There are so few moments in cinema when the world witnesses a film that will define a directors career, making them a household name. Only a handful of directors have been able to do this but Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is this film. It is a voyage of epic proportions crafted by a visionary filmmaker unlike anything we’ve seen in cinema in a long time.
Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a woman who is brought back to life by scientist Godwin Baxter after jumping off a bridge. With the mind of an infant, Bella must start from scratch and learn about the world through the eyes of others and herself. Poor Things is a fantastical and eccentric telling of a common female story that allows Yorgos to take outlandish risks cinematically and technologically. Bella’s drive for liberation does not come off as “admirable” but instead essential.
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Emma Stone gives one of the greatest performances in the last decade and embodies every aspect that makes Bella who she is, a naive yet highly intelligent woman who learns through her own mistakes and successes. Yorgos has a style that will never be (mirrored) and his ability to do so flawlessly in his own endeavors rather than to simply be “original” is astonishing.
The words that come to mind regarding Poor Things is a gothic-like adult fairy dream of independence and love. Bella’s expression and will to learn about anything by and from everybody is a joy to watch. In order to discover oneself it is essential to absorb as much knowledge from as many point of views as possible, even if these people have positive or ill intentions, which is what Yorgos was able to do in this epic journey.
The points of views Bella experiences through her interactions with Godwin (Willem Dafoe) Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), Max (Ramy Youssef), and Alfie (Christopher Abbott) is the catalyst towards developing her own opinions, desires, and outcomes. The film shows that without a will to learn and constant curiosity towards the unknown we are bound to become products of the people we surround ourselves with. Poor Things is in fact a masterpiece, one that is beyond the realm of what we thought was possible in cinema through Lanthimos’s expression and insane vision of what the world is and can be around us.
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