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The latest feature from director Yorgos Lanthimos wears its literary influences with pride. The film is a candy-colored, steampunk inflected adaptation of the 1992 novel of the same name — itself a reinterpretation of “Frankenstein” — and invites audiences to grow up alongside its “monster,” Bella Baxter, played by the extraordinary Emma Stone. As an unabashedly bizarre and racy moviegoing experience, the movie will likely play well among critics, but may struggle to garner broader mass appeal. Still, Lanthimos’s creative and incisive critique of the human condition deserves praise.
The film’s emotional and thematic exploration of humanity depends a lot on Lanthimos’s use of color. After an opening shot drenched in blue, the first act of the film is shot in black and white. This sense of dullness perfectly reflects Bella’s sheltered life, kept from the world by her father-creator, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). When color roars back into the film, Bella fittingly escapes into the real world. Flowing first through the pastel tones of a whimsical interpretation of Lisbon, the film becomes visually and thematically darker as Bella absorbs the complexities of the world.
Alongside these creative uses of color, Lanthimos also experiments with different shooting styles. He captures many scenes through a wide-angle lens, suggesting the overwhelming naïveté that animates Bella. As she explores the world with wide-eyed fervor, the audience is invited to experience that alongside her. Other times, his compositions seem ripped straight from the stage, with stationary wide shots that capture the full physicality of characters and lend a theatrical air to the film and its performances.
Those performances and the characters they bring to life elevate the film above just an eccentric watch. Emma Stone in particular gives an electrifying performance. Somehow convincingly playing both a child and a woman simultaneously, Stone inhabits the joys and pains of growing up with nuanced emotional depth and convincing physicality. This theatrical dexterity gives her another legitimate shot at taking home the Best Actress statuette.
Stone’s costars are up to the task as well. Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the emotionally stunted Casanova Duncan Wedderburn simmers with danger and petulance in a welcome turn from his more heroic roles. It’s a part that contrasts nicely with Ramy Youssef’s more understated and practical Max McCandles. As Dr. Baxter, Dafoe, even under layers of monstrous prosthetics, delicately conveys both the pride and sadness of a parent whose child has become their own person.
Prosthetics make up only a small crumb of the visual feast that Lanthimos serves up with “Poor Things.” Careful attention to detail, sumptuous costuming, and extravagant set design make every frame a delight. Viewers are treated to a whirlwind world tour, with each location a teetering mountain of whimsical steampunk detail. These outlandish sets hold both real beauty and real horror — which Bella wryly describes as “nothing but sugar and violence.”
Within these inventive landscapes, Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara offer an off-kilter reflection of the social injustices that plague society, confronting viewers with the often hidden suffering that keeps it afloat. As Bella travels the world, she discovers not only the joys of science, art, and friendship, but also the pain associated with misogyny, poverty, and exploitation. As her journey reminds the audience, humanity is capable of great love and great cruelty. This dichotomy presents Bella with a complicated choice about what kind of person she wants to become and simultaneously challenges viewers with the same task.
This investigation of humanity, however, is tied directly to Bella’s sexuality. The film’s one major misstep is its overreliance on sex for character growth. Female liberation is realized through sexual liberation — Bella enters the real world due to a tryst with Wedderburn and later becomes a prostitute — yet the camera remains fixed in the male gaze. Additionally the frequency and length of the film’s sex scenes feel shocking for the sake of being shocking — failing to materially develop the film’s nuanced themes.
Bella, however, maintains a strong degree of agency in these exploits and emerges not only intact, but stronger. Returning home after her long travels, she reconciles her complicated relationships with her father and McCandles as a means of reclaiming her own identity. The more she realizes that identity, the more agitated the men around her become. It’s in this self-actualization that Lanthimos and McNamara justify their adaptation, turning the tragedy of “Frankenstein” on its head and giving it a more feminist inclination. Rather than indulging the idea of a sexually and intellectually liberated woman as a monster, the film rejects this patriarchal reading as Bella realizes her full potential as an equal member of society.
Anchored by some all-star performances, “Poor Things” will rightfully generate Oscar buzz. Made with a brazen and singular vision, Lanthimos and Stone’s achievements are towering and deeply satisfying. Its layers of strangeness might turn off some viewers, but the very human emotions at its center ring true. Topped off with decadent set design and costuming, this movie more than justifies its delicious reinvention of the classic “Frankenstein” story.
—Staff writer Daniel P. Pinckney can be reached at daniel.pinckney@thecrimson.com
