‘Poor Things’ Review – Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein-Like Tale Celebrates the Magic of Curiosity

In Yorgos Lanthimos‘ comedic and fantastical Poor Things, an adaptation of Alisdair Gray’s novel, the mad scientist does what Dr. Frankenstein never dared to do: he lets his creation free out into the world instead of seeking to kill it. It’s not fear that drives this decision but love, and it sets the tone for a dazzling, bizarre, and imaginative fairy tale of a journey fueled by curiosity.  

The mad scientist here is surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a disfigured medical experiment himself at the hands of a cruel father. His creation is Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a recently deceased woman he’s revived by replacing her brain with that of her unborn baby, rendering her an infant in a grown woman’s body. Godwin tenderly raises Bella as her young mind develops, enlisting an assistant in medical student Max (Ramy Youssef) to document her early stages of re-life. But Bella is a fast learner with determination and free will. The moment scamp Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) enters Bella’s life, helping along her development mid-sexual awakening, she embarks on a sprawling voyage of discovery and curiosity.

Lanthimos, working from the screenplay by Tony McNamara (Cruella, The Favourite), captures the highs and lows and growing pains of Bella’s journey with whimsy and wonder. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography, using a mix of 35mm film stocks, infuses even more personality into the mix. Bella’s sheltered, early development stages are shot in black and white, evoking The Wizard of Oz as flashbacks and Bella’s life outside the Baxter household switch to a vibrant jewel-toned color palette. The palette almost imperceptibly changes as Bella herself is changed by her evolution, shaped by life experiences. Wide angle, fish-eye lens gets employed to great effect, a means of both conveying the strangeness of discovery and scale. Holly Waddington’s costume design also matches Bella’s evolution to an awe-inspiring degree, telling a story in and of itself.

Much like her character, there’s a fearlessness to Emma Stone’s performance. Bella is driven almost solely by curiosity and a deep fascination with the world. Stone handles it all with a nuanced frankness, whether she’s exploring Bella’s clumsy, heavy-footed toddler behavior or finding liberation through sex, with zero concerns about taboos or impoliteness. Bella begins as a blank slate, eager to be shaped by the world around her. She doesn’t know cynicism until she feels the sting of it. She didn’t understand fear until she learned of it. It’s Stone’s comedic and blunt portrayal of Bella that makes Poor Things such a profoundly human experience.

Employing simple, old school techniques that include miniatures and ethereal painted backdrops, Poor Things celebrates a world made richer by curiosity. Lanthimos, through exquisite style and form, all but asks his audience to recall a golden era of cinema driven and shaped by audience curiosity. It’s a beguiling reminder that curiosity enriches us, even when it leads to painful encounters and harsh lessons. Above all, it highlights how an expanded worldview deepens empathy. For a story that draws from Frankenstein, birthing an inverse fairy tale world that shows what kindness might have afforded Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, there’s perhaps no more fitting theme than that.

Poor Things’ dedication to bluntly exploring the weirdest quirks of humanity, from infancy to adulthood, is the precise type of strange cinema that mainstream audiences will find off-putting. Yet through Stone’s audacious performance and Lanthimos’ awe-inducing approach, Poor Things fearlessly and humorously champions the magic of curiosity that’ll reward adventurous movie lovers.

Poor Things releases in select theaters on December 8, followed by wide release on December 22, 2023.

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