Based upon the novel Poor Things by Alasdair Grey
Screenplay Written by Tony McNamara
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
**** (four stars)
RATED R
This is why we go to the movies!!!!
Dear readers, of course we all understand that the movies are a form of escapism. A place to go to evade the pressures of life for at least 2 hours and fall into another world. But for me, as I have stated before upon this blogsite, at their absolute finest, the movies are unquestionably an art form in which a roomful of strangers can experience together, therefore, undertaking a shared journey directly into what could be considered as dreams due to their transportive nature combined with the imagery upon the silver screen. When a movie operates at its peak, the experience for me is the sort where I can almost forget that I am sitting inside of a movie theater and the film itself graduates from images conveyed through artistry and craftsmanship and becomes an experience that pulsates with life. The film exists as its own state of being.
Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things" is exactly the type of film that whisked me from reality into its own fantastical world while reflecting its orgiastic, propulsive vision back to our real world via a force that lifted me. It is an electric film starring a go-for-broke Emma Stone in her finest cinematic hour to date, it also represents Yorgos Lanthimos delivering his best work since the defiant, unforgiving satire and Orwellian surrealism of "The Lobster" (2016), itself a film I placed at #4 on my personal favorite films of the decade between 2010-2019. For me, "Poor Things" is not only equal to "The Lobster." It is not only 2023's top film. It is a work that sits in that rarefied air of Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert's "Everything Everywhere All At Once" (2022) as one of the best films of our current cinematic decade.
Set in Victorian London, Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things" weaves the tale of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), the adult appearing yet developmentally infantized ward of the disfigured surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Upon taking on an assistant in medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), Godwin--whom Bella refers to as "God"--reveals that Bella is the result of his medical experiments as she was formed by harvesting the body of an impregnated young woman who had committed suicide, replacing her adult brain with the brain of the unborn child and then, re-animating her.
The body of an adult woman powered by the gradually then rapidly developing brain of a child and further, Bella is studied by Max, who soon grows affection for her and wishes to marry her. While Bella accepts Max's proposal, she hungrily craves the freedom to explore and investigate the world beyond Godwin's mansion and grounds. Her desires are soon met by the arrival of attorney Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), with whom she has a tryst and soon abandons Dr. Godwin and Max and begins an odyssey that takes her across the continents and an evolution into her new self made existence socially, philosophically, intellectually, and sexually.
Untethered to a past she cannot remember and societal rules and norms that are in essence meaningless, Bella Baxter's journey from infancy to liberation is a cinematic feast in Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things." The production and audio visual landscape--presented superbly through Lanthimos's team including Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, Costume Designer Holly Waddington and Composer Jerskin Fendrix--suggests everything from the meticulousness of Wes Anderson films, the phantasmagorical surrealism of Terry Gilliam films combined with the art of Salvador Dali and Hieronymous Bosch and the clinical precision of Stanley Kubrick films while firmly extending the cinematic language developed by Lanthimos in past films, especially "The Lobster," which this film shares conceptual and thematic connective tissue.
Evoking Bella's world, which exists somewhere between dreams and the strands leading to the depths of nightmares, Lanthimos envisions his most rapturous and lushly presented landscape to date. I cannot stress enough, this is a HARD R rated film that is by turns grotesque, disturbing, occasionally gory, sexually graphic--dear readers, I cannot recall seeing a film this sexually extreme since Alfonso Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (2001)--and decidedly grim.
That being said, it is also quite often very funny and I am also surprised as to how joyously playful it is! Nothing ever feels labored and everyone looks to be having a blast while building and existing in this impossible world! And why not? Mark Ruffalo especially looks to be thrilled with being unleashed from the Marvel films for this stretch. Willem Dafoe extends far beyond what could have existed solely as a mad scientist role. From leading actors through supporting players, Yorgos Lanthimos is the filmmaker who treats his cast as they superlative gifts that they are and in turn gifts them with a story and characters they can run with.
As with Yorgos Lanthimos' past films, there cannot be anything tentative in a film like this. You will either go with its flow or you will not. There is no middle ground. With regards to the journey of "Poor Things," we are given something that is a blending of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (published 1818) and Voltaire's Candide (1759)--which itself birthed Christian Marquand's vulgar, picaresque sex fueled travails in the awful "Candy"(1968) and did indeed pop into my mind as I watched--and through its conceits, conceptions, inspirations and surrealisms, Lanthimos conjured up a veritable wave of a film experience to ride and he found a champion to lead the way in Emma Stone.
Emma Stone is a revelation, As Bella, she completely commits and delivers a fearless performance that is completely unfiltered or steeped in self conscious vanity or ego. Much like the film itself, Emma Stone is working in a state of being as Bella. I just didn't really see a performance, so to speak. As Bella, Emma Stone...simply...IS! For the first third of the film or so, during which Lanthimos presents in striking black and white cinematography, Bella is depicted as being in her infant/toddler/preschooler phase of life despite the adult female form she embodies. I instantly was taken aback by the sheer physicality of Stone's work as she truly appeared to be an infant from her facial expressions, vocalizations, and especially the movements of her limbs. Honestly, as someone who is surrounded by children every day in my real world role as a preschool teacher, Stone was pitch perfect! How she walked, tumbles, grabbed, ate and reacted to the world in which she is learning...for the second time, unbeknownst to her initially.
And certainly, that is the key to the character...the way in. How would she--or all of us, for that matter--interact with an existence that we do not and could not know? Emma Stone's brilliance is that she not only richly depicts how Bella is engaging the world she is investigating, her ability to transfer that feeling to us int he audience is paramount, for then, we are firmly inside of Bella's experiences, giving us the ability to potentially remember or to reflect or to even imagine what was this feeling like for the very first time.
When Bella masturbates for the first time, thus unlocking a sexual awakening and curiosity, that first moment...honestly, it almost felt as if Emma Stone was making that discovery for herself as authentically as she rendered the emotions! While this moment leads itself to hysterical sequences, we are also walking through the door with Bella to a rediscovering of her own womanhood ad complete self, which then gives the film progressively deeper layers of poignancy, pathos and even a moral rage at the world in which Bella--and all women--exist. But...most importantly, a world that Bella does not remember and so, it possesses no meaning.
With the exception of perhaps the kindly Max, the men in the world of "Poor Things" all exist to attempt to mold Bella Baxter into whichever image they happen to deem and often to unsuccessful effect. For if the world is wholly anew to Bella, and she is operating as a child, Bella's world view exists completely through her own desires. If she wants it, then so be it. If she doesn't, also so be it. She is completely of her own mind and it is unchanged, even as it develops and expands with knowledge of the world as it works and how it exists through its unfairness, inequalities and horrors.
Bella Baxter's formidable qualities are forged through her untainted innocence which becomes the world's upending sense of anarchy as she is unable of being manipulated or controlled and again, Emma Stone's outstanding work showcases this character at every developmental stage (which I am still marveling at how she pulled this feat off--as I am certain the film was shot out of sequence per the norm).
All of this being stated, this does lead to what I am certain would be a powerful debate between viewers, especially within a 2023 where we live in a country where women are not allowed to have full agency over their own bodies. For what does it have to take to have that agency...to be free? How should we feel about Bella's pilgrimage or sense of liberation? Is it liberation if a woman needs to live, commit suicide and be re-animated with the mind of a baby to experience the world all over again to finally claim the agency she should morally possess at birth? It is impossible for one film to contain an actual answer to that question but it is presented and it exists for us to question and debate as we drink up every moment that Yorgos Lanthimos elicits.
And again, this is exactly what the movies are for!!! Not disposable, forgettable visual baubles to never fully digest. Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things" takes the eternal coming of age story yet injects a creepiness that bridges Grimm's fairy tales to body horror and still emerges through to the other side with a life affirming vibrancy and vivaciousness that celebrates the sense of discovery that is inherent with living life.
There is nothing here that is disposable or remotely forgettable. Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things" is grand, exhilarating, rapturous cinema.
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