Have you ever wanted to plunge yourself into a movie? Just grab the edges of the frame and dunk your entire body inside? That's exactly how I felt watching Poor Things, the latest movie from the delightfully sick mind of director Yorgos Lanthimos. Like his seminal film Dogtooth, Poor Things is about an isolated soul with no knowledge about the wider world. Like his 2016 motion picture The Lobster, Poor Things is about how ridiculous "normal" social routines are. In the vein of his 2018 film The Favourite, Poor Things is rife with sexual tension and brought to life through an outstanding Emma Stone performance. However, simultaneously, Poor Things feels like a whole new era of the filmmaker's career. The intentionally subdued color palette of The Lobster and realistic locales of The Killing of the Sacred Deer are eschewed for luscious vibrant imagery that feels akin to everything from the works of Powell & Pressburger to episodes of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. It's like the earlier (already superb) works of Lanthimos were a foundation being built for the glorious house that is Poor Things.
Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) isn't like other girls...she's been brought back from the dead. How did that happen? Well, Dr. Godwin "God" Baxter (Willem Dafoe) found the body of a pregnant woman dead in a river after an apparent suicide. Naturally, this scientific mind decided to take this lady's corpse, put her baby's brain inside her head, and then revive the organism. The result was Bella Baxter, who now has an entirely new consciousness and, as she ages mentally, is growing more and more enamored with the outside world. Jerk supreme Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) promises to show Baxter the world and take her everywhere she wants to go, a trip that inspires Poor Things to switch from monochromatic colors to a wide array of hues utilizing every shade in the rainbow. This voyage also leads to Baxter figuring out nuances of the world and discovering just who she is as a person.
Confidence courses through every vein of Poor Things (an adaptation of the Alasdair Gray novel of the same, with the script penned by Tony McNamara). That's always been key to why Lanthimos movies work so well, they execute outlandish premises and inexplicable human behavior with nary a wink to the camera. However, Poor Things is an especially assured achievement from this filmmaker. Best of all, that conviction manifests throughout the feature in such proudly overt ways. The outstanding costumes are colorful creations full of bold flourishes and poofy sleeves, for instance. Richly detailed sets stretch out to the heavens and revel in their artificiality, they remind one of colorful versions of backdrops from vintage expressionistic films! Meanwhile, the score by Jerskin Fendrix is a masterfully brash creation that isn't afraid to get noisy. Discordant instruments (like strings on a harp getting plucked strangely or the harsh clanging of a triangle) and deep-pitched wailing sounds dominate the sonic landscape of the film. A track like "Reanimation" is full of appropriate momentousness (not to mention a blaring organ and an ominous high-pitched wail) to accompany the sight of Bella Baxter being brought to life. There's so much pomp and circumstance in these compositions and the entire film is all the better for that grandeur. Ferndrix's score functions as a great musical extension of Bella Baxter's personality (we truly feel her pain with the aid of these music cues) while these qualities also coalesce into a score unlike any I've ever heard before.
Bella Baxter doesn't hide her true feelings or ambitions...it's great that elements like Fendrix's compositions or those sets are similarly proudly prominent. Many filmmakers may be wary of coming off as "silly" or "not serious" by embracing the absurd, but Lanthimos and crew always opt for the stylized when it comes to realizing the world of Poor Things. The result is a movie overflowing with so much infectiously endearing creativity that it's impossible not to get soaked up in all the twisted mayhem. Poor Things encapsulates many of the sights and images that could only be accomplished in cinema, the sort of glorious spectacle that the big screen was made for. If you're going to make a story this bizarre, you should really lean into all of its most preposterous possibilities. Poor Things, with its endlessly creative visuals and score, does just that.
Best of all, Poor Things does one of my favorite things any story in any artistic medium can do: give us a protagonist worth caring about in the middle of confines divorced from reality. Bella Baxter may travel to real-world locations like Paris in Poor Things, but they sure don't look like any destinations you could travel to in the real world (that's a compliment!) Her surroundings are intentionally at odds with normalcy, yet Bella Baxter is a lead character who's endlessly compelling. Everything from the writing to Robbie Ryan's cinematography and especially Emma Stone's performance renders Baxter with a sense of humanity. She's an oddball, but she's not a punchline nor are we meant to gawk at her "weirdness." On the contrary, Poor Things invites us to view the world through Bella Baxter's eyes and realize just how moronic normal conventions of everyday life (particularly when it comes to gender roles) are. Mesmerizing sequences like Baxter wandering around Lisbon on her own (the first time she's ever been truly independent in her life) touch one's soul as we bear witness to just how much the outside world means to this lady. There's a beating soul to Poor Things, a movie that often casts off reality to the wind to hysterical results.
Much of that soul does come from Stone, who once again indulges in her chops for weirdo comedy by inhabiting Bella Baxter. What's immediately striking about her on-screen work is her physicality, specifically the way she portrays Baxter as someone who is still getting the hang of the finer nuances of walking. For the rest of the movie, Stone keeps masterfully contorting her body language to reflect Baxter's growing knowledge of the wider world. It's a tour de force performance just in physicality alone, the fact that she always nails such precise pieces of outlandish comedy just makes Stone's work all the more amazing. Plus, it's downright remarkable how much Emma Stone sheds her movie star image for this role. When I was watching Poor Things, I truly felt like I was watching Bella Baxter, I wasn't just watching Stone taking on a role or reminder of this leading lady's many other roles from the last 16 years. Bella Baxter is a totally idiosyncratic creation and much of that uniqueness emanates from Stone's total commitment to such an unusual role.
Stone is backed up by a totally game-supporting cast who are also unforgettable in such transfixing ways. Mark Ruffalo has been getting a lot of hype for his enjoyably despicable work as just the worst human, but I also want to throw some roses towards Hanna Schygulla and Kathryn Hunter in their key supporting roles. Neither performer sticks around on-screen for long, but they each leave an enormous impression with the screen time they do get. Schygulla makes for a great understated but confident counterpart of Stone's Baxter, while Hunter's unpredictable work as a brothel owner consistently keeps viewers on their toes. Of course, the MVP of the supporting cast has to be Willem Dafoe, who brings such interesting levels of lived-in reality and nuance to a character (the mad scientist playing God) that has existed in cinema for nearly a century. You've seen this archetype before, but you've never seen a character quite like Dr. Godwin "God" Baxter thanks to Dafoe's tremendous performance.
For both movie geeks and just folks looking for a good time at the movies, Poor Things is a scrumptious cinematic feast. You'll want to gorge on the cinematography, request seconds of all the great comedy beats in the script, roll around in the costumes, stare in awe at the performances, and send your compliments to Yorgos Lanthimos for crafting something so original and daring. When the COVID-19 pandemic first shut everything down, I truly wondered if movie theaters would even exist anymore. I didn't dare to dream that one day somebody could once again wander up to a movie theater and spend a few hours in the dark immersed in something they've truly never witnessed before. Thankfully, that day has come. Poor Things is here and it's just the kind of movie you too will want to plunge head-first into.
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