While watching Poor Things, I couldn’t help but think: “There’s no reason every movie shouldn’t look like this.”
Obviously, that’s a stupid thing to think because there are a million reasons mostmoviesdon’t. For one, director Yorgos Lanthimos' comedy is going for something incredibly specific. It’s an adult fairy tale, and the production design, score, and cinematography — whether in gorgeous black-and-white or saturated pastel color — all work toward making it feel like it takes place in a world that has many of the same hallmarks as ours, but with a completely different energy. There’s also the fact that most directors in 2023 can’t get $35 million to make a two-and-a-half hour R-rated steampunk Frankenstein movie that doesn’t just feature sexual content and nudity, but whose story revolves around it. It’s a unique story that needs to look a particular way.
Poor Things marks the third collaboration between Lanthimos and Emma Stone, following The Favourite and the short film, Bleat. Their fourth collaboration, Kind of Kindness, is currently in post-production.
Still, there are aspects of its execution that should just be the way things are done. The production design combines real sets with CGI augmentation. When Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter and Mark Ruffalo’s Duncan Wedderburn are at sea on a cruise ship, for example, the ship is a practical set but the sky beyond it is a unique otherworldly color. Though this was achieved through modern means, old films used rear projection and matte paintings to achieve a similar effect.
Another reason Poor Things looks so good is that Lanthimos made the decision to shoot on film, and worked with Kodak to use the company’s Ektachrome stock for the first time since its reintroduction in 2021.
For amateur and independent filmmakers, shooting on film is often ideal, but out of reach. For the majority of cinema’s history, movies were shot on film. But the industry began to switch from film to digital in the 2000s, and digital became the default choice for the vast majority of productions from the 2010s on because it’s cheaper, more efficient, and much easier to work with.
That switch has been helpful for democratizing the process for young filmmakers. When you have a tiny budget, or no budget at all, shooting digitally is more achievable. You don’t need to pay for film stock and you don’t need to pay to develop it. You just need to buy an SD card, and shooting additional footage doesn’t cost anything except storage space and time. Every second you’re shooting on film, money you can’t get back is running through the camera.
It’s a shame that digital is easier to use, because film tends to look a whole lot better. The look tends to be softer and higher in contrast, with greater distinction between the parts of the frame that are in direct light, and the parts that aren’t. Digital sensors are more sensitive to light than film stock, so you’re able to still get a usable image even if you’re shooting in low light. It’s a major contributor to why the night scenes in shows like House of the Dragon look so dark.
But, most Hollywood films aren’t shot on the cheap, and for, say,Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which had a $300 million budget, opting to shoot on film instead of digital would be equivalent to a rounding error. But the same is true for more modestly budgeted movies, too.
On theOctober 27 episode of The Big Picture podcast, filmmaker Alex Ross Perry talked about the difficulty of convincing executives to spend money on artistic choices that aren’t strictly necessary.
“Even when you’re talking about budgets of $20, $40, $100 million on a movie or on a series, they want to cut every corner,” Perry said. “They want to save pennies on a $50 million budget. And you and I might think that’s insane, and for them it’s like, ‘Why would we have four writers if we can have three? That’s $65,000 less we have to spend.’ And it’s like, ‘On a $50 million series? Who cares?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, yeah, everything counts.’ The sort of greed and corner cutting can not be overstated.”
Perry is best known for his 2018 feature, Her Smell, which starred Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale’s Elisabeth Moss.
This led into a discussion about his own experience trying to win the battle to shoot on film for a $25 million dollar movie (that he didn’t end up making).
“They did the numbers and they were like, ‘That will add $250,000 to the budget.’ And I was like, ‘Well, this is great news. That’s one percent of the budget. We’re golden.’ And they were like, ‘No, no we can’t add $250,000, we’re already trying to cut.’ And I was like, ‘Well, then cut from somewhere else.’ And they were just like, ‘We can’t add one percent.’ And I was like, ‘But this is the artistic choice that must happen. It’s the only way to do this. It’s the only way this is worth doing.’ And they wouldn’t even have a conversation about adding one percent.”
Though there are filmmakers who much prefer working on digital, and do interesting things with the medium — Michael Mann and David Fincher are two examples — many (if not most) prefer the look of film. But, it’s cheaper and quicker to shoot on digital which, for many executives, settles that matter. Filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos, who have scored box office success and Oscar nominations, have the clout to shoot on film, but it isn’t always available for others.
It should be. This year, Hollywood has seen several high profile bombs that struggled at the box office in large part because of how much they cost to make. The era of big-budget movies that seems to be ending has been defined primarily by executive control. I hope the next era is defined (at least, to a greater degree) by artistic choice instead of corner cutting. With Poor Things, Lanthimos uses a combination of modern technology and old school techniques to create a film that feels fantastical and tactile at the same time. It’s a movie that prioritizes artistic choice over penny pinching and it’s all the better for it.
