Maybe it was Colin Farrell. Yorgos Lanthimos has a certain way with words, which work perfectly if Colin Farrell says them. However, that dialogue inside seemingly grounded movies untethers them from reality unmooring the movies a bit. With no Colin to lean on, Lanthimos goes for something different storytelling wise, starting completely untethered. That choice makes Poor Things Lanthimos’s best film to date: a strange, weirdo extravaganza where all ill fitting puzzle pieces find themselves a bizarro home. Don’t worry y’all, Colin will find his way here eventually.
Poor Things opens in some sort of scientific lab. Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) takes in a new assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to help him with his latest research project. That project is Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) a reanimated corpse of a dead person, which Max observes and documents/reports her knowledge progress to “God” daily. As Bella’s brain expands, she desires a life outside of this little London house she’s in. Her time comes when a charming lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), convinces her to depart to Lisbon together, and so being’s Rochelle, er, Bella’s journey from Milan to Minsk.
Anyone who knows Rochelle Rochelle knows what I’m hinting at with Bella’s journey. An exploration like that requires a committed, crazy actress to not only execute the very raw physical performance necessary for the movie to work, but also do it with all of Yorgos Lanthimos’s terse direct, dialogue so the story can go where Tony McNamara’s script wants it to go. Now, I know Emma Stone got an Oscar for La La Land, but this Poor Things performance is now atop my list of the best work she’s ever done. Stone completely transforms for this movie: there’s none of the chill Superbad girl or the La La dreamer in Bella. We basically see Ms. Baxter completely grow up onscreen, from 3 year old to full fleged adult. But not in our normal real world way: in a Lanthimos way, raised by an emotionless creator and adopting a very unique manner of speech unsullied by society’s rules. As such, Stone brings us along for the ride, filling in familiar rites of passage all of us go through, but through Lanthimos’s bizarre prism to make the journey all the more interesting and wholly specific, and not in poor taste, like Simple Jack. It’s a highwire act only a great actress could pull off, which Emma Stone has now officially vaulted herself into.
Because Stone’s performance is so good, everyone else involved in Poor Things raises their games too. Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo both gift award worthy supporting performances, with Dafoe channeling the complex Dr. Frankenstein and Ruffalo matching Bella’s ascent with his descent into emotionally bare fear and loathing. Lanthimos’s sets and cinematography are among the best of the year, creating a world that perfect fits Bella but is a layer or two removed from our real one, like Wes Anderson on a bad acid trip. The costumes and makeup are somewhere between Tim Burton and Technicolor period piece: poofy dresses awash in the rainbow and charmingly tailored suits to fit those masterful coifs and pitch black eyebrows. The CGI even disarms us with things as small as the twisted animal creations or Godwin’s post meal, um, bubbles and as big as a post rain filled luxurious sky. Yorgos Lanthimos builds wonder around Emma Stone’s magic, delighting audiences able to get on Poor Things’s specific wavelength.
The arrow is pointing up for everyone involved in Poor Things. This is career best work for a bunch of people here, especially Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos. I’m very excited to see if the 2 continue to push even further, and if Yorgos now has another muse, gearing us up for the insane Colin Farrell Emma Stone romcom we didn’t know we wanted until right now.