After being reanimated by her surrogate father, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), Bella (Emma Stone) navigates the world in which she has been reborn. As she discovers pain, sex, and a series of other human experiences, she is forced to understand that we are all Poor Things.
Sexually driven is Director Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, as Stone partakes in nearly a dozen sex scenes. It honestly feels odd seeing such a massive Hollywood-related name in this sort of role, one that nearly forces her to be nude for what seems like almost half of the film (it’s not really that much, but Lanthimos and his team put emphasis on those scenes, making it seem that way). With that said, Stone finds herself driving the film forward in a number of ways, but, again, Lanthimos places Stone in a series of situations in which she is meant to control the room using her on-screen sexual prowess. I’ve always known her to play the somewhat vocal, yet relatively innocent characters, but Poor Things sees her thrive in these sexual situations, powerfully demanding the camera and the spotlight, effectively outshining everyone else throughout the course of Poor Things. There’s no doubt that being this powerful while fully naked is challenging, and it goes without saying that her ability to do all that I’ve mentioned above is an incredible feat–and she deserves recognition for her performance.
I know Lanthimos for one thing and one thing only: The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a film void of emotion, and once again Lanthimos leans into his M.O. He likes to sidestep emotion in a lot of ways throughout Poor Things, leaning heavily on what Stone is able to produce with her aesthetic in order to appeal to audiences in this regard. As Poor Things progresses from one piece to the next, Stone uses Lanthimos’ direction to create something incredibly subtle, yet blatantly relatable. As she navigates a world completely new to her, she encounters the ups and downs that we all have throughout our lives; she deals with the unfortunate relationships that are effectively imperative to our existence, she begins to understand the importance of knowledge, and, without even knowing, she understands that she must find a purpose. While much of this rests on the shoulders of Stone, Lanthimos and his team constantly find ways to drive Bella forward. That may be with the aesthetic of the film, the use of other actors (including both Mark Ruffalo [Duncan Wedderburn] and Jerrod Carmichael [Harry Astley]), or something else entirely–and, again, regardless of what the means is, Poor Things finds success in this regard.
There is so much good crammed into Poor Things, and yet, there is something about it that holds it back. I attest that to the pacing of the film. Again, there is a lot of good shoved into the two-hour-and-twenty-minute film, and sometimes there is too much to unpack for viewers. The film feels long, and there were many times throughout the film in which I questioned whether or not something should have made its way into the final cut. While the fact of the matter is that the pacing is sort of fine, and there is never really too much going on at one point, there seems to be far too many extraneous details that exist within Bella’s story. Lanthimos needed to throw some more scenes on the cutting room floor, but because he didn’t Poor Things feels a bit frumpy from time to time.
Poor Things is a film set in Victorian times, existing partially in black and white, and including a series of wild, science fiction details that won’t appeal to the masses. Poor Things is the sort of artsy film that critics are often yearning for, and, I won’t lie, I’m one of those critics. With that said, there may be a bit too much going on, and Lanthimos and Writers Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray (the man that wrote the source material) may have extended themselves too far left of center. Poor Things is a political and social satire that navigates the entirety of human existence, and with that comes an aggressive amount of information. There isn’t much wrong with the film, but Poor Things exists for a very specific group, and Lanthimos does little to reel it in and extend an olive branch to the masses.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
Written by Tony McNamara & Alasdair Gray.
Starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Kathryn Hunter, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Hanna Schugulia, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10
