What happens when you mix Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and Dr. Suess in a blender that’s equally traumatic as it is hilarious? You get Poor Things, a movie that catches your attention through its surreal visual style but keeps you invested with its incredibly moving and profound character studies.
Going into Poor Things, there’s a fear that it may be too abstract for its own good, and the first 30 minutes or so do not help in laying that fear to rest. Between Willem Dafoe’s character, Dr. Godwin “God” Baxter, spitting up bubbles at the dinner table while hooked up to a device of his, and the frankensteined animals roaming around God’s house, it’s an understandable expectation that the movie will be overly self-indulgent in its strangeness. However, as we’re thrust into this vaguely-early-20th-century (I think?) fairytale world, with every scene appearing darker and sometimes more cryptic than the last, we are also given more personal introductions, specifically to the infant-minded Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone. Just as Stone seems to have become the muse of director Yórgos Lánthimos (she has starred in an unreleased recent short film of his and is already cast in his next film), Bella quickly becomes the muse of the audience. She is instantly sympathetic, even during the film’s more comedic scenarios towards the beginning, but once we get to know her better, that sympathy that initially emerged because of pity evolves into a genuine hope that this character will come out on top in the end through her own ingenuity.
Stone and Lânthimos understand and are able to portray Bella deeper than I think Tony McNamara’s script could possibly get across on paper. The writing is fantastic but there is so much complexity to Bella’s character that it requires very creative minds to properly interpret her on screen. Fortunately, Stone and Lânthimos more than rise to the occasion. Stone’s physical comedy and overall silliness work perfectly and the way her character develops as the film moves along feels more believable than one could ever imagine in a movie so upfront about being abstract. Bella’s journey throughout the film, in which she learns more about her past and current self and the world around her, is the best story I’ve seen given to a character in a movie that came out this past year.
To pair with Bella’s emotional trip across the world, which is sometimes as disorienting to the audience as it is to her, her father figure in Dafoe’s God is just as interesting a character. Dafoe has such an incredible ability to tap into characters with a morbid past, whether the audience or Dafoe is aware of that character’s backstory or not, and his performance here is of a top-tier level. His sensibility for understanding that God is not simply someone who has taken advantage of others but instead a man with more dimensions than what may appear on the surface (though, I suppose he’s a poor example given his disfigured body) is something not many actors can do as well as Dafoe.
The black-and-white/silvertone look of the film in the first half-hour is enough for someone to relate the movie to Eraserhead, but that’s not where I found the similarities. Poor Things crosses paths with Lynch’s debut in that both films are stories about how disorienting big changes in one’s life can feel, especially with parental and romantic relationships. The other clearest companion I felt Poor Things took inspiration from is The Shining. What tipped me off at first were the Kubrickian camera zooms and intricate set designs but what ultimately became the most prominent technical choice shared between the two films is its use of music. The scores have instances where you hear this sort of distant sing-scream in the background (I guess one could say a more echoey “Great Gig in the Sky”?) and both Poor Things and The Shining apply music more unconventionally, using prolonged, often high-pitched noises rather than full-fledged songs to enhance the emotion of a scene.
Poor Things is about a lot: breaking away from religion or deciding to be freer within it (Bella still recites God’s advice even after leaving), a woman simply gaining independence (and later on a statement on the role of women during this time), reconciling with growing up without a mother (a child inhabits the body of her mother literally through the work of God), what feminism really means (more than just sexual freedom), marital trauma — the list goes on. To balance out these hard-hitting themes that aren’t to be taken lightly is the tone of the movie which somehow works incredibly well. Mixing in comedy — mainly through the way certain lines are delivered, especially by Mark Ruffalo’s character — could’ve made for a film that feels as bizarre as it looks, but everything meshes so naturally, which was benefitted by the opening minutes where the audience is treated to a good dose of slapstick and visual gags.
Poor Things is a triumph of modern filmmaking, with the way Lánthimos and the actors feel connected to the film’s characters and are willing to let the audience in on these people’s lives ultimately grounding a film as wild as this more than some more conventional ones.
1/3/23