Poor Things wins big at BAFTAs despite ditching Scotland

By Kevin Maguire

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things took home awards for costume design, hair and makeup, production design, visual effects and best actress for Emma Stone.

Alasdair Gray’s novel which inspired the film is largely set in his hometown of Glasgow, yet it’s nowhere to be seen in the adaptation.

In its place is London and all of its Scots characters replaced by English accents with the exception of Willem Dafoe’s Godwyn Baxter: seemingly the characterisation of Gray’s creative impact on the story.

Gray sadly passed away in 2019, unable to see the adaptation however, the Alasdair Gray Archive remain to celebrate on the impact of his work.

Archive custodian Sorcha Dallas said: “I think Alasdair would have been upset that Glasgow didn’t feature in it.

“None of the places reffered to in the film were actually physically used in the making of it so I think it would have been quite easy to replace the name of London with Glasgow and there wouldn’t be any difference.

“Ireland is a small country operating on a global stage in terms of film production, they show that as a small independent country you can have that ambition globally.

“But Scotland isn’t an independent country and I think that’s at the heart of its absence in the film.

“Although equally the benefit from the loss of Glasgow is what Lanthimos has shown: the universality of Alasdair’s writing.”

While he may not have appreciated Glasgow’s absence in the film, Gray would have been happy to see his work in the hands of Lanthimos.

Dallas added: “We know Alasdair met with Yorgos Lanthimos back in 2011 and had really appreciated him as a unique visionary and I think he would have been really excited to see what he did with the Poor Things novel.

“What Lanthimos has done with this interpretation is show how Alasdair’s work can be adapted and used in different ways.

“I think he’d wholeheartedly approve of that because central to everything he made was the repurposing and reimagining of what came before.

“I also think that what Lanthimos has created in the film seems like a very collaborative, creative process, he really entrusts and empowers the other creatives in his team and that’s very much who Alasdair was too.

“He supported other people and they supported him too.”

Across the pond, Poor Things will be contending for 11 Oscars next month, including best adapted screenplay.

A win for that would be a win for Gray’s first adaptation: “Within his lifetime, several of his titles had been auctioned but never developed further into completed films.”

“I think this is one version of the film and I hope that there will be further interest and investment in it and his other works.”