What was the last internationally award winning, multi Oscar nominated film that addressed head on the issue of Original Sin?
It seems to me that Yorgos Lanthimos’ film of ‘Poor Things’ offers us fresh perspectives on an unfallen Eve, living without ‘Original Sin’.
This review assumes knowledge of the film, and so does not outline the plot or avoid ‘spoilers’, unlike my earlier review written after my first viewing. I have now seen Poor Things three times in cinemas, and each time I wanted to stand up and cheer at the end. I wish I had been wearing my clerical garb. ‘Witness!’ as some say.
Like the Biblical Eve Bella is born, or created, in a fully formed human body, which happens to be female, but she has no knowledge or experience. This aspect of Eve in Genesis does not seem to attract much attention in Bible studies, , but it is central for Bella. She has a child’s mind in an adult body. Like Eve her Creator has provided a safe place to live and learn, though they are very different Edens. What Biblical Eve learns is Forbidden Knowledge. She becomes ashamed of her God given sexuality, and is cast out of her Eden as a punishment. Bella, on the other hand, demands to leave, so that she can learn and grow. She has discovered one pleasurable aspect of sex, but suspects there is so much more to learn, and she does so without guilt of shame. She may have a tempting serpent, Duncan, and she knows he is dangerous, but believes that knowledge is worth a risk. Her Father, Godwin, God Win, taught her this, with his account of her parents lives and death. He knew this story was not true, but obviously believed it to be ‘truthful’, like any worthwhile myth or parable. Bella also knows that whatever boundaries she pushes through in pursuit of knowledge she will not risk losing her father’s love. She will not be cast out and punished. When she demands to be free to leave her home, her Eden, she does not know what sin and evil are. That knowledge, which many theologians call blessed, will come later.
In fact it seems that she knows something that the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel did not – that her Father/God will not only forgive her, but does not believe she needs forgiveness. As has often been said, but rarely is seems believed, ‘Nothing you can do will make God love you more – and nothing you can do will make God love you less’. Bella does believe this.
Evil is not forbidden to Bella.
Godwin, however is not her real father. She is the child of Victoria and Alfie Blessington, even though she inhabits Victoria’s body, and they were two very unpleasant people, drawn together by their love of cruelty. But Bella is not cruel, even though she is born with the natural uneducated cruelty of a child, a being without empathy. Empathy has to be learnt, and Bella does learn it in Alexandria where she is exposed to the actual human costs of her privilege, and is moved to tears by it, devastated, and immediately gives away any monies she can lay her hands on. It does not occur to her that Duncan, whose winnings she is donating, would object. What other response could any properly responsible human being have.
There are shades here of The Karamazov Brothers, and Ursula Le Guin’s story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, telling of the scapegoats who pay the price for our sins, our refusal to be properly responsible human beings.
"The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat’, wrote Le Guin, ‘turns up in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and several people have asked me, rather suspiciously, why I gave the credit to William James. The fact is…I'd simply forgotten he used the idea. But when I met it in James' 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life', it was with a shock of recognition."
The quote from William James is:
“… if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a sceptical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”
In Alexandria Bella is devastated by this revelation and it maybe the last step towards the full ‘height and depth and breadth’ of her becoming fully human, and humane. This is why she decides to become a Doctor, following her Father’s example. But/and, is Bella a Christ figure? I have mentioned Eve, but does she also suggest a New Adam? An ‘unfallen’ Adam. If Bella is n unfallen Eve then does her gender matter? Jesus, of course, offers us a much richer, complex, compelling and human figure than Adam. If that idea is shocking then maybe we should remember how shocking Jesus was, indeed his Gospel was scandalous one, scandalous in the way that Paul said was a stone that might trip many people up, and by doing so offer them a new perspective. I remember when the idea that McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest could be a Christ figure was either unaddressed or rejected. He was after all convicted of Statutory Rape, now more often called Child Sexual Abuse. Is Child Sexual Abuse the closest crime we have to 1st century blasphemy? Some certainly respond to it with a murderous rage.
I am not suggesting that either Ken Kesey or Milos Foreman intended One Flew Over as a Passion narrative, but the parallels are interesting. As I wrote in my film blog (revbobsblog.blogspot) many years ago, A man comes into the world of the asylum, filled with people imprisoned internally and externally, dumb, crippled, damaged, frightened, dependent, depressed and controlled by the 'carers' in charge. He gives them respect, hope, stimulus, autonomy - he even gets the dumb to speak. He leads patients out into the real world, where they are taken to be doctors and psychiatrists; takes them fishing; allows them to be free, if only for a while, from their dominators and definers. The powers that-be turn on him. Billy betrays him, and then - when the Pharisees exert pressure, Billy kills himself. McMurphy is destroyed (his body remains but his spirit is gone) but the big man moves the stone and breaks out into new life. The spirit of McMurphy lives in him.
Neither Alastair Grey’s book nor Yorgos Lanthimos’ film of ‘Poor Things’ is a theological tract. Godwin Baxter is not God – save for his ‘miraculous Creativity’ and unexceptional forgivingness. Duncan is not a serpent. He tells Bella he is dangerous, but in fact it is he who is almost destroyed by Bella. Max is not Adam, unless he too is blessed by Bella’s experience. In the film he learns how to be human through his love for Bella, and joins her in their real Eden, an Eden that even includes the once brutal Alastair. Even if Alastair has been ‘improved’ somewhat there is no indication that he is unhappy – and I think his fate is more of a joke than a moral lessen. It certainly made me laugh.
Alastair Grey once wrote that “My stories try to seduce the reader by disguising themselves as sensational entertainment, but are propaganda for democratic welfare-state Socialism and an independent Scottish parliament. My jacket designs and illustrations—especially the erotic ones—are designed with the same high purpose.” Contemporary Novelists (1996). There is not much about Scottish Independence in the film, and Socialism hardly gets a look in, but as Emma Stone has said "It's such a fairy tale, and a metaphor—clearly, this can't actually happen—but the idea that you could start anew as a woman, as this body that's already formed, and see everything for the first time and try to understand the nature of sexuality, or power, or money or choice, the ability to make choices and live by your own rules and not society's—I thought that was a really fascinating world to go into."
Stone especially appreciated Bella's lack of shame in regards to her experiences. She was the most joyous character in the world to play, because she has no shame about anything. She's new, you know? I've never had to build a character before that didn't have things that had happened to them or had been put on them by society throughout their lives. It was an extremely freeing experience to be her”.
We may have different ideas about freedom and morality, and even those of us who do not subscribe to the idea of the Original Sin, as projected by Augustine onto Eve, have still lived under its theological shadow and societal influence. It is rather like knowing at a profound level that God is not male, but still finding it hard to shake of the engendered imagery and language. This makes Bella a properly shocking creation – even to those who welcome her.
Among the richly implied references in this story - including Pilgrim’s Progress and Candide - Bella is not Frankenstein’s Creature. Even though we meet Bella in a state of Original Innocence; is the creation of a human surgeon; embarks on an educational odyssey; Bella is not like Mary Shelley’s tragic creation. Shelley’s Creature is left in the Arctic wastes. Bella’s journey eventually takes her home. Frankenstein’s Creature was wretchedly unloved by his Creator. Bella is obviously loved by hers. That is her precious heritage, She is beautiful, not ugly, and formed completely from her own flesh, not ‘spare parts’.
After the revelation in Alexandria Bella is overwhelmed by misery, but she does not become a ‘miserable sinner’. She is not moved by guilt but by compassion. In a Lutheran sense she become a more ‘bold sinner’, or as I would say, cheerful sinner, and eventually decides to become a Doctor. Even her attitude to her ‘clients’ in the Parisian brothel seems to be one of curious and compassionate ‘giving’, not seeking her own satisfaction but pursuing her own education in humanity by meeting their differing needs. She even suggests to Swiney that her visitors might enjoy their time in the brothel more of they were chosen by the girls rather than choosing them themselves.
I believe that Augustine’s ‘sin’ was his own, not Eve’s. His lustful past and ongoing sexual fantasies lay in his own heart and soul, not in those of some mythical Eve, but Augustine was not a psyche-ologist (a student of the soul) like Eusebius, even if he did understand the effectiveness of aversion therapy, plunging naked (we are told) into a bed of nettle when tortured by his erotic visions. Happily there is none of Augustine’s Manichaeanism in Bella’s view of herself, and nothing Marcionite about her view of Godwin. For me the implicit theology of Poor Things is about Divine Unity, not Duality.
One obviously scapegoated sin today is not the driving an EV or using a Smartphone, articles that include rare metals often mined by children in landscapes as poisonous as those of Hunt’s Scapegoat, but is in refusing to ‘know’ what we do really know – that “Cobalt is a type of metal commonly used in lithium-ion batteries. The DMC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is the leading mecca for cobalt production as the nation holds more than 50% of the global cobalt reserves. The excavation fields are mostly small artisanal mines, often lacking resources and protective equipment, such as gloves and masks, necessary for safer mining activities. Due to poverty rates in the country, child labor is common in mining and other sectors.” (The Borgen Project). I do not think Bella would turn a blind eye to that, or to so many other ways in which we ignore the true human cost of life-styles we accept as natural.
No doubt some folk will be scandalised by this films frank sexual scenes. Quite right, the whole film is scandalous, in the original sense of being a tripping stone. Saint Paul described the Gospel of Christ as scandalous, it should upset us, trip us up, let us see every thing from a fresh perspective, most especially our ideas about God, Sin, guilt and what it means to be human. I think this film does these things.
Godwin asks Max if he would “rather the World did not have Bella in it.”
I am glad it does.
