Poor Things (2023) Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos — Film Review
What are the poor things — are they women, are they children, are they experiments? They are the things and the people who are never allowed the chance to define whatever they are for themselves. In a world where Polite Society tells you who you are, it is, by default, heretical to insist upon the opposite.
Poor Things feels like it came straight from the recesses of my heart, and I both hate and love it deeply for that. “I am flattered by your intent to trap me. You would not be the first.” she (Bella Baxter, our main character played by the enchanting Emma Stone) says and I pause the movie, reflecting on what it means to live a life where you are constantly seeking freedom, and constantly having versions of this freedom offered to you that fully intend on forcing you to stifle who you are, what you want, and become trapped. The first third of this movie beckons you to see Bella as a trapped thing, an experiment being kept from the whims of the world. And in a way, it’s true. She is a trapped experiment. Through her learning of the world, we begin to recognize that sometimes locks are on the doors for different reasons.
She says to God (as in Godwin Baxter, Bellas father figure played by Willem Dafoe) that hate would begin to rot her insides if the locks were not broken, and so they were, and so she was right. The adventures begot more than fun and enchantment, but everything was, as Bella would say — Interesting. There is nothing about the content or the messaging of this film that I don’t love. There is so much to be said about how we treat children in this world, and the people who are a part of groups that we infantilize like children (disabled people, mentally ill people & more). There is so much love pouring out of the frames of this film. I wonder what kind of shit Yorgos has been on lately that willed him to this creation. This is so unlike anything he has made before, and so unlike anything I have ever seen before, from him or elsewhere. It’s like if Wes Anderson made movies that were not so devoid of sex.
The way that color theory is used in this film is almost unlike anything I have ever seen. Watching it made me ache to go back and revisit films from the late 60’s and 70’s where directors were not so afraid of color unlike now, where putting everything in bland muted tones is preferred by most mainstream filmmakers. This is not a film where you can say “the curtains are just blue” — they are blue for a reason, and her dress is orange for a reason, and her shorts fit the way they do for a reason. Everything is deeply intentional in the world of Poor Things, everything you see on screen exists for reasons that extrapolate the meaning of something else. The device of filming certain things from Bellas point of view being a fisheye lens distorting things and making them look novel and cartoonish, exists for a reason, for some obvious reasons, and for reasons we could dissect and expunge throughout many, many watches of the film. If you watch it for no other reason, watch it because it is so visually stunning.
As far as a Yorgos Lanthimos movie goes — this is extremely consumable. Probably his least esoteric film, in that the messages and the meaning is displayed and spelled out for us very clearly. It is clear this is a film that celebrates deviance from social norms, celebrates complete bodily autonomy, celebrates science and the pursuit of transhumanism, celebrates socialism, celebrates lesbianism, celebrates sex work, celebrates polyamory, celebrates the sexuality of people who are often viewed in society as unsexual beings, it celebrates spitting on facism, it celebrates finding freedom. That’s what this film is about to me, and it speaks to me so deeply in my soul as someone who has done some odd things in the pursuit of my freedom, as someone who people and institutions of “polite society” have aimed to trap, over and over and over again.
Bella is without a doubt one of the most lovable characters I have ever met in a film. She is me, she is the lovers I’ve had, she is the clients I’ve taken and the other girls turning tricks helping me rid myself of a foul smell. It’s so incredible how Willam Dafoe is consistently given such rich, complex characters to play. Poor Things is like if Dr.Frankenstein actually loved his monster. If he actually saw a life for his monster outside of being a thing of his creation, and nothing else. I think the concept of our brains being that of a child we could have bore ourselves is a beautiful one, one that reinvents how I think about myself, and how I will treat myself going forward. I am my own mother, and my own child. I can’t protect myself from the world, but I can try to understand it, in my own way. I can do everything in my power to retain the ability to do so, by retaining my freedom above all else. And in the end, I hope to have a beautiful little messed up family like Bella has in the end.
