General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Am I the only one who wasn't impressed with Best Actress? [View all]Happy Hoosier
(7,482 posts)I won't go into plot details here, but there are some spoilers that follow, so be warned.
1) The film is about a woman in a patriarchal society trying assert agency. This world is fantastical, and this facilitates the movie's narrative.
2) Bella is something of "Frankenstein's monster." She is a creation, but also a person, and it's no mistake that she is a woman, initially with a child's mind, created by a man to vaguely to serve a man's interests.
3) The "Frankenstein" character (DeFoe) is actually interesting. He's initially portrayed as this emotionless man who disregards Bell's personhood.... but that chages. He turns out to be rather more interesting than that.
4) Bella's initial search for agency is, almost stereotypically, sexual. And a lot of people stop right there. But the film is way more complicated than that. Bella learns that sexual desire and acting on sexual desire are not the same as actually having agency. Mark Ruffalo's charter is key here. He initially takes advantage of Bella's sexual desires, but is ultimately fristrated that he can't control her... he can't posess her.
5) But she struggles to find genuine agency free from patriarchal ownership. This part of the movie is pretty hard to watch for some folks. As a warning, it's pretty sexually explicit (furious jumping!!), and it IS a little voyeuristic, but not gratuitously so. Some of the discomfort is entirely intentional, IMO. The audience is meant to feel complicit.
6) The film has a pretty satisfying end, IMO.
7) Stone's performance is remarkable, and she definitely deserved the Oscar, IMO.