Poor Things: Darkly Comic, Disturbing Satire Like Nothing Else You've Seen This Year

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A
Poor Things is like nothing else you’ve seen this year: A darkly comic satire set in a dazzlingly designed steampunk world. It plays like it’s for fun, but is built around a deep philosophical core, that is ultimately about living authentically.  
Does it spoil things to suggest that there’s something deeper underlying what is, for a very long time in the movie, just crazy, unpredictable, often disturbing fun? 
I hope not. Because it’s, in big part, the fact that the film can fly off into unpredictable directions, and yet remain grounded that makes it one of the year’s best movies.

It’s also lifted by the excellence of the cast, and, the art and costume design that makes the movie both an intellectual and a visual feast.
This is the work of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who is one of the few filmmakers who has been able to find the sweet spot between dark and dangerous satire, with tinges of real cruelty, and mainstream tastes. 
His previous movie, 2016’s The Favourite was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture (Olivia Colman won Best Actress). It had a similar mix of biting satire, comedy and pathos. But Poor Things takes it a step further. 

And of course, it helps to have a fantastic script. Lanthimos has again partnered with The Favourite co-screenwriter Tony McNamara, who adapted Poor Things from a novel by the late Scottish author Alasdair Gray. 
Emma Stone, (who is also one of the film’s producers) stars as Bella Baxter, the very odd ward of an unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). 
Bella wobbles around the house like a toddler in a full-grown woman's body who has recently learned to walk. When we first meet her, she mostly needs to be fed and cared for, like a toddler – this chore belonging to Dr. Baxter’s somewhat stern and slightly exasperated housekeeper and lab assistant, Mrs. Prim (Vicki Pepperdine). 
Dr. Baxter, is, despite hints we get about his strange experiments, a warm and benevolent man, whose face is disfigured by a series of strange scars, which play into his storyline. He’s Bella’s father-figure, gently stern, overly protective (he won’t let her outside of the house) and when she can finally talk, she refers to him familiarly as God. The two are quite bonded. 

Dr. Baxter teaches anatomy at the local college, where he is considered a joke by most of the students - except for young Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who is interested in what the great man has to teach.  

Dr. Baxter hires Max to follow Bella, and keep track of Bella’s development, and nutrition. And her development, particularly her intellectual development, happens very quickly. She has a relentless curiosity, and is drawn to deeper, and more philosophical questions about the world.  She also discovers her sexuality, or rather the pleasure of sexuality, and feels the need to share the experience publicly, which is more of a problem for Mrs. Primm to deal with.  

Ultimately Max falls in love with Bella, and with Dr. Baxter’s encouragement, the two become engaged. But before the marriage can happen, Bella is seduced by Dr. Baxter’s scheming attorney, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who, with obvious lascivious intent, proposes that he take her to see the world starting in Lisbon. Over the objections of Dr. Baxter and Max, Bella, who is strong willed and has her own very firm sense of logic, insists on going so she can experience the world before she returns to marry Max. 
If Wedderburn was hoping for an extended sexual adventure, with a beautiful woman he could control, he immediately discovers his mistake.  Bella is taking the world in on her own terms. Having been raised in the Baxter house, and without having to conform to society for approval, she isn’t bound by norms or rules.

This is particularly true of her sexuality. Since she has not been raised with the idea of shame, she has no barriers and feels quite free to explore it, and the idea of pleasure in general as it interests her.  
This freedom from boundaries is true of everything for Bella. She takes the world as she experiences it. What pleases her, pleases her. And when she encounters things she feels are wrong, she expresses that directly. With Bella, Wedderburn has more trouble than he counted on. 
There are of course, evils and sadnesses even in this  colourful steampunk version of the world, and Bella’s journey brings her in touch with those as well.  She encounters people who themselves have unusual perspectives, and add to her sense of the world. Some of them, high society, and others from what qualify as the lower classes. And she explores everything without negative judgement.
Taken simply on the surface, Poor Things is a lot of fun. The performances  are uniformly superb, a joy to watch!!  Emma Stone manages the moods and transitions of this unorthodox, unconventional character perfectly.  

This is one of my favourite Willem Dafoe performances, which is saying something. And Mark Ruffalo, plays Wedderburn with a faux upper crust, British dandy accent. And his way of telegraphing his character’s bad intentions, and his comic timing is a complete and total delight.  The great Kathryn Hunter is also terrific as the madame of a Paris brothel. 
But this is a movie with much more going on. 
Lanthimos is a master satirist. And satire, of course, is by definition edged in some kind of cruelty. This leads us to the pathos of what’s going on underneath it all. And that is also present in Poor Things.  

Dr. Baxter’s backstory, in particular, plays in that direction. His life is revealed in comments, dropped casually in conversation. At first these are slightly funny, but as the film goes along, what we learn evokes empathy. The film has striking things to say about how we ingest and rationalize the cruelty of the world around us, and sometimes project it onto others. 
Because this is Bella’s story, it is also a feminist story and interestingly, a companion piece to Barbie, although the amount of sex in Poor Things makes it an adult movie. This is not a movie to take your kiddos to.
But, both are satires, audacious in their way. Both films deal with female empowerment and very meaningfully, with the importance and necessity of having agency over one’s body, and owning one’s sexuality.  Poor Things’ setting, in this faux Victorian Edwardian era, where women were considered property, underscores that. 

But, like Barbie, the subtext of Poor Things is much more universal.  It is also, and fundamentally, about the courage it takes to find yourself and to live as that authentic self in a complicated world,  full of uncertainty, cruelties, and complications and things well beyond one’s control.
It is a joy that Lanthimos has put these things together, in a most unconventional way, in a movie that on the surface is a bright, shiny and crazy.
Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, written by Tony McNamara, Starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Mark Ruffalo, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine. In Theatres, Friday December 15.