Important Fact:
Release Dates :
September 1, 2023 (Venice)
December 8, 2023 (United States)
January 12, 2024 (United Kingdom)
Running time : 141 minutes
Countries : Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
Language : English
Director : Yorgos Lanthimos
Producer : Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Ali Herting
Production : Searchlight Pictures, Element Pictures, Film4 Productions, TSG Entertainment, Fruit Tree Media
Distributed by: Searchlight Pictures
Based on: Poor Things By Alasdair Gray
Music By : Jerskin Fendrix
Star Cast : Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef
Together with Tony McNamara, who wrote “The Favourite,” Lanthimos brilliantly tackles Alasdair Gray’s comic book and delivers up a macabre sensory feast that is far apart from his earlier Greek weird-wave ascetism but no less subversive.
The year 2023 saw the release of a movie that not only astounded viewers but also highlighted the extraordinary skill of Emma Stone. The critically acclaimed picture “Poor Things,” which was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is a distinctive and unusual contribution to the cinematic canon. This blog will go into the world of “Poor Things,” examining its story, its characters, and Emma Stone’s captivating performance.
The Plot Unveiled
A dark comedy-drama called “Poor Things” centers on Emma Stone’s outstanding performance as the mysterious Bella Baxter. Bella is discovered dead in a secluded Scottish community, which is where Bella’s tale starts. The story, however, takes an unexpected turn when Mark Ruffalo’s character, Dr. Godwin Baxter, a bright but eccentric scientist, uses a series of strange experiments to bring her back to life.
Bella is brought back to life as well as to a world that has undergone a radical transformation. Her brain is swapped out for the one of a deceased criminal, and she is given a new identity. The scene is set for a story about identity, love, and what happens when you tamper with the lines between life and death through this change.
POOR THINGS
A film by Yorgos Lanthimos
In Theaters September 8th#PoorThingsFilm pic.twitter.com/BGrMQG6cyu— Poor Things (@PoorThingsFilm) May 11, 2023
Emma Stone’s Captivating Performance
Bella Baxter is portrayed by Emma Stone in a way that is absolutely intriguing. Her extraordinary acting skills are on display in her ability to transition between the naivete and wit of Bella before her metamorphosis and the shrewd, sneaky manner of the criminal whose brain now resides in her body.
Stone does a disturbing and captivating job of capturing Bella’s complex emotions as she struggles to come to terms with her new identity and the moral difficulties that ensue. Her chemistry with Mark Ruffalo’s Dr. Baxter gives the film’s bizarre story more depth.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Unique Directorial Style
“Poor Things” benefits from the unique and surreal touch that director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for. This is a perfect example of his talent for incorporating dark comedy with profound stories. In order to reflect the craziness and unpredictable nature of the narrative, Lanthimos creates a strikingly beautiful universe.
The Eccentric Supporting Cast
In addition to Stone and Ruffalo’s outstanding performances, “Poor Things” has a strong ensemble cast that enhances the film’s eccentricity. The intriguing roles that Willem Dafoe and Michelle Yeoh play give the supporting characters more depth and complexity.
A Thought-Provoking Exploration
“Poor Things” tackles important issues of identity, ethics, and the effects of scientific research in addition to being a lighthearted movie experience. The spectator is compelled to consider the ethical limits of scientific experimentation and the essence of humanity itself as Bella negotiates her new life.
Our civilization has failed in that we have allowed the word “interesting” to be used as a euphemism, a thinly veiled insult, or a placeholder for praise when none can be thought of. There are few things in life that are more significant than interest: having it, drawing it, recognizing it in every corner of the commonplace, and making it odd and novel in the process. It’s difficult to conceive that Yorgos Lanthimos would ever take offense because throughout his career, he has confused and excited countless viewers into using the word “interesting” to describe his work. In his sumptuous, ferociously gorgeous new picture “Poor Things,” he locks in on a woman with the same yearning. He is a filmmaker who revels in interest, in curiosity at the cost of comfort. Everything is new and intriguing to Bella Baxter, a literal toddler in a woman’s body – words, bodies, maps, music, candy, sex — and Lanthimos meets her curiosity with rabid glee.
A book-within-a-book-within-a-book that parodies Victorian Britain’s seemingly contradictory preoccupations with decorum and grotesquerie while also tease the modern reader’s own tabloid-trained taste for the lurid, Alasdair Gray’s comic book “Poor Things” from 1992 is a work of peculiar, obsessive genius. Adapting the book with screenwriter Tony McNamara (whose lascivious wit was so crucial to the success of their previous collaboration “The Favourite”) has shed its ornate literary affectations and, in a move that may enrage some Gray loyalists, its specific Scottish burr without simplifying the deep philosophical questions contained within it. What exactly constitutes a life or a person? Who has the authority to grant and revoke life? Just learned suppression accounts for adult behavior? And how do they achieve such crisp pastry?
an experience unlike any other.
POOR THINGS.
directed by yorgos lanthimos.
in theaters september 8th, 2023. #PoorThingsFilm pic.twitter.com/WLfhisIHDh— Poor Things (@PoorThingsFilm) June 8, 2023
In essence, Bella (Emma Stone), a spindly beauty, is the improbable creature in this Frankenstein story. Godwin (Willem Dafoe), a gnarled, facially scarred recluse and surgical genius whom she aptly and adoringly refers to as God, is her creator/doctor. The easiest way to learn Bella’s origin story is through the film’s winding, around-the-world plot, although a vertical scar at the base of her neck—which is concealed by a layer of waist-length sable hair—provides some insight. In the beginning, only Godwin, his housekeeper Mrs. Prim (Vicki Pepperdine), and the eager young medical student Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef), whom Godwin hires as a research assistant, are aware of her existence.
Max is instantly charmed by Bella, a fully mature woman who acts, speaks, and thinks like a kid while playing the piano in the drawing room and dumping her meal in his face while laughing the entire time. He believes she has an uncommon mental disorder, but Godwin is adamant that she is simply developing. She is, in fact, even though her appearance is unaltered but her increasingly bizarre sense of style in clothing. Every day, she adds 15 new words to her vocabulary. Her mind becomes more focused and acute. She learns what’s between her legs one important day and how satisfying it is to touch. She is perplexed by why anyone would deny the existence of such easily accessible pleasure when she is told she cannot talk, much less engage in, such activities in public.
Max, who is meekly smitten, finds it unfortunate that Bella later meets Duncan Wedderburn, a rakish, hedonistic lawyer who tells her that “polite society destroys the soul,” before promising to whisk her away, take her on adventures, and provide her with as much sex as she desires (a riotous Mark Ruffalo, nimbly mustachioed). She has previously been restricted to Godwin’s sprawling, curio-filled London home, where she has developed a deep interest in the outside world through atlases and her untrustworthy guardians’ tutelage. Therefore, the offer is alluring. Wedderburn’s inflated attractions might wear off after a few days, but Lisbon, their first trip, never does.
As Bella becomes increasingly more worldly, she learns how much there is to being a woman and how little there is to some men. She also learns the complicated answer to the question she asks after the first time she and Wedderburn rattle the bedposts: “Why don’t people do this all the time?” through a strange, sad, twisty, horny, often hilarious coming-of-age arc.
With a running time of 141 minutes, it’s a colossal absurdist odyssey that takes in a groaning buffet of settings and ripe secondary characters, all of whom are played with relish by a dream cast that includes Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, and Hanna Schygulla, but which is supported by a single, astounding performance by Stone. She relinquished the lead role in “The Favourite” to Olivia Colman while honing her cut-glass English accent, and she is now rewarded for her perseverance with what most actors would frankly describe as a once-in-a-lifetime job. Her speech, demeanor, and body language all deftly change from one scene to the next as she shapes Bella before our eyes from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. She also takes on large-scale physical comedy (including a hall-of-fame-level dance sequence between her and Ruffalo) with gusto, all the while highlighting the character’s growing, sinking sense of reality with a steadily hardening gaze.
Any less courageous or brazen a performance would probably fall flat amid the veritable firework display of formal technique and trickery with which Lanthimos illustrates his heroine’s dizzyingly expanding, distorted acquaintance with the world — a busy, swirling mise-en-scene that blends chintzy matte-painting artifice with eye-popping digital effects to evoke the disorienting awe of childish discovery from a cosmopolitan adult perspective. Once Bella leaves home, the image transitions from severe monochrome to hyper-saturated Kodak color. Instead of entering Oz, she enters a beguiling world of marshmallow skies, glittering vinyl oceans, and pasteis de nata. Robbie Ryan regularly uses the unsettling wide-angle lenses that were so prevalent in “The Favourite,” all the more effectively to convey a perspective that is nonetheless overloaded with where to gaze.
The startling work of production designers Shona Heath and James Price, whose visual reference points flit from Arts and Crafts to Art Deco, Victorian steampunk to Belle Epoque luxury, all strewn across sets that delight in the overt fakery and garbled exotica of golden-age Hollywood world-building, amplifies the film’s playfully elastic sense of period — a marked change from the novel, with its neurotically recorded dates and particulars. Lisbon, Paris, and Alexandria transform into top-heavy staged caricatures of themselves, as a little child might imagine them after flipping through a picture book.The magnificent clothes by Holly Waddington are also detached from reality: Her designs for Bella mark both her otherness from everyone else and her growing self-awareness. They are heavy on sky-high shoulder pads and oversized whipped-cream collars in aggressively clashing hues.
Experimental pop musician Jerskin Fendrix’s gnawing, atonal score, which relentlessly emphasizes one instrument at a time to match Bella’s switching fixations, stands out for its severity in contrast to this mood of sensual and sensory richness. Consider it a sonic reminder that Lanthimos, despite having the resources and freedom to create such a lavish adult dream, nevertheless exhibits some brutalist tendencies. He is a surgeon who will cut violently to the heart of the human condition and expose parts of the body that not everyone will want to view. “Poor Things” is oddly affecting in its intensity and abundance and may seem a great cry from the stern, austere asceticism of an early piece like “Dogtooth.” But in reality, they are quite similar creatures that are hooked on dissecting other individuals to discover what makes them unique, what makes them swoon, and what makes them interesting.
Conclusion
A must-see movie of 2023, “Poor Things” stands out in a year full of cinematic shocks. This dark comedy-drama stands out in modern film because of Emma Stone’s captivating performance, Yorgos Lanthimos’ distinctive directing style, and a compelling story. As we explore the eccentric world of “Poor Things,” we are once more reminded of the ability of film to upend our preconceptions and transport us to a voyage into the extraordinary.