‘Poor Things’: Emma Stone Shines With Manic Brilliance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Wildly Surreal ‘Frankenstein’ Vision

Alci Rengifo

“Poor Things” is the latest magnificently mad vision from director Yorgos Lanthimos. His cinema is one of the few true heirs to the legacy of the classic surrealists. Reality is bent, civilization and manners mocked, but never without genuine ideas. Some may find his brand of filmmaking off-putting, or too puzzling, yet it’s quite a liberating thing to see his work receive the kind of mainstream release as any other studio film. His latest is an adaptation of a novel by the late Scottish writer Alasdair Gray that turns “Frankenstein” on its head with anarchic joy. This time the reanimated being is a woman who wants to see and experience the world, even if the men in her life must learn what genuine independence means.

The setting is late 19th century London, where a medical student named Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) catches the attention of one of his professors, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Baxter has a scarred face and curious anatomy. He even has to produce his own digestive juices. The doctor recruits Max to assist in chronicling the progress of Bella (Emma Stone), a woman living under his care who speaks with the fractured vocabulary of a child. That’s because who she used to be tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Baxter aka “God” found her pregnant corpse and transferred the brain of her infant into the mother’s skull. Bella is essentially a mind in rapid development, to the point that Baxter suggests Max should marry her since she clearly likes him. Before vows can be exchanged, Bella falls under the allure of elitist playboy Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Off she goes to see new cities and sights, while experiencing her sexual liberation.

“Poor Things” is a grand culmination of the Lanthimos style, combining the edgy surrealism of “Dogtooth” with the satirical humor of “The Lobster” and subversion of period films in “The Favourite.” Unlike a lot of recent postmodern cinema, Lanthimos never lets the intriguing style of his movies brush aside the themes at play. The oddities on screen are, of course, what first traps us. Without exposition we’re introduced to Baxter’s estate where animals run around that could be a chicken with a dog’s head. At supper the doctor opens his mouth to allow a gas bubble to emerge and pop in the air. Cities Bella visits while on a trip of whirlwind sex and discovery (“furious jumping” is how she describes it) look like a combination of steampunk and Salvador Dali canvases. Skies are bluer and sunsets richer reds and oranges. This is almost an alternate world onto itself, richly photographed by Robbie Ryan, who also shot “The Favourite.” Wilder moments are captured with a fish-eye-lens that turns us into voyeurs. Some shots subtly reference Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” or borrow from the various “Frankenstein” titles. Jerskin Fendrix’s music is having pure fun mixing period sounds with the crackling electricity of a classic monster movie.

But the true richness is the story itself. The screenplay by Tony McNamara (also writer of “The Favourite”) is a picaresque adventure where each fresh stop in Bella’s journey signals a new stage in her growth. Lisbon is where she tastes libertine excess with the pompous Duncan, who warns she will never find a better lover than a stallion like himself. It’s a dreamlike locale with trams gliding high above and singers crooning melancholic songs from balconies. This is also where Bella begins to realize Duncan might be quite dull after she starts reading philosophy, with the encouragement of a wise ship passenger played by the great German actor Hanna Schygulla. A stop in Alexandria shatters Bella’s sense of the world when a cynic (Jerrod Carmichael) shows her a slum at the bottom of an arched stairway, where the poor suffer and starve. What a hardened heart already knows shakes Bella to the core, and leads to one of her most loving yet naïve gestures. 

Emma Stone delivers one of her best performances as the reanimated woman who wanders the world with a genuine sense of wonder and then, terrible discovery. Imagine if as adults we were barely becoming aware of how everything actually works. Sensations and pleasures are both promising but full of danger. When Bella and Wedderburn land in Paris, she figures working at a brothel run by Swiney (marvelously played by Kathryn Hunter) is a good deal. She can have sex and make money. But then she realizes there’s no choice in what clients you sleep with, from the smelly to priests. And yet, Bella has the freedom to choose what road she wants to take, which soon drives Wedderburn insane. The Casanova did have a heart and has fallen disastrously in love. Mark Ruffalo too delivers some of his best work ever, satirizing Victorian manners with every snarl and smirk. That still doesn’t give him the right to dictate to Bella. She seems confused when he proclaims he wants to marry her while expressing his desire to throw her off their ship. In a different vein, Willem Dafoe’s Baxter is not your typical, mad scientist determined to undo his creation. He’s such a figure of the Enlightenment that he balances scientific rationalism with his paternal feelings for Bella. He becomes the parent who lets the child fly out of the nest. 

Though the material may sound heavy, Lanthimos’ surreal sense of humor makes it a roaring good time. Bella’s dialogue is hilariously direct and to the point. She readily admits Max is better suited for marriage but needs to have adventures first, even if Wedderburn has “damaged me some.” Baxter aka “God” is always hinting at his physical woes as being the result of dastardly experiments his father carried out during childhood. As in his “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” Lanthimos has a keen sense for bringing out the absurdities of human rituals and behavior. Bella brings down the house when Wedderburn demands she behave during a snobby dinner, giving her exact phrases to use which she of course applies in the most embarrassing ways. We also get a glorious dance moment reminiscent of the brilliantly quirky throw downs in “The Favourite.” There was also much talk about the “graphic sex scenes” in this movie. It has more copulating than most recent dramas, but it’s not “graphic.” Some may be thrown off because Lanthimos captures how absurdly funny we indeed look in certain positions. The same can even be said for brief moments of gore, with close-ups of brains and surgical procedures. 

“Poor Things” expands and even surpasses the kind of radical feminist themes “Barbie” did so well this past summer. Like Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s colorful adventure, “Poor Things” is about seeking genuine freedom. You could even say they comment on what love truly is between individuals. In “Barbie,” Ken has to learn how to appreciate Barbie as more than just a pedestal object. Emma Stone’s Bella entrances men because she seems so vulnerable, frightening them into near insanity when she develops real agency and curiosity. One of Lanthimos’s cinematic teachers, Luis Buñuel, also featured women characters that went against the norm, like Catherine Deneuve in “Belle de Jour,” leaving the patriarchy confused. We can’t judge Bella for experimenting and bumping into scoundrels, because life is full of those. The best people can do is learn from their journeys. “Poor Things” is wonderfully inventive with unforgettable, even monstrous images, but its greatest feature is an infectious sense of human freedom. 

“Poor Things” releases Dec. 8 in select theaters and expands Dec. 22 in theaters nationwide.