Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things might be the best movie of the year. Please, for the love of God(win), do not watch it.
Let’s not mince words. I do not want you to watch Poor Things, I don’t care who you are. Yes, this is in spite of my assertion that this film is probably Yorgos Lanthimos’ best work yet — of course it wouldn’t be his previous film, The Favourite, then. Poor Things is sick. It’s deranged. It’s unkind and a blight upon the human condition and perhaps a direct insult toward Emma Stone’s agent. And no, this isn’t reverse psychology. Do not come to me saying you watched this film because I gave it a 9/10 and then complain about the outcome. This is not a film for people who want to sit back, relax, and unwind. Poor Things is very much, wholly anti-THAT. It’s also my Favourite.
If you do decide to watch this film and then write me off as a hack immediately after, just know that for my experience, I went into this knowing absolutely nothing about it except for the director, the lead talent, and the poster (of which I decidedly refused to inspect closely). I read nothing of Alasdair Gray’s eponymous 1992 novel of which Tony McNamara’s screenplay is based on, and for that matter, I have little clue what to even reveal about this film’s premise without angering the handful of you made of stern enough stuff to embrace this film’s unstoppable madness. Well, I have declared this a forbidden film, so I might as well fully commit and unpack it best I can.
“She’s an experiment.”
Poor Things is about a young woman finding personal liberation in a world ripped from BioShock Infinite‘s “Columbia” mixed with the dreadful body horror of BioShock‘s “Rapture,” but if David Cronenberg had directed both. For those of you outside of video game circles, the basic construct is a cursed blend of Frankenstein, The Odyssey, and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). Like I said, cursed.
Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, at first an infantile woman who acts erratically and nonsensically under the care of a deformed scientist she refers to as God/Godwin, portrayed by Willem Dafoe in easily his most sublime performance since Tommaso. Despite her eccentricities and perhaps because of her off-putting child-like demeanor, she attracts the attention of competing suitors, one of whom is an adventurous cad of a lawyer played by Mark Ruffalo, who whisks Bella away on a sexual journey in more ways than one.
Lanthimos’ style of filmmaking has always contained multitudes. There’s the side of the Greek director who can’t seem to decide for himself why people are the way they are. Or rather, why movies constantly put a glamor filter to the awkward, disgusting, and readily apparent nature of human beings. Maybe because movies are supposed to be an escape? Well the other side of Lanthimos is where that escape comes in. Through works like Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster, and more, Lanthimos imagines fantasy worlds where the rules are arbitrary, but the effects they have on society are all too real. It’s escape through realism, basically, and it’s what makes him the type of director cinephiles all over the world love to claim they understand. Guilty as charged.
“It is the goal of all to progress, grow.”
With Poor Things, he’s entered another realm of mystical monstrosities and exaggerated aesthetic without quite compromising his theoretical worldview, that the world is more interesting when we put words and images to the uncomfortable. The bizarre side effect is that this only makes Stone’s Bella all the more thrilling of a character when she inevitably comes into her own liberation. If she was a fireball of a performer in The Favourite, then Poor Things is her wildfire of femininity and feminism.
“A woman plotting her course to freedom.”
What Stone manages to pull off in Poor Things is the stuff of legends. The performance looks, sounds, and feels impossible, yet it’s also…life-affirming? It’s by far her best performance thus far and then some, where even the obvious criticisms somehow work in her favor. Like how at times this heightened imaginarium world tends to get away from Lanthimos, particularly when he decides to employ some of his more tired and perfunctory lens tricks that remind of how J.J. Abrams just couldn’t give up the ghost on that flare aesthetic for as long as he did. Whatever, at least Lanthimos uses it sparingly, since clearly it works for other people.
Anyway, 2023 might’ve been the year of Barbie, but in actuality, Poor Things is the macabre madhouse this year was made for. It’s just a shame the vast majority of the population can not, will not, and should not watch it. Assuming they can wrest the DVD away from me to get a glimpse at this poor, unfortunate soul.
Poor Things is now playing select theaters. Watch the trailer here.
Images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. Read more articles by Jon Negronihere.
REVIEW RATING
- Poor Things - 9/10
9/10
