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Director Yorgos Lanthimos lets Emma Stone, as an artificial miracle creature, first discover her body and then the world. A crazy, cheeky and pleasantly clever film.
There have already been main prizes in Venice and at the Golden Globes, and more are to come: This film is already being celebrated as the cinema event of the young year.
“Poor Things” refers to the monstrous creatures that the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter creates. There are all sorts of hermaphrodite creatures running around in his house, a dog with the head of a goose, a chicken with the head of a pig – and a woman with the brain of a baby.
Legend: Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) – briefly and eloquently called “God”. AP Searchlight Pictures / YORGOS LANTHIMOS
For Baxter, life is an endless field of exploration, a fun playground where nothing is impossible. His father taught him this – and used him as a research subject. With his scarred face, Baxter is both researcher and creature: Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster in one.
Shameless miracle creature
Baxter’s masterpiece is called Bella. He created it from a suicidal woman he pulled out of the Thames and her unborn baby, whose brain he implanted in the dead woman. First of all, this miraculous creature stumbles through Baxter’s house, speechless and uncoordinated.
Little by little and with the help of the loving assistant Max McCandles, she learns to talk, walk and eat. The only thing Bella doesn’t understand is the modesty: she throws herself into discovering her body and her sexuality with great pleasure. Max falls in love with Bella, but she runs off with slimy lawyer Duncan Wedderburn to explore the world.
Experimental and surreal
This story is told in a surreal setting – in an alienated Victorian era – the images are either black and white or brightly colored, exaggerated like a backdrop, with echoes of steam punk, comic worlds, but also early expressionist cinema.
Emma Stone is simply stunning as she discovers the world as the curious and shameless Bella and gradually drives Duncan crazy because he is no match for her directness, her speed and her quick wit.
Legend: Bella (Emma Stone) with lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). KEYSTONE / AP Searchlight Pictures / ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA
When Bella’s thirst for knowledge finally turns away from sexuality and towards the world of knowledge, philosophy, Duncan is angry. She only reads, he says to her on a long voyage, and that’s why she’s losing her charm.
She’s changing, like everyone else, Bella replies, and besides, he’s in front of her in the sun. In this sentence, Bella, who is now well-read, packs all of the emancipation and enlightenment skills: from ancient Diogenes to Voltaire to the feminists of the present.
Legend: Well-read and quick-witted: With Bella, Godwin Baxter creates a creature that gradually emancipates itself. KEYSTONE / AP Searchlight Pictures
The Greek Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster,” “The Favorite”) continually reinvents his cinema, experiments with narrative forms and imagery. In its craziness, “Poor Things” is the current highlight of his work.
Bella’s crazy story is a pleasantly cheeky and modern educational epic, a brilliant plea for enlightenment, in which works such as Voltaire’s “Candide”, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and many more resonate.
Shamelessly funny, soothingly clever
“Poor Things” is shamelessly funny and pleasantly clever cinema, full of cheek and wit. The most one could accuse the film of is that, for all its absurdity, it conveys a somewhat old-fashioned understanding of Western educated middle class.
Nevertheless, the laurels for the experimental Greek are justified: there is rarely enough to see such crazy good cinema as “Poor Things”.
Cinema release: January 18, 2024
2024-01-17 21:19:33
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