 |
| Emma Stone in "Poor Things" Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com |
When I heard director Yorgos Lanthimos was coming out with a film adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, “Poor Things,” I knew I had to read it. With all of Lanthimos’ previous films emerging from original screenplays, I was interested to see how he’d fare with bringing pre-existing ideas to life. Having read several dozen books last year (trust me, I make time for it), Gray’s was one of the most unique that I read, painting a colorful picture of distinct and wacky characters in a Victorian-era sci-fi setting.
Lanthimos brings his signature, off-kilter style to the events of this movie, mixing his celebrated filmmaking sensibilities with the author’s creative vision to construct a film that opens a beautiful and vibrant world.
In London, enigmatic surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) recruits the help of medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to study the physical and cognitive development of the resurrected Bella (Emma Stone), a pregnant woman who committed suicide and whose brain was replaced with that of her still-living fetus. When Bella wishes to venture out into the world, she’ll behold things she never thought possible.
It’s really something to have witnessed the career transition of Stone. While she had some terrific comedic performances in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s with “Superbad,” “Easy A,” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” she has shown a tremendous range over the last 10 years in movies like “Birdman,” “La La Land,” “Battle of the Sexes,” and “The Favourite,” the latter of which was Lanthimos’ previous film. She does a superb job in showing the gradual transition of someone who has to learn speech and proper body movements from infant-stages to that of an adult after being resurrected, presenting someone who’s awkward in her body, but soon becomes more and more confident in who she is and stands up to those who try to hold her back. As her character grows, Stone commits herself to the peculiarities of her character and shows a whole new side to her comedic abilities. In between the humorous aspects of her performance, Stone delivers some of her most powerful work in the film as Bella absorbs her new surroundings and is overcome with what she’s been missing. This is a movie where Stone shows a whole new range in both her body movements and vocal intonations, inhabiting one of the most memorable characters of 2023 cinema.
Mark Ruffalo delivers a comical, buffoonish performance as the stern and controlling Duncan Wedderburn, a lawyer who whisks Bella away for international travels. He has some terrific physical comedy with Stone, particularly a dance scene, as well as a lot of verbal back-and-forth that offers some of the best laughs in the film. The way in which Ruffalo shows his character trying to traverse the increasingly difficult situation with Bella is endlessly funny to watch, and as his comical misfortunes pile on, Ruffalo’s entertaining performance will have you cracking up at Duncan’s follies.
Dafoe is engaging as the soft-spoken surgeon who cares for Bella as she readjusts to her new life. He strikes a fine balance between the lunacy of his mad-scientist mind and the fatherly tendencies that he has towards Bella, giving us a character who understatedly displays his loneliness to the audience. There’s a melancholy to him from time to time as he describes the cruelties that he faced as a child, and we see his need to connect with someone like Bella, who, like him, is different.
The rest of the supporting cast has its share of fine performances that add a lot to the strangeness of the world that Lanthimos brings us. There’s Youssef as the kind and ambitious assistant to Godwell; Christopher Abbott as Alfie Blessington, Bella’s cruel husband from her previously life; Kathryn Hunter as Madame Swiney, an eccentric brothel owner; Suzy Bemba as Toinette, a prostitute whom Bella befriends at the brothel; and Jerrod Carmichael and Hanna Schygulla as Harry Astley and Martha Von Kurtzroc, two people whom impart their philosophical knowledge to Bella on her travels.
The screenplay by Tony McNamara, who co-wrote Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” with Deborah Davis, captures the spirit of Gray’s novel with its distinguished characters and innovative re-invention of the “Frankenstein” story. He brings us on a journey of Bella’s enlightenment as she ventures throughout the world, seeking big ideas to learn and new people with whom to converse. McNamara’s script takes the eccentric source material and maintains its weirdness, all while maintaining the emotions at the core of Bella’s arc. With the portion of the film before Bella’s expedition, the events of her travels, and what happens after, McNamara shows many details in Bella’s development as she goes from being sheltered to worldly. As Bella ventures to each new place, McNamara shows what the world presents to her, unfolding the globetrotting scope of Gray’s novel with immense detail.
Lanthimos goes full-force in bringing us into an alternate 19th-century European setting that we’ve never seen. Within the different locations, he mixes in an eye-catching steampunk aesthetic as we go from London to Lisbon to Alexandria to Paris. Bella’s seeing these places for the first time, so what’s significant about this sumptuous production design by James Price and Shona Heath is how, by utilizing a steampunk vibe in these settings, we as viewers feel as though we’re seeing these places for the first time because of how we’re experiencing them in this whole new way; and we feel this in particular during the scene where Bella explores Lisbon, which is the first stop on her odyssey. As we venture through the elaborately detailed locales, we see the world in both its wonders and woes, and Lanthimos captures the remarkable constructs of these worlds with cinematography by Robbie Ryan, who provided the camerawork for “The Favourite.” Just as he did with that film, he employs a fish-eye lens in several scenes to heighten the strangeness of the environments and scenarios that are depicted. Other than that, Ryan’s lensing captures every complex detail of the production design and visual effects that situate you in the film’s uniquely designed world. And, when you throw in Jerskin Fendrix’s bizarre and beautiful score that highlights the grand weirdness of what’s on screen, Lanthimos will keep you enthralled in this exciting and eccentric adventure.
It’s special to come out of a movie and think to yourself that you’ve never seen anything like that, and with “Poor Things,” that’s a feeling you’re sure to have.
Grade: A
No comments:
Post a Comment