Yahoo News How ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ Inspired Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, photographed by DP Robbie Ryan, received an enthusiastic ovation as it opened the 31st EnergaCamerimage cinematography film festival Nov. 11. A familiar face at the annual event and an Oscar nominee for Lanthimos’ The Favourite, Ryan used an inventive range of film stocks and lenses to support the absurdist story (an adaptation of the 1992 novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray) of Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone, who also produced), a Victorian woman brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist played by Willem Dafoe, and her journey toward liberation.
The approach to the cinematography took a cue from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. “[Poor Things] is very obviously artificial in many aspects,” Ryan explains. “[Dracula] leaned heavily on early cinema techniques like miniatures, processed backgrounds, false perspective and speeding up the camera, and loads of crazy lighting effects. Bram Stoker’s Dracula really enjoyed that madness. We definitely leaned toward how evocative that was.”
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Poor Things was lensed entirely on film, with early scenes appearing in black and white “so that when Bella goes on her journey, her world becomes colorful,” explains Ryan. About 30 percent of the movie was filmed with a 35mm Ektachrome stock that has been used on HBO’s Euphoria. “That’s a really beautiful stock. It’s very colorful, very contrasty,” says the DP, who adds of the lens choices: “Yorgos decided to elaborate on what we had done on The Favourite. Obviously there are still wide-angle lenses, but with this one, he wanted to do a few more zoom shots.”
In his review of the film, THR’s David Rooney noted that a “major wow factor of this lavishly appointed production is the eye-popping design work and dazzling craft contributions,” adding that “Robbie Ryan’s cinematography captures all this with an attention to color and light that’s magical.”
The film was shot in and around Budapest, Hungary, with the majority filmed on stages at Origo Studios and Korda Studios. Says Ryan, “All these sets are different cities, so for me [lighting] was a bigger challenge than The Favourite because The Favourite had no lights. We went from one extreme to the other, from no lights to a set with 600 lights. The logistics of it was something I hadn’t really done on a film set before.”
Ryan says he and Lanthimos enjoy a “fun” working relationship, describing the pair sitting in their office each day, chatting about the film. “He has so much knowledge as a cinematographer on his own, I always feel like I’m the schoolboy coming into the headmaster’s office,” Ryan says. “He’s very good at giving you freedom to do what you think is right until he thinks it’s wrong. And then he’ll tell you. It’s a really healthy collaboration. We have a lot of fun together and we both love celluloid, so we have a lot in common in that respect. It’s quite an enigmatic process working with Yorgis.”
This story first appeared in a November standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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