Poor Things (2024) – RICH!

Released: 18th January
Seen: 23rd January

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those directors who you can guarantee will deliver a film that’s so different from everything else in the cinema that it’s hard to describe it as anything other than “A Yorgos Lanthimos Film”. Even when he does something close to a regular period piece like in his last film The Favourite there is something just beneath the surface that creates a strange experience. He’s one of those filmmakers that we’re lucky to have because he keeps things interesting and allows the audiences who see his work to experience something truly unique. Once again, with his latest film Poor Things, Yorgos has delivered something truly fascinating to behold.

Poor Things, based on the 1992 novel Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer by Alasdair Gray, tells the story of a woman we will know as Bella Baxter (Emma Stone). Bella is a strange creation, the result of what happened when Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) found a pregnant woman who had jumped off a bridge and replaced the dead woman’s brain with that of her unborn baby. As such Bella is a fully grown adult who effectively has the mind of a toddler, slowly learning how her body works and how to function in society. 

Dr. Godwin (or God, as Bella calls him because subtlety is for peasants) brings in Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) as an assistant to help keep track of Bella’s progress. The more that Bella slowly learns, however, the more she wants to explore. Eventually, Bella meets and runs away with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) who promises her great things, and also fucks her a lot because she’s just learned how good genital fondling feels. So begins an epic adventure where Bella will explore not just the world but ideas of socialism, poverty, domestic abuse, class warfare and being a whore for fun and profit.

Poor Things is basically a modern, sexy Frankenstein and it’s kind of a wild ride. Heavily stylized, the film divides itself up into chapters and every chapter uses a markedly different visual style. The early era might look like an old James Whale film, but a later section looks like something out of Dune. It plays with every camera trick, lighting choice, and colour palette that works and it’s all so carefully handled to create a truly fascinating art piece where every frame is expertly crafted to look as pristine as could be. It’s almost like the director of photography just decided to show off every skill that they have in their toolbox and it makes the film so fascinating to sit through.

Trying to explore the idea of a character learning how to be a human being is not something that’s easily handled, just look back to films like Bicentennial Man as proof of how it can go, but Poor Things embraces the inherent weirdness of humanity, and dials everything up to play in the extremes. As Bella slowly grows more and more the weirdness of the film heightens with her, the strange dialogue gets a little more classic old English (which ends up making it even sillier), and the concepts being played with get more esoteric. Philosophy gets introduced late enough in the film that just having a casual conversation about socialism seems like the only option at a certain point. It’s a careful tightrope to walk in terms of tone and for the most part Poor Things nails that tone.

What really makes the entire concept work is Emma Stone, who we may as well just start calling Two Time Oscar Winner Emma Stone because there is no way she doesn’t win this year’s Oscar for this jaw-dropping performance. It’s a performance that starts as an innocent pure child with no understanding of the world and slowly grows, evolves, and becomes more worldly as time goes on. She has to not only portray every emotion you can think of, but she has to do it like it’s the first time she’s ever done it. Her first time seeing the true horrors of the world feels like you’re watching innocence be taken away from her, her first time defying an order feels like a mischievous child at play and just her first time pleasuring herself feels like you’re watching someone learn a great secret trick. It’s the kind of performance that requires the actor to have absolute trust in everyone around them, there can’t be a single second of doubt anywhere and damn if Emma doesn’t completely give every moment her full conviction. It’s a go-for-broke performance that carries the entire cast, who really don’t need carrying because they’re all brilliant in their own right but the film absolutely belongs to Emma Stone.

Honestly, the only negative that I had with Poor Things is that the pacing can be somewhat ponderous at times, overly long sequences of people just staring at things happening, and scenes feel like they go on for much longer than they need to. Obviously, nowadays a lot more films are pushing for 2-3 hours but this one really felt like it was stalling for time in some areas and that did make it easier for the mind to wander off. To an extent it’s understandable, with sets like this and a cast so great you’re going to want to see as much as you possibly can but there are just enough times where you end up just wondering when they’re going to get onto the next bit of Bella’s great adventure that it’s noticeable… but that’s only if I sit here desperately trying to think up a negative so it’s not just blind ass-kissing for a movie that’s undeniably great but also very much a film for a specific audience. 

Poor Things is gloriously rich in its detail, performances and a visual language that’s unparalleled in modern cinema. It’s something so weird and unique that it probably shouldn’t have been able to get such a big A-list cast but every single person involved in this brought their best and went all in on the absolute insanity that they’ve been tasked with. While it’s definitely not a film for everyone, it’s the kind of oddity that everyone should at least get a glimpse at. There’s a good chance this might go down as Yorgos’ masterpiece, the film that all others he makes will be measured against and if that’s the case then I look forward to seeing what the hell he does to try and top this.