THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Life is not always what you make it until you have the opportunity that lets you.
PLOT
Based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, Poor Things takes place in Victorian London and follows eccentric surgeon Godwin Baxter invite his medical student Max McCandles to his home to introduce his experiment of a ward he calls Bella Baxter. She appears to be childlike because some time before, Godwin found her jump off a bridge to her death when she was pregnant with her unborn child. Rather than reporting her body to authorities, he chose to reanimate her by replacing her brain with the one that belonged to her baby, thus renaming her as his own. After a few days personally studying as an assistant, Godwin would see the attraction Max has over her and encourages him to take her hand in marriage. When he proposes, she accepts but her rapid intelligence makes her curious of the outside world itself and becomes deeply fascinated of sexual pleasure, masturbating whenever she can with whatever. Before she chooses to do so, she would run off with lawyer Duncan Wedderburn who she hired to overhaul her nupital contract. Godwin would let her go as he would experiment on another woman named Felicity who would mature much slower than Bella. When first traveling to Libson, Bella would frequent sex with Duncan but she would become too difficult to control. With that being a problem for him, he would keep her on a leash by smuggling her onto a cruise ship. She would still let her curiosity guide her as she would befriend other passengers named Martha (Hanna Schygulla) and Duncan (Jerrod Carmichael) who introduce her to philosophy. When Duncan fails in trying to stunt her growth, he would get caught in drinking & gambling. During a stop at Alexandria, Bella would be in shock on seeing the suffering of the poor. It would be so disturbing for her that she would take Duncan's winnings and give it to two crew members who falsely promise to give it to the needy. With no money to afford the rest of the trip, she and Duncan get dropped at Paris. She would then choose to seek money via prostitution at a brothel. She would befriend Madame Swiney and another prostitute named Toinette who introduces her to socialism, but Duncan would be so enraged of her decisions that he would choose to leave her. With Godwin falling ill, he would ask Max to find her which he does when finding Duncan institutionalized. When she does, she agrees to marry him as planned and pursues the same line of work as her adopted father. On the day of the ceremony however, Duncan would crash it when bringing General Alfie Blessington who recognizes her as his wife Victoria before she died. Surprisingly, she would choose to go with him rather than marry Max in order to learn more of her life. Within hours back to her first home, she would see firsthand that her husband was very sadistic in advance which deduces why she chose take her life (as Godwin admitted to her when she returned). When he later tries forcing her to submit to genital mutilation, it would lead to an altercation that would end with him passing out after shooting his own foot on accident. With Max's help, she completes a brain transplant by swapping Alfred's with the one of a goat. After Godwin passes away, the film would end with Bella deciding to continue following his footsteps with Max and Toinette by her side.
THOUGHTS
Yorgos Lanthimos is a name I identify as one of the finest filmmakers due to making every one of his artsy films of the 2010s incredibly compelling. It's no exception here because I'm hooked from start to finish once again. I can quickly say that Jerskin Fendrix's score hooked me in when setting this fantasmic atmosphere. The production design is insanely great because despite this story being set in the past, it feels like a whole other world and Robbie Ryan's cinematography benefits off of it to further the captivation. You definitely get your fair share of laughs due to how the use of reanimation is treated; I mean there is no way you can take serious an animal's head not match with the body. Now when you put aside the comedy, you can respect the rest of the film as is for sharing something deeper. Like Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, you can see the allegory on how most of the male gender prefer seeing women as objects and that alone, but that would lead to the thought of humanness. When being human, we can get used to a short list of things but the more we choose to explore life it can help us accept there is more to it than our basic pleasures. The more you choose to dismiss it, the less human you think you are. That is the whole point of Bella's journey who proves to be more human than her inner circle sees her to be. Emma Stone raises the bar in her range as an actress with her experimental role to date. Bella is an enigma in her own right because we're in awe seeing a woman gain rapid intelligence due to having the brain of an infant. Because of that brain coming from her own baby, it's clear there was an advantage for her to develop at her rate compared to what Margaret Qualley showed as Felicity. Seeing her get so connected with sex is definitely hilarious because that discovery is a different journey for everyone and her take is too bizarre to not enjoy. I can't deny I wasn't laughing with every sexual encounter she had from touching her maid or criticizing a customer's smell. Again apart from that, she was truly choosing to enjoy life rather than think small because she knew from the start how much there was to learn and would rather know now than never. That's where you can't help admiring her because you want to have such curiosity to make yourself happy and live proudly which is what she did. It was good that she chose to learn about her past because she deserved to know and when she did, she became grateful of her second life. From her experiences, she did see the good but saw a fair amount of bad to accept the world isn't enough. Rather than breaking her than before, she finds a better solution to overcome her situation which you gotta respect because she'd rather be free than be imprisoned mentally & physically. Christopher Abbott was definitely surprisingly great at making a menace out of Alfred, but we don't even get to know him had it not been Duncan. Mark Ruffalo was quite a treat because he's openly debaucherous and everyone sees right through him. Bella takes a chance on him solely off of how he doesn't block her from sexual intimacy which is all he wants from her. That would become his downfall since he has no idea of her predicament which becomes a roller coaster for him to deal with. It's funny to see him put up with her for the most part because he isn't sure if he's attracted to her rebellion nature or not. Although he and Alfred are poor examples of an ideal man, there were others that were better in comparison. Willem Dafoe was indeed impressive in his transformative performance as Godwin or as Bella called him God. You can fairly say he earned the title for his success with reanimation, but he still reminds us how compassionate he is as a scientist and human in general. While he admits he was at first attracted to Bella and never made a move due to being physically incapable to do so, but the more time he spent he instead felt more protective like a parent rightfully did. I don't blame her for feeling such because you should be responsible for who/what you choose to reanimate. He then allowed her to travel with Duncan because he knew withholding her from the world would be banning her from being creative with her mind. In the end, you can bet he died happy knowing how she surpassed expectations as a human. Ramy Youssef was another great standout for making Max one with the most clear conscience. He has this natural attraction towards Bella because he admires how free minded and curious compared to him and appreciates seeing that in people. And she gives him a chance by the end because she respects him for not really stopping her being herself. She also has Toinette around because she, like Max, reminds her how special the world can be with great minds like theirselves. With what they can do with reanimation, lord knows what else is possible. But the longer he spent, the more he realized she wasn't worth it in his eyes. In short, Poor Things is a worthy Best Picture nominee for being the most unique fantasy film of 2023. If you're looking for something unorthodox in all the right ways, this is the one for you.
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