Poor Things (2023)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Stars: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef
Short Review, no spoilers
Who needs Barbie when you have Bella Baxter? Both are
artificially constructed and both enter the ‘real’ world baffled by societal
restrictions upon their femininity, but these two icons of empowerment differ
wildly in their approach – while Barbie lapses in to existential crisis, Bella
launches in to her circumstances with unapologetic lack of restraint. Emma
Stone’s character is also a lot more fun and adult as a saucy and generally badly
behaved Frankenstein’s monster in Yorgos Lanthimos’ version of Alasdair Gray’s
novel. A well-cast and excellently performed, bawdy slice of artful
eccentricity, Poor Things sits in arch light relief amongst its rivals for awards
glory and deserves success.
Full Review (spoilers)
One of the most delightful aspects of Poor Things is it’s address
to corporeality through both science and humour, which perhaps surprisingly
helps us to view the human more humanely. Dr Godwin Baxter has salvaged a
suicide victim from the river in to which she plunged herself and reanimated
her using the brain of her unborn child. As dastardly as this sounds it is all
part of a tenderly, objectively administered experiment, the results of which
we bear witness to as the film unfolds. Opening in the household of the doctor
and his ward, we see a tall and gothically attractive young woman with the mind
of a child who is boisterous and unpredictable but nevertheless tended to with
patience by the man himself as well as a housekeeper. Invited in to the fold is
a young medical student to make notes on Bella’s progress while the busy doctor
continues his day job, however Bella is rapidly growing from toddler state
(disturbingly playful stabby stabby games in the doctor’s autopsy room) to an
id-happy one - sexually aware, cognitively demanding and desperate to see more
than the inside walls of the doctor’s house. In response, Dr Godwin decides
that the average but kindly student Max can marry her as long as she stays
behind closed doors, however the lawyer employed to draw up the contract is Super-Cad,
Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who immediately explores his sleazy curiosity
by finding Bella in the house and poking her between the legs.
Again, the mad scientist who gave birth to all of this –
affectionately called ‘God’ by Bella – proves himself to be less the control
freak we may have expected when he reluctantly but reasonably allows Bella to
leave. Henceforth an adventure in Lisbon with her equally randy accomplice – apparently
though as Bella actually proves to be less vulnerable than expected and way too
much for this notorious lover and leaver. Pushing Wedderburn’s limits beyond
what he thought was controversial and leaving him as consternated as those he
had used and abused himself, Bella enjoys and explores and Wedderburn loses his
mind. There’s a dance scene during which Bella’s typical abandon matches
weirdly and wonderfully with Wedderburn’s desperate attempts to temper it,
resulting in a chaotically compelling display.
To his horror, Wedderburn finds himself besotted with Bella
and the next man to try to imprison her. However, suit-casing her on to a
cruise ship and trying to sell it as just the next step on the adventure she
had so much wanted to embark upon, Bella is not fooled but disgruntled and
instead finds expansion through philosophical thought from a couple of
bohemians on board. This is also where she is first introduced to the concept
of societal suffering, as the more cynical of these new companions literally shows
her (from a distance) extreme poverty as it is playing out below the decadence
of the upper decks. Bella cries and promptly sends Wedderburn’s gambling
winnings to the dying babies via a couple of sly cruise staff who steal it and
ensure Bella and Wedderburn’s removal from the ship. Next is Bella’s dalliance
with prostitution to enjoy her favourite thing and sustain herself financially –
sex?! and have money to survive?! Oh joy, who knew life could be so
easy. Extra-curricular activities are ‘socialism’, a satisfying lesbian
partner, and the last straw in Wedderburn’s dedication to the woman he has
become infatuated with. She spits ever more poshly and verbosely in his face,
and he ends up in a padded cell.
Meanwhile back home, dear old God is missing his wantaway
daughter but attempts to scientifically assuage his pain by making a new one.
She is much more lacking however, and God’s cancer that Max offers to cut out
is too far gone – a genuinely tragic acknowledgement that is as poignant as it
is matter of fact from this emphatic man of science. Word is sent to Bella and
the homecoming to ‘Father’ and betrothed would seem to wrap things up, but … up
turns husband of the woman Bella was before she was reanimated, a sociopathic
military general who enjoyed a life with his wife as well as random cruelty
wherever he could direct it, mostly at the end of a pistol to servants etc.
Interestingly, Bella decides to leave Max at the altar and give life with Alfie
Blessington a go, where she learns of a miserable existence which likely
provoked her vessel’s desire to end itself, along with the child she carried. Strangely,
she tells her ‘husband’ all about God’s experiment without pointing out that
reigniting marital relations with him would result in a form of incest – she
inhabits the body of Alfie’s wife but has grown through the brain of their
child – you might have thought this would put an end to things instantly.
Nevertheless, she succeeds in putting a bullet in Alfie’s foot and making good
her escape with the assistance of Max, also instructing him to patch Alfie up
and make him in to a new addition to her beloved God’s surgically spliced
animal menagerie.
A sadly happy ending there is indeed, whereby Bella and Max
embrace God and lovingly see him in to death, and Bella accepts Max as her
husband through her own will. On top of this, Max supports her in becoming a
surgeon as they exist happily in the curious domain built by God.
The production is visceral and pretty, and the soundtrack of
very special note. Performances all round are wonderful, including sound
confirmation of the underrated Willem Dafoe as an immensely versatile actor
dedicated entirely and admirably to the beauty of film acting.
One complaint is the invasion of political nervousness when
it comes to race and the characterisation of Bella – I couldn’t help but notice
her lack of reaction to what would seem to be her first encounter with a person
of non-white skin colour. Sadly, it would appear that the peculiarities of
gender, sexuality and age are fair game to explore in today’s world, but even
the naïve ponderings of a child-like individual cannot be tolerated when it
comes to a first meeting with someone of a different ethnicity. I wondered at
what someone like Terry Gilliam would have done with the same material, a
fellow surrealist but one never governed so heavily by the demands of today’s sensitivities.
A shame to compromise the exploration of Bella’s impetuous innocence by shying
away from possible responses to racial difference – beware the comments of your
children, they will be implanting ‘right-think’ directly in to their
brains next! Direct God-like meddling with the brain rather than the natural
exploration that is (mostly) allowed in Poor Things.
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