MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Poor Things
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
This afternoon’s movie…
“Vegesaurs, Daddy. With pea-rex and carrot triceratops.”
Review: Staring out into the cold, cold air, I realised that the frozen peas episode of Vegesaurs reflected how we are all destined to reach a cold, cold end, much like the dinosaurs and vegesaurs before us. Fossilised or not, we are all doomed to the cold eventually. Plus, what dinosaurs are the coconuts supposed to be?
The evening review…
POOR THINGS (2hr 21mins)
Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Featuring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe
Synopsis: Dr Godwin Baxter (Dafoe) creates his own human by putting a baby’s brain inside an adult’s body, dubbing his child Bella Baxter (Stone). As she develops mentally, she becomes aware of everything the world has to offer, both good and bad.
Review: At the end of Poor Things, I wondered how a movie like this was ever allowed to be made alongside a studio system that at times stifles such creativity, before thinking about how amazing it was that a movie like this could be made. However much you enjoy Poor Things, it is certainly a revelatory swing for the fences.
We see the form of Bella Baxter, before the fantastical lab experiment that created her final person, jumping from a bridge into a river. This violent baptism is only the first part of her re-birth and before the body is cold Dr Godwin Baxter, with a face that launched a thousand lunches, takes the pregnant form and combines them, placing the brain of the baby inside the cranium of the adult and with some final Frankenstein-ary, creates his own child.
Glorious and brilliant.
She begins as any child does; she cuddles her caregivers and bumbles around both physically and verbally. But alongside the introduction of lab assistant Max McCandles (a quiet, sensitive Ramy Youssef), Bella starts developing her skills and personality at an astonishing rate.
The set design and cinematography reflect how Stone’s character sees the world. The off-kilter visuals show a child’s perspective of a world just-discovered, whilst colour is used to accentuate how wonderful it all seems to her. In less experienced hands, this would create a cornucopia of high-contrast images that ultimately mean nothing. But Poor Things is gorgeously shot without being forced to abandon substance.
The title works on at least two levels. The first is how Bella Baxter, both before and immediately after the lightning-infused operation, is seen by anyone close to her. But eventually we’re introduced to the second idea, which is how Bella then begins to view those around here who have never had their way of life challenged before.
It’s within both of these guises that Emma Stone gives a superlative performance, as do the rest of the cast around her. Unlike her and Lanthimos’ collaboration on The Favourite, Stone this time emerges confidently into centre stage and makes the film her own. From babbling and smashing plates to making judgment calls on philosophical standpoints, Stone grasps this character the same way Bella grasps life and this enables us to live Bella’s life as if it were our own.
The film is as liberated as its main character.
That’s not to say the rest of the cast don’t get their chances to shine. Willem Dafoe somehow gains sympathy, despite the broken moral compass of the man Bella calls God. His scarred face and body show his inner pain, and the rejection of this pain, making it physical. Eventually he grows to accept what his father was as he stumbles and coughs towards the end of his story.
Mark Ruffalo gives a wondrously delirious, snooty performance. The sequence involving his gambling winnings portrays it best: he’s a man who had it all before it was all taken away from him for reasons he doesn’t understand. Whether he’s on top, or devoid of any money or hope, Ruffalo infuses his character with a manner and accent that are a hilarious mix of grumpy and entitled. Here he represents male ego, fragility and relentless easy living. Ruffalo and Stone engage in a dance-fight sequence that might be the hilarious high-point of the movie. Glorious and brilliant.
Even the smaller parts provide highlights. Harry and Mrs Prim (Jerrod Carmichael and Vicki Pepperdine) give Bella the opportunity to grow and have fun, even turning the tables as she learns and develops beyond Harry’s abilities. And despite his late introduction, Christopher Abbott as the awful and cruel Alfie manages to do a tremendous job in a short space of time (his final image could arguably be the opposite of Bella’s trajectory; equally it could simply be the truth of Alfie revealed).
In the end, due to the horrible things she’s witnessed along with the glorious, Bella’s philosophy seems to be ‘Give kindness to others before I am unkind to you.’ This is clearly a Frankenstein for modern times. Except here the ‘monster’, instead of being a representation of power, low intelligence and stifled emotion, is changed to a female child in an adult’s body, released and eager and joyful but infantilised in the same way a lot of women would have been decades ago. This steampunk reflection of our world allows this reawakened body to learn about life not from tearing apart a child, but by indulging in all her whims be it sex, food or dance.
The film is as liberated as its main character, not just in the sex scenes but also the gory, disgusting surgery scenes. All of life is shown to Bella, and she revels in the joy and reels back at the horror before finding her balance in an ending far neater than what was expected. This might, perhaps, be antithetical to the rest of the movie but that’s not to say the ending wasn’t deserved. Just that perhaps it belongs in another film.
Before this neat ending, the middle section of the film does threaten to drag. But this is followed up with the best, more intense final section as Bella confronts her past(s). Like the beginning, everything comes to a head and Bella emerges fully evolved. Perhaps this is why the ending was as neat as it was; allowing Bella this ending makes all the struggle worth it where other directors might’ve been tempted to provide something gruesome. But a more gruesome ending would go against the general message Poor Things seems to be trying to convey: that the world can evolve and become better, and that those who bring nothing but cruelty will be cast aside, eventually.
