film defines it indeed "Bella's coming-of-age story".
At the beginning of the film Bella, almost dead and rescued by Dr. Baxter after she attempted to take her own life by throwing herself from London's Tower Bridge, is trapped at home, looked after by Baxter, his housekeeper, Mrs Prim (Vicky Pepperdine), and Baxter's assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef).
McCandles falls in love with Bella and Baxter consents to his proposal to Bella, under the condition that the newlyweds continue to reside with him in his peculiar townhouse.
Things don't go as planned, though, when Bella elopes with solicitor Duncan Wedderburn and a journey of discovery - touching Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris - starts for Bella. During it Bella discovers and starts exploring her sexuality (the film received an R-rating for its sexually explicit scenes and full-frontal nudity and required the presence of an intimacy coordinator during production).
So what starts like the story of Frankenstein's monster, turns into a story of liberation in which a woman gets a second chance at her life and, free from society's restrictions, turns her fate around.
"Bella doesn't have any shame or trauma, or even a back story," Emma Stone explains about her character.
"She's not raised by a society that is putting these confines on women. That can be incredibly freeing, and there is really no research you can do for something like this. Bella draws things from the men she meets, from the women she meets, from the environment she's in, from what she's eating. She's like a sponge."
Bella embodies a storm of emotions, hurtling forward like a monorail: "The male characters are trying to control Bella in their own various ways, and she doesn't even entertain it. She is just too autonomous," adds Stone.
Bella's perspective reshapes the world around her, a world filled with authoritative men whose power pales in comparison to hers (consider someone like the narcissistic, self-centered, and misogynistic Duncan, but also the mentally and physically scarred troubled anatomist Godwin Baxter).
The key in unlocking her character lies in her complete indifference to others' opinions of hers: Bella doesn't care about what people think about her and this indifference not only enables her to reveal the vulnerabilities of the men she encounters, but also exposes something deeper - "the fear men have of women," as emphasized by Willem Dafoe, who plays Dr. Baxter. It's important to note that it's not only men who attempt to exert control over her, but also women like Swiney, the brothel's matron.
Bella's fashion and style choices play a pivotal role in asserting her dominance over the other characters. The hair, makeup, and prosthetics, crafted by Nadia Stacey (known for her work in "The Favourite" and "Cruella"), played a significant role in this transformation. Stacey observed that in Victorian England, long hair was considered a symbol of femininity and attraction to men.
However, women typically wore their hair up in public, only letting it down in the privacy of their homes. Stacey made a deliberate decision for Bella to never wear her hair up, particularly when she was in Lisbon, fully embracing her freedom and doing precisely as she pleased.
The film holds additional symbolic elements that viewers will gradually discover. Swiney, for example, consistently dons conservative attire with some surrealist touches like the hand-shaped brooch (View this photo) that seems to reference the wooden hand brooch featured in the catwalk in George Cukor's "The Women" (View this photo; there seems to be another reference to Cukor's film in Swiney's turban that evokes Sylvia's headdress with a rigid ribbon sticking out View this photo). However, beneath this modest exterior lies a hidden secret, inspired by the picture of a Victorian woman covered in tattoos - a revelation that adds depth and surprise to the character, akin to the layers of symbolism woven throughout the film.
The film's costume designer, Holly Waddington ("Lady Macbeth", "War Horse"), will probably be responsible for relaunching supersized leg-of-mutton sleeves.
While we've witnessed the resurgence of this style on runways over the years, Bella's costumes take it to another level. Waddington's design choices not only reflect Bella's transformation but also elevate these iconic sleeves into a contemporary fashion statement.
The sleeves of Bella's outfits expand indeed in tandem with her evolving mindset, filling the space typically occupied by male characters and symbolizing her social and sexual awakening.
At the film's outset, Bella is confined within the house and wears blouses reminiscent of the Victorian era, but she never wears a complete outfit, something that symbolically hints at the fact that she is still incomplete and imperfect.
As the story unfolds, her clothing becomes more elegant and refined, with a modern twist.
At one point, Bella seems to channel the aesthetic of a Prada or Miu Miu ad, donning long boots, knee-high socks, and a short coat. Accessories are also important in this film and they are often employed to create time clashes: the peep-toe boots, for example, reference André Courrèges. Late '60s-early '70s Space Age fashion provided a twist to the Victorian references in the film (the peep-toe boots would have never been allowed in the conservative Victorian society) and show how Bella is progressing towards freedom and how her freedom can't be contained.
There are further interesting symbols to discover behind her ensembles: when Bella sees the impoverished slum dwellers in Alexandria, she is wearing a formal outfit, underscoring the stark contrast with the destitution around her; Bella's wedding dress, as described by Stone, is instead "sheer and delicate, but also incredibly strong," serving as a metaphor for the nature of sex, where "vulnerability and confidence" coexist harmoniously.
Notably, the only instance in the film where Bella wears a restricting Victorian corset is when she returns to Alfie Blessington and dons a dress from her previous life as Victoria Blessington.
But the vivid costumes, fabrics and accessories, at times garish and extravagant, at others dark and almost poisonous (but so powerful to have turned into an inspiration also for Jerskin Fendrix's textured musical score...), aren't the only fashionable connection in the film: there were two production designers in this film, James Price and Shona Heath and the latter is well-known for her collaborations with renowned photographer Tim Walker.
Heath and Price created extremely detailed sets characterized by a wide range of references: art and film fans will note inspirations going from the satirical drawings of Albert Guillaume during the Belle Epoque era in Paris, to Federico Fellini, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Not everything was built (the sea behind the characters and the skies while on board of the ocean liner, for example, are LED screens), but, at the Origo Studios in Budapest, the production designers built instead multi-layered, epic and composite sets, going from the intricate worlds of London and Baxter's House (inspired by the fluid and open designs of architect John Soane) to the ocean liner ship, the Paris square and brothel and the Alexandria hotel and slums. For the city of Lisbon, they used the largest sound stage in continental Europe at Korda Studios in Budapest.
The colours are also very symbolical: early parts of the film are shot in black and white, but the most colourful scenes and the parts in which Bella's journey and her discoveries become more powerful were shot on ektachrome.
In July, many women held hopes of finding liberation through Greta Gerwig's "Barbie", only to be disillusioned by the blend of feminism and consumerism stamped with the approval of Mattel. Perhaps they will be vindicated by Emma Stone's portrayal of Bella.
In the film's production notes, Stone ponders, "What would a woman be, if she were able to start from scratch?" The film offers Bella and women in general another opportunity at life, a chance to potentially rediscover themselves both sexually and as complete human beings, free from the perpetual constraints imposed by society.
"Bella's representation of female sexuality is more in line with today's landscape rather than thirty years ago," Andrew Gray says. "She is able to explore sex without feelings of guilt, which makes her a modern heroine (...) I want audiences to understand that this is a political film, and recognize the feminist and socialist aspects. The endeavor of the novel and the film is to make the world a better place by not accepting the evils we have come to regard as normal."
"The story is so relevant today, maybe more so than when we started writing it," agrees McNamara. "The idea of patriarchy and of young women liberating themselves from being objectified has become so important in society. I hope that comes through."
It would have been a delightful sight to witness Gray alongside the film's director in Venice. Would he have opted for a formal tuxedo or would he have worn his usual humble uniform for which he was famous in Glasgow's West End where he lived? Who knows. And who knows what he would have said about the new life of Bella on the big screen rather than on the page.
As his artistic legacy endures, what's for sure, though, is that the intricately allegorical world of Lanark (for who among us is not afflicted by the same metaphorical maladies that plague Unthank?) will be the next adaptation for the big screen.
All images in this post courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. As the members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and of the Writers Guild of America (WGA; on strike since May) are still on strike in the USA and are therefore unable to promote the films they have worked on, the comments provided in this post are taken from the official Production Notes given to the press.
Comments