19/03/2024
Holding nuanced and complex thoughts and feelings is often a challenge. People seek validation externally as the discomfort of "not knowing" becomes too hard to bear. At a time when information is a few clicks away, attentions spans shrinking and gratification harder to resist, we have to choose. This creates polarisation and a tendency to see the world in black or white. Our ability to hold complexity and nuance is therefore reduced.
Things are hardly ever black or white. They are always more complex and nuanced than that. And I believe that we need to practice and re-learn "not knowing", to have a more compassionate response to this world we live in.
This is what I felt the film Poor Things made me do to some extent.
Poor Things has had a big success in awards season, including best actress Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA to Emma Stone, and further awards to special effects, costume design and production design among others. The film also enjoyed an enthusiastic critical response. It was called a "Virtuoso comic epic" by the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, and "visually sumptuous and gleefully clever" by Manohla Dargis of the NYT. In this article I share my thoughts about this film which I found cinematically intriguing, but thematically confusing.
You can read my full blog post by clicking here:
https://www.rskcoaching.com/post/through-the-coaching-lens-poor-things
Feel free to share and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Ruth
(Illustration by Evie Fridel)