FilmSnobReviews

Title: Poor Things
MPA Rating: R
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe
Runtime: 2 hr 23 mins

What It Is: A depressed woman decides to take her own life and jump off of a bridge while pregnant. A mad scientist named Godwin Baxter (Dafoe) with a love of creating strange beings finds her body, and reanimates it with the brain of the unborn child. The new woman is named Bella, who displays an adventurous hunger for discovering the nature of things, learning, and experiencing. Developing at a faster rate than expected, Bella rebels against the better wishes of her father, of whom she calls ‘God,’ and her fiancé, Godwin’s assistant Max, and runs away with the sleazy, seemingly dangerous lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo). Exploring this world, its people, and the strange way of things, Bella cuts her way through to become the person she was, not made, but always meant to be.

What We Think: My heart is so big for this film, please let me tell you why:

This movie is exuberantly enjoyable, but certainly not for everyone. It’s odd, extremely sexual (I’m pretty sure the sex scenes out number those of any Verhoeven flick), and to many, too bizarre and ambiguous to appreciate. This entails a lot of Lanthimos’s works, to those of which we here at Filmsnobs are no stranger. I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing his previous feature The Favorite, which was my literal favorite film of the year, and its no surprise Poor Things is also my year’s number one… what I didn’t expect was Lanthimos to again, somehow completely outdo himself. Unlike other interesting, challenging, ‘high-art’ (and European) filmmakers out there, say your Trier’s, Noe’s, and Haneke’s, Lanthimos is a modern director whose films are no gamble. So far, its a nearly bulletproof guarantee that every movie he makes is much better than the last and has made great strides as an auteur and visionary. I haven’t been a fan of all his films, some being stronger in story than others, but lately, I’d remark since The Lobster, he’s continued to push the boundaries of what he can express as an artistic filmmaker. So yes, overall–I am a huge fan.

That being said, let’s look at this film in a vacuum and why it’s so selfishly important to me.

Everything in this film I loved. It’s like it was made for me, like I was Bella Baxter floating around in a dream. Every scene and shot are crafted so clever and with meticulous performance and design. Stone absolutely steals the show as the beautiful, abundantly expressive, and often times daunting Bella. Of Bella: I understand and refute the criticism of her character being a stereotype. What I feel frustrated with in the criticism community are the societal schematics. People want films to be right, but not necessarily good, if that makes sense. And I say this as someone who believes in… well, human rights for example. But personally, I don’t care about seeing good people doing good things or bad people doing bad things to prove they’re bad (aka, pandering; keywords: Disney, Marvel, and The Oscars). I want to see something that feels true to life with risk and honesty. I’d rather see a filmmaker go out on a limb and express themselves truly than see a well-produced, shiny movie that was designed to supposedly cater to me, and the millions of other humans who watch movies. In that, I think Poor Things sort of weeds out those who are looking for those movies that tell and show them exactly what they already know, or want to hear. What’s important about Poor Things is that not only is it a perfect amalgam of so many forms of art and storytelling (too many for me to list at this point) and is one of the if not THE most gorgeous and unique-looking film of the year that pulls off the whimsy of Pinocchio without looking like Pinocchio (if that makes sense, it’s its own beast), but Poor Things hides much to do with my experiences as a young woman.

Now, of course the over-the-top horniness and ‘Born Yesterday’ application to Bella Baxter does not apply to every woman, nor me. But who the hell is asking for a fictional character to completely represent them, or aspect of them? Not one person can really speak on behalf of everyone; its unfortunate that that is the supposed prerogative of female, inclusive, and/or minority characters to either be sacrificial lambs or the perfect, minimally flawed living heroes as living proof of groups, who for years were also abused BY elitist headed corps like Hollywood, that they also deserve to be respected and treated as human beings. And from what I’ve seen, a lot of people (namely reactionists) who don’t like this film and think its too weird and even bad criticize it for not having a clean, easy moral core. Which is fine, this movie is just not meant for them. You can have your Black Widow, and your Pearl, but there’s a reason why one of those flicks tend to resonate more deeply with its audience and will continue to resonate with future viewers.

Bella and the morality in the film are flawed. They aren’t designed that way, but both in tow accept and acknowledge the flaws and shortcomings. The people who don’t see this are missing out on a beautiful message. Yes, Bella has the brain of a baby and the body of a woman. Feel what you will of that, but never did I feel the film was exploitative. I’ve seen and, also as a young woman, have experienced exploitation, and I don’t see it as such, not just because Bella is usually the one in control, or at least seems that way, but because the film is communicating something entirely different. It’s a coming of age film, and I think young men, or any people who have experienced the discomforting highs and lows of coming into adulthood, could relate to the idea that doing so does sometimes feel like you were literally ‘Born Yesterday.’

I’m 24. Many days, I do feel like I was reborn at 22 (I actually do remember the day that it happened), that I’m an entirely different person living a new life, and now that I have autonomy and control, I like thinking of it that way. I can’t say I did much as a teen girl, I wasn’t really allowed to be who I wanted to be out of protection, but I found that experience very suffocating. Hey, being a teenager is tough shit–and while that was expressed in this film, I feel through Bella’s mother/host body as someone who was likely married as a teenager as this is set in Victorian England, Bella’s experience is entirely centered on being ‘reborn’ as a young woman and having all these people and rules applied to her, how that changes her, how she changes them, and where her motivations lead her in spite of having that baby brain (which, if you are under 22-26 years old or so–you do have a baby brain, and no, Bella is not literally a baby because she has a recycled brain from a baby, it’s a metaphor y’all). I would say this is a quintessential film that allows us to experience womanhood through gorgeous, wild, ostentatious fantasy and expression without sacrificing the redundant plot point of having to hurt or abuse the protagonist in order to prove how victimized young women can be (are) and allows the beautiful wizard of creativity, science, destruction, and creation with the playful energy of Yotsuba that is Emma Stone’s wide-eyed Bella Baxter to grow and learn and be the human being she, and her mother host (much like Wandering Emanon, the ‘immortal woman’), was always meant to be.

Our Grade: A++, The most inventive, extravagant, oddly hilarious, and deliciously fun film of the year, surely to go down in history with other rare female-centric fantasies, such as Labyrinth, Pearl (I said what I said), Alice in Wonderland, Spirited Away, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Coraline, Legend, Night is Short, Walk On Girl, The Shape of Water, The Last Unicorn, and Moon Garden. Fans of Frankenhooker will also be sure to enjoy (that little list was a slight jab, if you haven’t seen any of those films, get on your ass and start watchin’). We’re already getting a little long for our reviews and there’s so much about the movie that I can’t even fully get into and why those aspects are so good, including the cast, production design, costuming, writing and the score, so please, definitely give this film a watch, especially if you are inclined to Bella’s journey or something adjacent, as this film just left me with such big, happy tears as the grand soundtrack wound on, it left me feeling somehow that much more understood and that much more seen and accepted and human, resonating deeply. Inspired by the film, I’ve also dyed my long hair Bella’s jet black.