The Bizarre & Dark World of POOR THINGS
Bella Baxter is Lanthimos’s richest character to date.
Poor Things is a philosophical masterpiece.
Before you read on, please go and see this film if you can! The feeling of this film is best reprised on the biggest screen.
It was quite difficult not to spoil parts of the movie in this analysis, but I tried my best to keep the surprises out of the writing. This is SPOILER FREE!!!
Yorgos Lanthimos has a phenomenal catalog behind him, but Poor Things may be his best yet. His portrayal of the 1992 novel of the same title showcases a vast, neverending world that will cheer you up and curb-stomp you within the blink of an eye. Bella Baxter is our eyes and ears, giving us some of the most hilarious bits of the year, as well as a resurgence of a child-like fever to never stop learning. There is not enough time to talk about every aspect of this movie’s cinematography, art design, costume work, choreography, and almost everything else. Poor Things is cinema at its highest height, using every category and department to create a dream world with no sense of where it may go.
Emma Stone shows that she is one hell of an actress for the entire runtime. She is up against tough competition this year in the Academy but deserves the award. Bella Baxter as a character is not an easy ask for any actress, but she was willing to get fully into her character and sacrifice her image in our society to illustrate this surreal story. The sacrifice comes in the form of extreme sexual scenes and full-body nudity for Stone. Lanthimos has continued to commend her openness in many different interviews, including Vanity Fair’s recent video on the film. Holly Waddington, the film’s costume designer, brings forth some of the most elegant and beautiful wardrobes for a character in recent memory. The outfits add another layer of surrealness to the world, much of them combining time periods to create the sense of Bella finding out what she will become.
Ruffalo’s cad of a character, Duncan Wedderburn, is a whimsical, freedom-seeking man who brings a disguised masculine persona into Bella’s naive being. His distortion of the world is mind-numbing and plays into a greater thematic element of the film, showcasing how women are constantly kept in a man’s shadow. Duncan and Bella are “creatures of freedom,” but we quickly realize they’re in opposite corners. Ramy Youssef’s character, Max McCandles, is the other side of masculinity, where women are the cause of genuine admiration. He is an example of a man who took the time to understand both men and women, never taking for granted what is given to him without boundaries. Duncan’s view of women is shown best through the cruise sequence, where he continuously refers to Bella as an object and tells her he did not plan to stay with her long, signifying he does this very often. This plays off of the horrific truth through men’s view of women in society and how it has been normalized and affecting women for centuries. Her cluelessness is revolting and gives a new perspective on why it has been the way it is for so long. The Paris sequence feels elongated with how confining the space becomes. While it is hard to watch, this sequence gives Bella the strength to feel, as many begin to later in life, nothing.
“We must experience everything, not just the good, but degradation. Horror. Sadness. Then we can know the world. And when we know the world, the world is ours. This makes us whole.” -Swiney (played by Kathryn Hunter)
This quote indicates a darker side to this film. The strongest people go through the hardest times, something similar to a certain Bible verse (although you can say this film downplays higher powers as not a good means to follow), “God gives his toughest battles to his toughest soldiers.” Metaphorically, this works in favor of Dafoe’s Godwin Baxter, letting Bella explore the world and giving her a battle that he could not have given on his own. Willem Dafoe gives a performance that is decayed and aged, at times giving a feeling of home when we are in his presence, even in his troubling tendencies. His experimentation can be seen as a metaphor for men’s continued hard-on for innovation and excitement to cope with internal turmoil in their own lives, something the recent Iron Claw dives into as well.
Lanthimos has never had a musical score in any of his films. Jerskin Fendrix was given the green light to compose the film before production started. With a mixed use of strings, plucks, pipe organs, and synthesized background vocals, Fendrix is able to tap into Bella’s inner emotions. Yorgos uses the score as an added element of feeling for the audience. When Bella’s life is simple in the beginning, the score is tame and wildly unpredictable. As the movie sets in, constant string plucks remind the audience when danger is imminent. When watching Bella’s exit towards the end of the film, signaling there might not be a way out, Fendrix’s low-pitched strings evoke the feeling of complete dread; a goosebumps feeling. The score adds a necessary weight to the film’s thematic tropes and paves the way for exploration without intent to stop.
Robbie Ryan’s camera work and use of several lenses in this film make for a masterful creative leap of faith.
In all, Poor Things becomes a film that is instantly recognizable for its use of wide-angle lenses, dark humor, and philosophical viewpoints to their fullest extent. If you do not get anything from the film (which should be hard to do), let it be never to stop expanding your horizons. Whether it is understanding the viewpoints of others or giving light to your wild side more, do not be the person who creates a fallacy of themselves; instead, be the person who never stops asking questions and growing from life’s bumps and bruises. I could not find an exact quote, but Bella describes how things continue to evolve in our society. Something is only the way it is until something new comes, and then that becomes the way it is. This film crowns the explorers and demeans the people attempting to take that away.
And look, to the many people who will denounce this film as a pornographic nothingness with loads of sex and no enjoyability, you are being left behind with the superhero blockbuster extravaganza the 21st century created. I value film with my own criteria like any other, but the future of film lies within our ability to grow and understand the hardest of stories. This is not a surface-level story and requires you to put the ideas into a larger perspective. This film could be looked at in the future as a monumental achievement in cinematography and art direction by all facets of the crew, but I do not see a film that could be more relevant to today’s world than anything released this decade. Truly a masterpiece, Yorgos!