Seen The Lobster? I have not. Seen Killing of a Sacred Deer? Neither far-sighted nor near! But I have seen The Favourite, where I infamously (at least in my mind) overlooked Olivia Colman’s performance in lieu of Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, although I am grateful for Colman’s subsequent rise. But I hope that going into this movie without director Yorgos Lanthimos’s entire catalogue by my side doesn’t interfere with an analysis, if there’s a certain signature or tone that flourishes, and I’m left by the wayside unable to discern a pattern. It may sound crazy, but it can happen – like starting Seinfeld at season 4, and getting flummoxed by how a neighbour can get an audience ovation just for walking through a door. Anyway, Poor Things has received acclaim, and award nominations, with Emma Stone only just winning the Golden Globe for her lead performance, so with all that said, the movie should transfer universally, I imagine. Ah, the things I worry about.
Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) is a disfigured biological scientist who salvaged a heavily pregnant woman out of the water as she wished to dash herself away. Since ‘God’ is heavily experimental, God decided to fulfil the mother’s wishes, but cut out the baby to put its brain in place of the mother’s, to produce the findings. Later, God hires a student to track the experiment’s progress as she moves from feeble adult infant, to young woman, at an accelerated rate, before the creation, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), implores to explore a life of her own, fueled mostly by the joys of the bump between her legs.
Well, 2024 hasn’t started me off with something breezy. Poor Things, although lurid and whimsy, is chock full of big ideas, headed by an emboldened Bella Baxter, making her own sense of the world. At 142 minutes, I really felt the runtime. Also, seeing Emma Stone in the altogether for around a quarter of the movie should’ve been more titillating that it ends up being. Poor Things is a visual sensation, and it’s remarkable in how the gothic realism presented by this movie is a mere backdrop to the larger coming-of-age story at play. The only time the designed absurdity really creeps over into the plot in a meaningful way is with Dr. Godwin’s bubble function, and still, the movie really doesn’t do anything with it. The script is often funny and pointedly written, but it took me a while to put my finger on an explanation as to why this movie, with all the hallmarks of a masterpiece, didn’t have me explicitly excited, and I found an answer in a lacking of love. Once I came to that conclusion, it was easy to see a comparison to David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie also about another of God’s unusual creatures finding their way with wide eyes, and yet, that movie is filled to the brim with love, as it forms its axiom. Poor Things divergently endeavours to be about freedom – the freedom of pleasure, and experience of life without cages, which is not nothing. Admittedly, and I must be clear that this movie is directed by a man, and written by a man, but it also holds a very firm feminist perspective. And I’m here for these movies that want to explore womanhood and its journey, but we’ve had two now, with Barbie the other in mind, that choose to sweep love aside like a Zamboni, like it’s insignificant in the scheme of life, and it’s all very weird… Hey, if that’s what women want their movies to be about today, now that a woman’s voice in film is sharper than ever, then that’s for me to accept, but it’s a surprise when it wasn’t that long ago, prominent actresses and beloved filmmakers, made profit and filled cinemas, with so-called chick flicks and romance, so where has that gone so quickly?
I ultimately enjoyed Poor Things for what it is; I’m just not wild on the movie’s implications, that I might describe as short-sighted or uncalculatable. For all the movie’s play, I don’t think Poor Things holds a wider viewpoint on marriage, but only presents at least two options that are horrible. Bella’s ex-husband is clearly insane, toxic, and Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) is a clever rendition of a pompous lover we’re happy to watch cop his comeuppance. But the lead observer is also a dweeb, who, if he’d had fucked Bella the moment she wanted it, unencumbered by the constraints of now-outdated societal practices and whatnot, then maybe he might’ve halted the whole story, keeping Bella contented, and from her wild adventure. Marriage is never argued as a poor institution, only that poor examples are an obvious prison – and even when Bella tells Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) later that she will accept his ‘practical’ proposal, it’s hard to argue with her evaluation based on her experiences, especially after Duncan was so passionate in his desires, despite his flaws. But there’s got to be something in between these examples of man – one who gropes a woman between the legs as they just meet, and a man who foregoes a woman gagging for it because he follows haggard protocols – but the movie ignores the middle-ground if one is supposed to make wider inference. The same can be said of Poor Thing’s perceivably flimsy comment on socialism – as even while Bella learns of the immense suffering of the poor, and then gives away money that isn’t hers, nothing practical is mentioned of it again, apart from considering herself a willing socialist, with no explanation of how that would be/is a remedy. And another thing – I’ve seen shows and movies touch on prostitution before, like Secret Diary of a Call Girl and even Game of Thrones, and approach it from an angle that within the seediness, there is a tangible humanity, self-assurance and even charity, and I don’t doubt that; but to approach prostitution so matter-of-factly, as a means of production, is something completely new to me, and I wonder if it’s an attitude born out of normalising an OnlyFans culture. But once again, even for all my philosophical gripes, I can’t be the one to deny that Poor Things is invigorating. As I left the cinema, ‘Steer’ by Missy Higgins came on the radio, and I adore that song, about finding freedom outside societal constraints and feelings of inadequacy, and isn’t this movie trying to say the same thing? The movie employs a frame of reference in how we are willing to accept uncaring in a scientific experiment, and isn’t Bella simply aiming to approach unfiltered feeling as if it were one of her father’s experiments? And I see value in that. Although, still, what’s funny to me is that I feel like the good message from society for years has been for men not to think with their dicks, and well, Bella does nothing but think with her clit, and by extension, all things being equal, this male’s perspective sees Poor Things as an invitation for men to think with their dicks again. I’d think of Lisbeth from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – a David Fincher movie again – as a much better example of one embracing her sexuality and femininity, although I suppose massive defenders of Poor Things could dismiss this notion by arguing Lisbeth is still too fettered by being stoic.
Emma Stone is also not an actress I’m crazy about – I think she’s good, solid, but there’s probably about twenty actresses ahead of her that I look forward to seeing more, whether it be due to what they’ve made in the past, or just their manner in general, and maybe that had something to do with my level of engagement with Poor Things too. This is certainly the role for Emma Stone that has been her “biggest”, out of what I’ve seen anyway, and with award season in mind, I have to think further on whether I admire something like Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer more, or Emma Stone here, for quality connection over quantity 🤔 But I always love how Willem Dafoe is the best “most prominent” actor of the day – you need a bloke to fill ANY hole in your movie, then he’s the most enthusiastic out there, and he’s perennially fantastic. I personally thought Mark Ruffalo persona may’ve slipped once or twice as the raunchy Englishman with a stiff upper lip, but he’s certainly having fun, isn’t he? 😎 And I was particularly engaged by his one dance number with Stone. I’m also truly glad that Kathryn Hunter has been put to good use in another role after she was astounding in The Tragedy of Macbeth.
The nature of Poor Things is reminiscent of The Addams Family as well, but what I’ve always loved about the Addams Family is that although they hold different interests and pleasures, they’re always grounded by a passion for family that is like no other, and therein lies the heart. Poor Things has little heart, but is about freedom, and hedonism, and it manufactures what it wants to say extremely well. I don’t know whether my brain is short-circuiting at the ideas of this movie because it presents a radical new way, and I’m too engrained in the old, or if this movie’s attitudes are hogwash; manipulating, and haven’t been followed down to their own logical implosions. I started the year in 2022, quite affronted by Steven Spielberg’s lame interpretation of West Side Story, and whilst I’m not personally aligned with a lot of this movie’s wider messaging either, as a movie, and one story of a woman’s bizarre journey and discoveries, Poor Things is still fascinating. It’s rich in theme and conversational points, and whilst it won’t be one of my favourites, I can still admire its boldness and originality, at a distance.
4.0
P.S. I recognise it may be a nitpick, but I also thought the constant world-play concerning ‘God’s’ name as the creator, was petty, and beneath the quality of the rest of the movie, honestly – although, it’s really only prominent in the beginning. And where else can you go to see a depiction of a child’s brain inside a woman’s body, and happily discover that I felt sick at the thought of Max being attracted to Bella in infancy. Mind over body FTW, even though Emma Stone still looks phenomenal at 35; of course, she does.
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