Poor Things

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (2023) **1/2

Poor Things is the second film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos in which people are transformed into animals. Not having seen all of his films, I can say there may be more. Whether that says more about me as a viewer or Lanthimos as a creator is up for debate but, in seeing a Lanthimos film, you know he’s going to bring the weirdness. Poor Things, perhaps the film by him which has garnered the largest distribution in the U.S., is a hotbed freak show of a film.

The story begins in Victorian England with surgeon and teacher Godwin Baxter (God, for short). Known for his unusual experiments, he has a stitched-together face that resembles a patchwork quilt, emits, while enjoying a meal, odd soft-ball sized bubbles that float in the air, and is probably mad. He’s played, of course, by Willem Dafoe.

God’s latest (human) creation is a near-dead, pregnant suicide victim, who he brings back to life by replacing the adult lady’s brain with the brain of her unborn infant. The result is Bella, played at first with childlike curiosity by Emma Stone, with risk-taking commitment. A “normal” character enters the story in the form of Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), Godwin’s new assistant who Godwin is hoping will eventually marry Bella. Lanthimos’ plot (based on the novel by postmodernist Alasdair Gray) brings to the screen much disturbing material, not the least of which Bella’s sexual maturation and curiosity. Like the monster of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein novel, though, Bella’s intellect also matures at an astonishing rate; from the mentality of a small child at the beginning of the film, she’s reading Ralph Waldo Emerson by the third act, and campaigning for socialist causes.

A catalyst for Bella’s worldliness is the caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn, played deliciously by Mark Ruffalo with a Snidely Whiplash-like moustache made for twirling. He whisks Bella away for a European tour. It’s here the film reveals a structure not unlike Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, Tom Jones; Poor Things‘ first third is relegated to a stately estate, with the outside world barely glimpsed. It then becomes, like Jones, a bawdy, picaresque, European travelogue, though in a Europe never quite seen before. Poor Things seems to take place in an alternate Victorian world, where technology has advanced in some ways, but is held in stasis in others.

Bella’s intellectual journey, taking many sordid and queasy — and unbelievable — turns, can be considered a feminist one, though Lanthimos has faced criticism from many corners for the film’s content, including from feminist critics. Working in a brothel for fun and profit may not be the ideal feminist trajectory, they point out; it’s instead, a misogynist male’s view of feminism. For its artistic worth I can’t say the film is intellectually or emotionally satisfying, but there are moments that transcend the whole, such as Duncan and Bella’s deranged ballroom dance in which she vies for freedom while he attempts to keep her in check; or Duncan forlornly yelling “Bella!” in a snowy courtyard, like a sniveling schoolboy Stanley Kowalski.

The look and soundscape of Poor Things is both memorable and pretentious. The music score by Jerskin Fendrix is willfully, annoyingly obtrusive. The early estate cinematography is shot in bleached-out color (sometimes straight B&W), recalling the Victorian look of David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and the films of Tod Browning. Like The Wizard of Oz, Poor Things embraces vibrant color when Bella’s journey begins, with whimsical, candy-colored land and cityscapes. The tone and look of the film recall not only Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks (wherein yet another person is transformed into an animal), but outré early ’70s films by Ken Russell, Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (1971), and Andy Warhol’s Flesh for Frankenstein (1973). The costume and set design is minutely detailed and flamboyant. Poor Things‘ end credits, knowingly framed like works of art, are exquisite in their beauty. It must be that I’m not Lanthimos’ target audience, though, when I say I wish I cared as much about his characters as I enjoy some of the film’s surface pleasures. Poor Things, ultimately, left me cold.

—Michael R. Neno, 2024 February 4