Grade: A
Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos’s early resume credits include several music videos, which should give you an idea of his style. He had great success with The Favourite, which wasn’t one of my favourites, but received 10 Oscar nominations, including a win for Olivia Colman, amongst its 3 acting nominations. He has another one coming in 2024 (Kinds of Kindness, currently in post-production), with his Poor Things stars Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley in the cast. I already can’t wait.
His otherworldly imagination has achieved lightning in a bottle with Poor Things, one of the best movies of the year. Everything looks unearthly. A ship emits green smoke, the color palette of the sky rivals that of Ghostbusters, and in my favorite gag, Willem Dafoe’s character routinely burps out a large dark bubble that pops after a few seconds. He plays Dr. Godwin Baxter, a surgeon with a grotesquely scarred face. He discovers the dead body of a pregnant woman. He takes her in, removes the baby’s brain, puts it in her head, and brings her back to life in an obvious Frankenstein homage, in one of those old movie labs with levers and sparks and flickering lights. He names her Bella Baxter.
Nothing Emma Stone has done before will prepare you for what she does in Poor Things. She is better in this than any of her other films, including her Oscar-winning role. As Bella, a re-animated 30-something woman with a baby’s brain, she has to learn to walk and talk. A performance like this could be easy awards bait for an actor, but we see her grow, progress, and mature throughout the 141 minute runtime. By the time we arrive at the end, it’s hard to believe this is the same character. The way she takes us on this journey is unparalleled. Stone displays tremendous courage with her facial expressions, physicality, and her body.
Bella calls Dafoe’s character “God.” I guess, to her, he is. It doesn’t take her long to discover how to satisfy herself sexually, which becomes a frequent pastime. She has to be reminded that the cucumbers at the dinner table aren’t for the purpose she thinks. She develops an obsession with sex, which she calls “furious jumping,” and does it so much she wears out wealthy womanizing lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). He has been commissioned by “God” to look over a marriage contract between Bella and one of Dr. Baxter’s students (Ramy Youssef). Before she gets married, Duncan takes Bella on a tour of the world.
I couldn’t pin down when Poor Things takes place, and I don’t think there’s a specific time. Much of it looked like the distant past, but then there are some things in it we don’t have yet. The young men in Bella’s life take it upon themselves to act as her own personal Henry Higgins. Her horniness certainly helps matters, too. She starts off very young, mentally, and is therefore agreeable and submissive. The dynamic changes as Bella becomes an avid reader and expands her vocabulary, thoughts, and curiosities. She “outgrows” them, and they almost become intimidated by her.
This might be the best screenplay of the year. It’s brilliantly stealthy in how funny and smart it is. I love the way Lanthimos plays with visuals; the first act is in black-and-white, and significant chunks are filmed with a wide disorienting camera method which feels like we’re looking through a glass peephole on a door. Bent musical notes in the score set a quirky tone. And at the center of it all is the tour-de-force work from Emma Stone, who plays with everyone. Poor Things will do furious jumping with your mind.
Grade: A
Film Reviews by Mark 
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