Poor Things Movie Review
Poor Things is a 2023 scifi dark comedy movie loosely based on a 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. The critically acclaimed movie bagged several accolades including 4 Oscars at the 96th Academy awards.
The movie’s story follows one Bella Baxter on her odyssey of self-discovery after a major anatomical surgery that seems to have left her in a child-like blank slate…
The Good
The genre-defying production is a provocative movie, set in a difficult to distinguish period that has futuristic and fantastical elements against a Victorian era backdrop with steampunk cityscapes and characters dressed in elaborate costumes that makes one appreciate how it scooped an Oscar for Best Costumes as announced by a naked looking John Cena who was promoting his character in Ricky Stanicky.
If you watch the movie without knowing what to expect, it’s a carnival of oddness, a Frankensteinian tale that is hard to describe but stays with you in thought provoking ways.
Emma Stone bodied her perfomance as Bella Baxter in an alternate version of Frankenstein’s monster meets My Fairlady who starts off as an inarticulate and unco-ordinated tangle of limbs and evolves into a self-made, articulate, expressive, and independent lady about town. Award-winning perfomance.
The stunning visual aesthetics of the cinematography are reflective of Bella Baxter’s character arc, starting off on a black and white colour palette with fisheye lens useage and as Bella’s knowledge expands so does the colour get more vivid and have sweeping landscape shots… Even the movie’s soundtrack grows in sophistication along with the plot starting from its initial chaotic composition.
One cant help be drawn into Bella Baxter’s wide-eyed curiosity (re)learning the world and questioning the confines and the whys and wherefores of … well life.
Willem Dafoe is unforgettable as God – Godwin Baxter a skilled physician who looks more like Frankenstein – or rather Frankenstein’s monster in a clever juxtaposition of the monster being the monster’s creator and the story ultimately one of the humanisation of a monster….
Then there is Duncan Wedderburn played by Mark Ruffalo a leacherous cad whom you’ll love to hate until you cant help but feel some form of sympathy for his just desserts when the tables turn and he becomes the clingy partner.
“My heart has become dim towards your swearing, weepy person...”
The Bad
Poor things is so not family friendly, its middle act might as well as be Victorian-era erotica with a montage of sex, nudity and debauchery – furious jumping as Bella calls it.
While the sexual liberation could have been a vehicle for Bella’s character development, the movie dragged out that aspect more than they necessary, perhaps for the shock-factor… For movie with a run time of 2 hours 30 minutes, a lot of its parts could have been whittled down for a tighter more impactful plot.
The Ugly
Poor Things raises provocative questions about feminism, sexuality and the oppression of women that has been the hallmark of patriarchy with women treated as perpetual minors and objects not capable of looking after themselves or make sound decisions…. While oddily the men folk are unable to barely handle a slight measure of what they dish out were roles reversed.…
A disturbing aspect of the movie arises from Bella Baxter’s character if you consider it from the perspective of her ‘childlike’ consciousness in a mature woman’s body raises disturbing question on consent and her sexual liberation which might not be as liberating as its portrayed but rather grooming with rapey undertones of a misogynist’s wet dream…
Final Thoughts
Poor Things is an interesting twist on Mary Shelly‘s Frankenstein with a touch of My Fair Lady some Barbie and Alice in Wonderland in a peculiarly haunting film whose exact metaphor you might forget but all you know is that its provocative… It’s like watching something you shouldn’t be, but cant look away.
Its not for everyone.
Have you watched Poor Things? Thoughts?
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