Poor Things (2023)

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Yorgos Lanthimos should be in the conversation when we discuss the most impressive current directors. Adapted by Lanthimos and writer Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, Poor Things may be a departure from the director’s signature tone and visual style, but it still beautifully demonstrates his uncanny ability to experiment with impeccable cohesion. Here, that experimentation involves a modern updating of the Frankenstein mythos.

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Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is the product of an unusual experiment by doctor Godwin (Willem Defoe); she has the brain of an infant transplanted into the body of a grown woman. She now travels the world experiencing its complexity and hypocrisy without any preconceptions of human culture or social behavior. Thus, Bella is nothing but inquisitive and sympathetic, and her insistent curiosity leads her to the “wisdom” of the film’s central characters who have all in some way been hypnotized by their privileges and/or obstacles.

Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella’s first lover, becomes increasingly exposed as pompous and controlling as her constant challenges threaten his position as a kind of cultural guide. As appropriate for the charming and off-kilter wit, he not only falls even more in love with Bella, but goes insane due to his inability to understand who – or what – she has become.

Thanks to Gray’s whimsical source material we get to see experimentation on every production level, but Poor Things never feels indecisive. In fact, it’s the dedication to an eccentric spirit that allows the film to maintain its identity throughout its runtime. The settings are extravagant and dripping with color and character, allowing the audience to be just as awestruck as Bella is when she’s faced with the dissonant characteristics of the world.

Previously, Lanthimos’s films have largely explored the negative, subdued emotions of his subjects. 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer used the sterility of a hospital and upper middle class neatness to act as a backdrop for how repressed guilt can poison our lives, while 2015’s The Lobster showed our desperate capacity to love and be loved regardless of the consequences.

Like its production, themes in the film are varied, to put it mildly, and deeply moving. Characters in each chapter float in and out of Bella’s life to offer their wisdom on politics, social dynamics, gender norms, economic class, education, sex, etc. One would think that the myriad of subjects would overcrowd the narrative and render it useless in adequately addressing any of them individually. However, Tony McNamara’s (The Favourite, Cruella) script is able to give each of these subjects proper respect by presenting each character as a sort of advocate for the ideas, allowing Bella to have a curious and thoughtful dialogue with each topic without taking the audience out of the experience.

The point is in the aggregate; Bella is meant to represent the purest form of a sincere and curious human being, devoid of any preconceived societal or cultural baggage, and I think the film presents a brilliant perspective on what makes a life meaningful and free. Poor Things is a stunning achievement for Yorgos Lanthimos, a remarkable next step in the career of one of the most exciting contemporary directors, and easily one of the year’s best films.