Poor Things is the epitome of disappointment, and it loses steam quickly
After seeing Lisa Frankenstein in theatres, I was on a bit of a Frankenstein kick. I could not get enough of the Shelley story and all of it’s variations throughout film and television. The concepts of playing god, creating life and creating monsters, it really was a never ending quest to view and digest every new spin people could take on this classic tale. And with all of it’s critical acclaim, Poor Things seemed to fit the bill.
At a quick glance, Poor Things tells the story of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman recently brought back to life by a disfigured scientist (Willem Dafoe). Bella is very sheltered but decides to explore the world and runs away with a romantic but slimey lawyer, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo). Along the way she encounters sex workers, philosophers, and troubled souls from her past who teach her about life as a woman in the 1800s.
Bella, as a concept, is a great character — a woman dealing with men trying to impose their will and wishes onto her, while she has no idea of how to behave in society and truly is herself, is brilliant. Her character’s mere existence is interesting enough on it’s own with the setting serving as a background. Stone is a skilled actor and it is nice to see her in a stoic role, one where she’s not relying on goofy voices and eye rolls to get her from scene to scene.
The subject matter is also timely and important; in an age where women’s issues are still a hot topic, the discussion the movie is trying to have is relevant, and needs to be had, but I just don’t think this is the avenue for it. This movie falls flat in it’s delivery, both beating audiences over the head with what it thinks the point is while also not understanding the source work, the book the film is based on, at all.
Poor Things wants to talk about the idea of men owning women, while really never having any of the men take any responsibility for the things they have done. Some aren’t held accountable at all or barely get more than a slap on the wrist (looking at you, Max, who was totally okay with having sex with a baby brained woman or Godwin, who fucking caused all of this chaos). And while I have seen some argue that the men are deplorable and that is enough to get audiences not to root for them, I disagree—the use of a nuanced character like this is better used in a film where there are no good versus bad. In a film where we are actively watching Frankenstein’s monster deal with the tribulations of being alive, and in this cass being a woman, I believe this is a perfect place for literal repercussions for sexism as it fits the narrative structure of extremes. Watching men hurt Bella and then hurt themselves while she does nothing would be perfect, and really only Ruffalo’s character falls into that trope. It would show how men build up narratives about women and do themselves in, not really knowing the real woman at all. Yet Godwin is forgiven, that freak assistant is totally fine in the end, and then the husband is turned into a goat man by brute force. I’m just confused with what the movie wants me to take away from it—are women not allowed to exist with their own agency, constantly falling victim to the narratives of men? Or are they girl bosses who take their power back by brute force? They could be both, but the narrative doesn’t support that. It doesn’t know what it wants except to show Bella masturbating.
The film wants to comment on the “born sexy yesterday” trope while simultaneously leaning right into it. The film tries to be sex positive, but through the lens of a director (Yorgos Lanthimos) who doesn’t seem to understand what sex positivity is, using it often as a manipulation tactic (The Favourite, one of my least favourite films of all time, ironically enough) or as something essentially unattainable (The Lobster). In Poor Things, there’s a lot of sex, but the director doesn’t really know how to craft the empowering narrative it intends. So the sex scenes are just shock value and that’s about it. Discussing this film with my friend, she compared it to the narrative of famous HBO stinker, The Idol, where yeah, it looks like all these men are exploiting Bella, but really she’s in control. And that’s allegedly “hot”.
Except that it isn’t hot. It isn’t even true.
Much like on The Idol, Bella is a victim — she is gaslit and exploited by almost every man she encounters. It isn’t until she starts working at a brothel in France that she finally gets a female love interest who just treats her like a person. This love interest is the only seemingly good person to exist besides Bella, which adds to the narrative of ‘women good, men bad’ which….is this what the movie intends? Is this the narrative structure? I have no problem with movies not having a lesson to be learned, but Poor Things insists that it has a moral to instill into audiences The problem lies in the fact it has no clue what the moral is.
I wanted to like this movie, I wanted to love this movie. But as the three year old Family Guy meme once went (the Godfather one), Poor Things insists upon itself while simultaneously standing for nothing. This happens every time I see ads for Yorgos Lanthimos’ movies. The marketing team promises me something that his pedantic and edgelord films can never deliver. He promises feminism but it’s always in this bizarre way where the women are victims but they think that they aren’t— but then they are and men are evil but never held accountable, or if they are held accountable it’s through brute force, but only sometimes as they can also be the makers of their own demise. Do you see how confusing this is? It’s like a parody of a European film you would see, where nothing makes any sense and the ending scene is a character smoking a cigarette and going, “Ah, c’est la vie.” This film is all aesthetics and no substance while it is insisting upon saying something.
Those movies might work for some, but not for me. I don’t think commenting on the horrors of being a woman while being a man who refuses to empathize rather than sympathize, really adds anything to a discussion, and really isn’t a discussion worth having. And a two and half hour film of being talked at about how womanhood is a curse by some dudes (Dafoe is somewhat sympathetic but that’s strictly because, like Gary Cole, I naturally love him in everything. Ruffalo, whom I usually love, is really barely present in this role but he’s having the time of his life, so good for him), while Baby Brain Bella is seemingly unaware of the influence she even has over these men so is it really empowering? Or is just happenstance?
While one could argue her ignorance is empowering, it can also be argued that these men are victim to the hotness and Bella falls victim to the “she’s so hot and doesn’t even know it” trope…yeah, definitely not the joy ride the director thought it was.
This review is wordy, with runon sentences and fractured thoughts, but that was all I could pull together after watching this. That’s all this film is itself, a bunch of pretty nothing leading nowhere.
This film failed to anger me, or even depress me. It was a long, dragged out conversation where men just spoke over me and while all the while encouraging me that “they understood”. It was a bad first date, a long meeting with your boss, a conversation you don’t want to have with your hipster, Uber driver. This just left me exhausted, tired of having to say the same things over and over again when it comes to movies where men are talking about women.
But what do I know? Maybe I just need Willem Defoe to put a baby brain inside of me so I can watch this film understand what it means to be a woman.