User Reviews

This film is a journey through the absurdities of life that are conventionally accepted by society.

Bella is brought back to life by a scientist who swapped her brain with the one of a newborn, so she sees and experience the world without any social lens and she is indeed free from all the little things that cage us - she doesn't marry the guy her "father" wants her to marry, she's curious, seeks adventure and she looks at sex as a way to make herself feel happy.

I don't know if i read it correctly, but one of the themes that I see in this movie is the "belonging", as in "if I belong to someone I have to make sacrifices in order to be with that person, or I need to behave in a certain way to be worthy of this person", which has been a leitmotif of women's lives though out the centuries.

With Bella we don't see this kind of dynamic, because she acts only to make herself feel joy and happiness, so her happiness doesn't belong outside of anyone else and she has power over it.

Bella teaches us the importance of freedom at all costs, even when we are making the worst decision but it's OUR decision and we will face the consequences of it.

Love is often mistaken with possess, God loves Bella = he wants her to never leave her house.

The Lawyer loves her = he kidnaps her and brings her on a boat.

I personally love that she never feels sorry or desperate or in need to be saved, she is her own hero!

I really loved the fact that there are no good or bad characters, everyone has flaws and perks, even the protagonist herself.

Emma Stone is INCREDIBLE in this, she made me forgot she was acting, Defoe gives us a genius portrait of a mad genius, without being a caricature.

This has to be my favorite out of all the Lanthimos movies.

For the reason that I'm completely unsure who this film is aimed at (aside from film lovers like myself), I will not be recommending this one, but I'll also state that this is one of my favourite films in years. If that intrigues you, then maybe Poor Things is your cup of tea. Yorgos Lanthimos is a director with a clear vision that I deeply admire. I don't love all of his work, but the worst I can say about any of his films is that I appreciate them. Well, Poor Things just jumped to the top of my list of favourite Lanthimos pictures. This is a pure work of art, in the weirdest, most bizarre way possible. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the brilliance of Poor Things. Let's dive right in.

The film begins as Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) finds the dead body of a pregnant woman. After taking her corpse to his lab, he makes an incision and removes the baby from her body. He then takes out the woman's brain and replaces it with her baby's brain. Then, much like in the style of Frankenstein, he reanimates the body and she comes to life. He refers to her as Bella (Emma Stone) and refuses to let her leave home. Much like an infant, Bella learns to walk, speak, and also learns every detail of her body. Upon meeting Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), the two of them form a connection and flock away to roam the world together and get very intimate. That's the jist of what sets this film in motion, so if that already turns you off, I would recommend not watching it.

If you're still intrigued, well then this film is a masterpiece. This story is told in a very unique style. As they visit real places in the world, it's done in an incredibly artistic and surreal way. This film is aware that the premise is impossible, so it makes the visuals and details match the absurdity and I couldn't get enough of it. The production designers, art directors, set decorator, costume designer, and the makeup department all deserve endless praise for their work here. They brought Lanthimos' vision to life in stunning fashion. The look of this film blew me away, on top of me already loving the wackiness of the story.

Honestly, all I want to do is gush about this film. The camerawork, the score, every performance, and even the incredibly worded dialogue all just made this a remarkable achievement. Emma Stone deserves an Oscar for her performance here too. I haven't seen such an odd performance done this well and this committed in quite some time. She's a true revelation here and her chemistry with Mark Ruffalo was hilarious. He also deserves all of the recognition he's receiving for this.

Poor Things is a very rare kind of filmmaking that doesn't come around very often. Yes, it's weird beyond what words could ever describe and I even watched a couple of people walk out of my screening, but I just can't feel that way. The craft onscreen is undeniable and I could only dream of ever being able to make a film this masterful. In every conceivable way, I believe this is my favourite film of 2023. If you're someone who is up for watching anything and willing to give anything a shot, I seriously can't recommend this film enough. I'm currently adding it to my list of favourites, ever.

I thought it was going to be MORE Frankenstein-esc, however it wasn't really like that at all.

It's a beautiful movie, the set design, the costume design, the colour grading, all beautiful. And with a well-known cast, the acting is really good.

From what I understand, the point of the movie is for the empowerment of women; I had to look into this as I won't lie, I didn't really get 'the point' at the end!.. And honestly knowing that, that's still not what I got from it. You follow Bella Baxter, a woman who's corpse was reanimated after her brain was replaced with her unborn baby's brain, and watch her basically develop from a child that knows nothing, to a woman who's personality develops around the experiences she has. To me, the empowerment fell flat as it felt more like a person being groomed and taken advantage of because she had the brain capacity of a child.

It's an interesting watch, and my interest was peaked every time moments of her old life was brought up, which I wish it went more into! But even though that's not the point of the film, I still enjoyed it.

As a sexual and open minded person, this movie was just garbage. Visuals were the only thing that can be praised.

Baby brain placed in dead mother's body...sounds like a fun start as a horror fan. However, old men having sex with baby brain woman and calling it feminism cause she's to mentally immature to understand what they are doing is wrong. Bulls*it. Honestly, people were gasping at a sexy Irishmen slurping up bath water and calling it offensive, while this piece if garbage was nominated for Oscars... What were these actors even thinking? I love everyone in this cast! I don't understand what world we are living in.

Don't believe the Oscar hype. Skip this. Watch Saltburn. Or Oppenheimer. Or Barbie. Anything is better than this.

It's a great movie, but I feel like some of the themes that are put forward in the first half, like feminism or socialism/social inequality, are not addressed in the second half, so while it remains funny and thought-provoking, it kinda doesn't delevop on its messages. A comment I found on reddit: There were some aspects of the book that were kept, but those aspects lost their whole point and didn't take on a new one:

Godwin (according to McCandless, but the whole epistolary parts of the novel was removed) being Frankensteinian himself. In the book, Godwin's ugliness is what contributed to him being the compassionate and altruistic person he was. He was the most kind and extraordinarily good person McCandless and Bella/Victoria had ever met. McCandless's version of events made him physically ugly because he was jealous of Godwin (because, according to Victoria, she was in love with Godwin, but he didn't return feelings and she settled for McCandless). There was no obvious point in making him so ugly unless it was just supposed to be that his father experimented on him so he's doing it to others, but the film was not that deep or introspective, so this feels like a deeply (and unearned) charitable interpretation. This example also shows a shift from Gray's worldview to YL's darker one.

McCandless being there at all. It is unclear why they didn't just create a new character and get rid of McCandless altogether. This character is so far from the original, it is unclear why they kept him. In the book, McCandless, like Godwin and Wedderburn, is the illegitimate son of an upper class man who exploited serving class girls and women. According to McCandless, all three of these men were in love with Bella, which can be read as the men carrying out what their father's did; they were now upper class men who were too insecure to be with women of their own class and instead exploited serving class women (or Bella who literally has the brain and development of a child when they meet her). In the book, nobody liked McCandless. Even McCandless's account implied that Godwin didn't like him much (until later), and Victoria's account was that none of them like him but merely pitied him and McCandless grew on them. Tbh in the book, McCandless was giving (complex and damaged) incel, and he had some remarkably funny lines. In the movie, he has no dimension to him at all.

In the book, Bella is Godwin's assistant in surgeries, and this work precedes her decision to become a doctor. In the movie, she out of nowhere is like "I want to be a doctor!" but there is no background to explain why her character is saying this. She had shown no interest or skill in being a doctor or healthcare. The closest was an act of cruelty where she stabbed a corpse's face like 10+ times (which book Bella would not do). That was as close as movie Bella got to acting in a medical setting.

The title Poor Things. The book was called this because it reveals a whole society, where there is a class-based hierarchy wherein people exploit people out of (financial, emotional, intellectual, etc.) insecurity. There is little to no indication that people act on insecurity in the film; instead, they just assume that people act violently and cruelly because that's how people really are, so they have no use for psychology or psychosocial commentary. Another example of departing from Gray's worldview to YL's

In fact, the film's character's are not dynamic. Bella is the closest, and she is honestly a husk. In the book, Godwin and McCandless were whole people whom you empathized with. There is nothing to them in the film. They very boringly made Godwin a cliched paternal figure who controlled Bella and spouted off about Objectivity™ and Rationality™, and those characteristics were the complete opposite of Gray's Godwin. Godwin allowed Bella so much freedom, and he strongly pushed back on the coldness (and wrongness) of Rationality™ and Objectivity™.

Poor things is a movie with such a unique personality and atmosphere that you might find it very difficult to find a similar movie.

The world was intricately crafted in a way which draws you straight into the screen. Each city in the movie has its own feel, like they would in real life.

The characters are so outlandish yet feel so real, they feel like some real people that you would find walking through the neighborhood, but find themselves in outlandish circumstances.

The acting form Emma stone and Mark Ruffalo really nailed the movie for me, Daxter's progression into lunacy was beautiful to watch and the innocence In Bella's eyes as she slowly finds out the evil of the world.

Overall the movie has immaculate acting, second to none atmosphere and a great adaption of well known book.

I am not sure where to start, but you have to go and see this movie.

I am not even going to comment on the dark amazing humor, the absolutely insane script and the way the actors bring to life the characters. There is no denying on the excellence of the delivery.

However I would like to draw your attention to the mastery of the director. The camera angles that bring in focus the characters and the journey of Bella that is painted throughout the movie, starting from the black and white simple-minded creature, to the character that discoveers a life full of experiences and full of color in Lisbon, to the red anger on the ship and the darker palette of her time in Paris to a pastel life in the end. Absolutely amazing 👏

On a hot note, a very good film. It leaves room for reflection, for thought, for very interesting considerations. Also interesting is the atypical method, the unusual technique used to emphasize how raw the reality of human nature is. Precisely because it is raw, it is repressed by numerous social customs, conventions, and habits sometimes unjustified, more often senseless, and even more often so automatic that they are now considered "evening prayer." This also makes one ponder the possibility that human nature is itself conflated as a concept. For, crude and bestial as it is, it can also leave room for compassion, perhaps precisely to protect that part of its species that crudeness cannot accept. Also must be considered very well-written characters, very well written, phenomenal evolution of everyone. Very good colours. Very good cinematography. The script sometimes provocative, more often disturbing, manages to raise awareness of a more raw and natural, more original emotional part that often lies dormant. This is one of those films that has the power and characteristics to make you reconsider the human as a species or the human as an animal. It is one of those films that makes you reconsider the madman or the drunk that you hear talking aloud to yourself on your way home from the movies.

It is one of those films that, in my opinion, can be liked or disliked, but something will always leave a person with something if they make an effort to go beyond the superficial image of the video and instead engage in analyzing the motif of the film.

Often the "natural" behaviour is censored, hidden, by the "polite society" Harry speaks of (the man in the boat) that "it will destroy you", conventions that erase the naked, dirty and bestial as well as unique and original nature of the human, to make room for something always produced by him, but precisely to protect those who cannot accept this nature.