“POOR THINGS” My rating: B+ (In theaters)
141 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” delivers such a unique vision, so elaborate a palette of visual wonders, so much wickedly sly humor that one is willing to forgive a padded running time and a draggy third act.
Although its literary sources are obvious enough (“Frankenstein” is a biggie; so is
“Candide”) the film’s wondrously weird sense of self is unlike that of any movie I can think of.
And it gives Emma Stone, the star of Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” the role of a lifetime.
Here she plays Bella, a grown woman who behaves like an infant.
“Her mental age and body are not quite synchronized,” explains Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), the hideously scarred eccentric whose home/laboratory is populated with bizarre animal hybrids (like a duck with a dog’s head).
Godwin — Bella addresses him as “God” — views his ward as both his daughter and as an experiment. He will educate this blank slate, raise her to be a reflection of his own genius.
Willem Dafoe, Emma Stone
He tolerates her childlike misbehavior (Bella routinely smashes dishes and plates just for the thrill of noisy destruction), having determined that she has an incredibly high learning curve.
In just a matter of weeks she goes from syntax-twisted baby talk to more-or-less full sentences.
Sometimes she stares in birdlike fashion off into space (reminds of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein); at other times she devotes all her faculties to examining (and often destroying) some new object in God’s cluttered abode.
Now would be a good time to mention the astounding production design courtesy of Shona Heath and James Price. “Poor Things” begins in London circa 1900 and later moves to the Continent, but historical accuracy is jettisoned in favor of a sort of Gaudi-inspired steampunk ethos. The picture is filled with weirdly shaped and decorated rooms, bizarre ships (both seagoing and aerial), and city environments that ooze fanciful theme park artificiality.
The sumptuous photography by Robbie Ryan (“American Honey,” “The Favourite”) embraces both crisp black and white and pastel-infused color, and his frequent use of wide-angle lenses captures a visual warp that nicely echoes the gnarly subject matter.
The great joy of “Poor Things” lies in watching Stone’s Bella blossom into her own person.
She’s abetted along the way first by Max (Rami Youssef), a sincere medical student hired by God to be Bella’s companion, teacher and possible husband, and later by unprincipled lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who spirits Bella away for a European debauch and introduces her to the wonders of sex. (Or, as she calls it, “furious jumping.”)
(Ruffalo’s comic performance falls just short of mellerdramer mustache-twirling; his depiction of Duncan’s selfish pomposity is hugely amusing, and almost makes me forget his terrible turn in “All the Light We Cannot See.”)
Bella learns and grows. Initially she moves with the jerky tentativeness of a newborn colt; before long she’s doing a funky dance of her own creation. Her vocabulary blossoms.
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo
What doesn’t change is her singular outlook. Her intellect rockets right past societal norms. She has no filter and so invariably utters the truth in situations which call for discretion.
She even develops a sense of empathy and is distraught at the plight of the urban poor she discovers on her sojourn (this passage is a nifty parody of the Buddhist legend in which the privileged Prince Siddhartha ventures from his palace to discover for the first time the plight of his aged and diseased subjects).
Eventually her adventures lead to a stint in a Paris brothel where she succinctly identifies what each customer needs (men are so pathetically transparent) and delivers with a minimum of fuss, becoming rich in the process. (It’s not that Bella is immoral; she’s utterly amoral.)
Eventually the yarn returns to London where we learn of Bella’s origins and her life as the wife of a thuggish noble (Christopher Abbott). Happily, her world-expanding experiences have prepared her to deal even with the most rampant and institutionalized chauvinism.
For its first 90 or so minutes “Poor Things” is like a birthday party in which every minute delivers a new present to unwrap. It’s a cinematic feast that just keeps on giving.
But things start to bog down in the Paris section…Lanthimos aims for raunchy laughs, with lots of nudity and cartoonish coupling (the easily offended should steer clear). But after a while the film starts to repeat itself. Yeah, yeah, we get it. Men are swine or arrested adolescents. The effect could be had in a fraction of the time it’s given here.
In fact, “Poor Things” would benefit hugely from some tightening. Less is more.
Nevertheless, the movie is a fantastic achievement. And you leave with a newfound sense of respect for the artistry and adventurousness of Emma Stone.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 