OSCARS 2024: Poor Things (2023)

I maintain that Yorgos Lanthimos is an unlikely candidate for an Oscars favorite. It's hard to imagine aggressively stylized, absurdist anti-comedies like “Killing of a Sacred Deer” or “The Lobster” appealing too much to the stuffy shirts at the Academy. And yet Lanthimos has slowly become a regular presence on the nominations slate. “The Favourite” breaking through with Oscars voters was one thing, since that was still something of a costume drama, a historically popular genre with AMPAS fuddy-duddies. “Poor Things,” meanwhile, is a hard-to-classify science fiction/fantasy that walks a very odd tonal balancing act. Despite this, the movie has become one of the frontrunners at this year's Oscars, earning eleven nominations. So what is it about this one that caught the Academy's attention? 

A pregnant woman tosses herself from a bridge in what appears to be Victorian London. An eccentric scientist named Godwin Baxter fishes the body out of the river, transplanting the brain of the still living fetus into the dead woman's skull. He names the new lifeform Bella, who has a deeply child-like reaction to the world at first. She advances rapidly though and Godwin – whom Bella calls “God” – recruits one of his anatomy students to help study her. The student, Max, even agrees to marry Bella. That's when she meets a smooth-talking swindler named Duncan Wedderburn, who takes the naïve but eager-to-learn Bella out of her home. The two travel across Europe, learning to lust after and loathe each other, on the way to Bella becoming a fully-formed human being in her own right. 

The most obvious literary predecessor to “Poor Things” is Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein.” Both stories are about innocent beings, created without their consent by a scientist with a God complex, tossed into a world they are unprepared for. While Frankenstein's creation is hardened into a remorseless killer by the world, Bella remains eager to find the best in people throughout. Like a child, she seeks nothing but pleasant stimuli but, owing to her adult form, quickly turns to vice. She gorges on sweets, drinks booze to excess, and has lots and lots of sex. Upon meeting a philosopher, she is exposed to the horrors of the world and hopes to make it better, to contribute something to this planet. Isn't this what we all seek out? To not just define ourselves but to also try and improve the chaotic, cruel planet we are tossed onto? The fact that Bella's creator and father-figure is defined specifically as “God” sets up even more existential themes and concepts to think about.

Yet “Poor Things” is concerned most obviously with Bella's status as a woman. Almost all the men around her seek to control her. Godwin, reflecting his own childhood with a hideously cruel father, tries to keep her under his strict observation. Duncan, a philandering cad, is fine with Bella fucking and travelling, as long as he maintains all the power. The minute she starts to show any independence, and starts to outpace him in worldliness, he becomes a sneering, bitchy man-child. He's especially testy about Bella owning her sexuality, by becoming a sex worker. He can screw around as much as he want but a woman who seeks out casual sex is a whore, you see. “Poor Things'” feminist themes get all the more blatant as it goes along, the men in Bella's life growing more monstrous as the movie heads into its expanded final act. While you can criticize the film for not being especially subtle, you can't say it's wrong either. 

To describe “Poor Things” just as its ideas does the movie a disservice though. This is a delightfully weird, frequently hilariously perverse comedy. Lanthimos' odd ball sense of humor rears its head early and often. Godwin's laboratory is populated with strange animal hybrids, such as a dog with a goose's head. Later, the scientist – whose face is scarred in such a way that makes him look a lot like Frankenstein's monster already – passes a massive belch bubble out of his mouth. All of these strange events pass with Lanthimos' trademark, deadpan sensibility, hardly being commented on. This proceeds the film's best comedic element, Bella herself. As a wide-eyed innocent with a particularly hedonistic appetite, she bluntly comments on everything around her, tearing through the layers of polite society in the process. Bella's complete disregard for societal niceties is best displayed during the show-stopping dance sequence, where she awkwardly gyrates across a ballroom.

Part of why “Poor Things” comedic instinct come off as funnier, and less staccato than “The Lobster” or “The Favourite,” is because of the incredibly talented cast. Emma Stone has never been better than as Bella Baxter. She moves with a spasmodic body language that immediately tells us so much about this character, while also speaking in clipped English. As Bella evolves, she adds more words to her vocabulary but maintains a unique outlook on the world. Stone's blazing blue eyes are well-suited to this. Yet Bella is more than a Born Sexy Yesterday waif. Instead, Stone makes her an all-feeling organism, directed not just by sensation but by feeling. It's a stunning physical and emotional performance. 

Stone is supported by a hilarious Mark Ruffalo, who fantastically hams it up as a screeching, sweating bastard of a man, and an equally funny but oddly soulful Willem Dafoe, as a very complicated man. Yet the biggest supporting player in the film is how it looks. Robbie Ryan's cinematography switches between sterile black-and-white and blazingly gorgeous color. The film is often shot through a fish-eye lens, centering us through Bella's virginal approach to the world and visually establishing the odd ball tone. The movie is ambiguously set in some sort of steampunk version of Victorian London, with lots of bizarre machinery and unearthly city skylines. The film emphasizes this with surreally colored skies and architecture, further creating a bewitching alternate universe the viewer can get loss in.

I'm sure a lot will be written about “Poor Things” in the future. People are already passionately debating if the movie is feminist enough or the right kind of feminist. What role its comedy and explicit sex plays in underlining its ideas. I'm sure film school term papers will dive into its many allusions and philosophical premises. I definitely look forward to the movie becoming a film fan favorite, all its angels being dug into. It's an amusingly weird, gorgeously created, fantastically acted movie with a lot on its mind. I'm kind of in shock that something this willingfully strange got so many Oscar nominations but I'm pleased as well. May Yorgos' reign be long and uninterrupted. [9/10]