The movie Emma Stone calls “perfect”
As this year’s edition of the Oscars approaches, one of the biggest names on anybody’s mind is Emma Stone. While she has previously received acclaim for her work in films such as Birdman and La La Land, Stone has delivered what is now widely referred to as the greatest performance of her career in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things.
Having previously collaborated with Lanthimos on The Favourite, Stone was fantastic as the complex and nuanced Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Stepping up to the challenge of playing an infantile woman who slowly grows into her own body after an experimental brain surgery, the Superbad actor demonstrated that she has the versatility and skills to tackle all kinds of projects.
Adapted from Alasdair Gray’s eponymous novel, Lanthimos’ latest feature is a layered tragicomedy that explores what it means to come to terms with the atrocities and the wonders of the world we live in. Both the film and Stone are clear frontrunners when it comes to the Oscar races, having already garnered a multitude of accolades in the festival circuit.
As fans catch up on this year’s Oscar selections, many will be left wondering about the influences that shaped Stone’s approach to acting. While parallels to movies such as Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser are self-evident, there are some films that stay firmly embedded in Stone’s mind, irrespective of the project she’s working on.
During a conversation with Vogue, the celebrated actor opened up about the kind of narratives that always manage to attract her, when it comes to books or movies. Emphasising the importance of interesting characters, Stone said: “I really like simple stories with great characters and not a lot of plot and heavy lifting. I feel that way with films, too.”
When asked about the movie that “shaped” her, the actor replied: “Oh God, I’m trying to think of ones I haven’t talked about extensively – but I think it’s going to have to be Network again. In the same way ‘Where Do The Children Play’ is the perfect song, I think it’s kind of the perfect movie. The way it’s directed, the way it’s written, that script, Faye Dunaway’s performance – it’s literally everything.”
Network is definitely as close to a perfect movie as it can get, featuring Sidney Lumet’s terrifying prophecy about the future of media frameworks based on Paddy Chayefsky’s sublime screenplay. Anticipating the politics of outrage and increasingly voyeuristic tendencies of modern audiences who are seeking to consume rather than understand, Lumet’s 1976 opus is undoubtedly one of the defining films of the decade.
Watch the trailer below.
