Poor Things is the latest installment in the brilliant Yorgos Lanthimos’ directorial journey. It’s a fantastic film about how the world — and specifically men — view and treat women, but more than that it goes to show just how well Emma Stone can act.
Spoilers ahead!
Poor Things
Poor Things follows Bella Baxter, a reanimated corpse brought back to life by Godwin “God” Baxter, an eccentric scientist played by the incredible Willem Defoe.
Bella’s brain, according to God, hasn’t caught up with her body, so she’s essentially an infant in an adult woman’s body — one of many allusions to how women are unfairly perceived in society. God keeps her almost entirely secluded to the house/laboratory without a hint of view of the outside world.
Naturally, Bella grows tired of this and after meeting Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), she decides to leave God and adventure with Duncan, as he promises to show her the outside world.
Their adventures last for a time, but Duncan soon shows his true colors as just another man that wants to control Bella and use her for sex. Eventually, Bella moves on and starts to live for herself while Duncan just can’t seem to let her go.
There’s so many details that I won’t go into here, because this really is a movie that you just need to experience for yourself. It really is a remarkable parody of our society and how women are viewed only for the benefits they can provide for men — how they’re perceived as fragile and unable to do anything without a man there beside them.
Acting on point
Oh man, where do I even start — the acting in this movie is phenomenal. Not only is the cast full of brilliant choices: Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, Mark Ruffalo, and Ramy Youssef (who I’m not as familiar with but certainly stands out side-by-side with Defoe).
Poor Things is a movie in which you just get lost in the characters — you don’t see Emma Stone as Emma Stone, Ruffalo as Ruffalo, or Defoe as Defoe (which, let’s be honest, is a very hard thing to accomplish with Willem Defoe). It’s a movie with extraordinarily unique characters that are both written and performed to near perfection.
Visually stunning
The picture above offers just a taste of the picturesque world that Poor Things delivers. While Bella’s journey in the movie begins as a black-and-white bowl of oatmeal, along the way it transforms into a world of bright and vibrant cotton candy.
Poor Things’ Director of Photography, Robbie Ryan, incorporates a lot of shots through a fisheye lens, and while I can’t say for sure why he did this — I believe it’s to almost remove the audience from the picture, in a sense. It feels like the fisheye serves as a disconnect to tell the audience “Hey, you’re looking at this from an outside point of view. You’re supposed to feel a bit of distance from the scene.”
At one point, Bella even bumps into one of the shots as it cuts to the next shot, a detail I found incredibly subtle but really cool — and I’m not even sure if it was intentional!
Should you watch Poor Things?
Yes — absolutely, yes! It’s certainly one of the most absurd movies I’ve seen lately, but I’m a sucker for weird and absurd movies. Yorgos Lanthimos is an incredibly underrated director, and while this might be one of the most bizarre, it also happens to be Lanthimos at his most accessible, in my opinion, even if you do start feeling every minute of the near 2.5 hour runtime towards the end of the film.
While some of his other movies like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer are a bit more…out there, in terms of “what does this movie mean?” Poor Things is actually quite simple and the point of the movie is very hard to miss.
If you’re a fan of Lanthimos, or just enjoy a good bizarre flick, you’re going to adore Poor Things.
Wallflower Writing 
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