Poor Things (2023)
While I do like many aspects of this film, the general premise and story as well as basically all the actors and their performances, I am not seeing this 5 star masterpiece that apparently many others do.
The black and white start makes for a great setup with this mad scientist incredibly well played by Dafoe and a very convincing performance by Emma Stone, who throughout the movie show the gradual development from toddler to something resembling adulthood. The Frankenstein aesthetics is spot on and the whole weird steampunk-ish world works well for such a story.
Bella’s learnings and reactions to the world around her is interesting and funny at first. How she speaks her mind with no filter or any sort of social inhibitions is refreshing. But it also got old after a while and my main problem with the movie is how it doesn’t really change that. Her first experience with sexuality or dancing is genuinely funny and a way to reflect on social norms, but after about an hour it just became predictable scenes where she goes through the motions of discovering and blatantly commenting on various aspects of life and society. And while it makes sense that Bella talks and react like that, with how she came into this world with a baby mind in an adult body, as a viewer it almost removed any need to think or reflect by myself. Because it is just not her, everyone is speaking with little to no filter, saying things as they are and all that, but when all the included symbolism is being spelled out in capital letters all the time it doesn’t leave much for me to take home. Not that every movie needs to instill something that one can ponder and reflect on for days afterwards, but Poor Things generally seems like a movie that wants to be more than just empty funny calories.
I was waiting for all this to maybe built up to something greater insight in the end, but all we get is a dumb revenge fantasy against a horrible aristocrat? Again, spelling out the symbolism in big letters isn’t that interesting. Which is a shame, because Bella makes for a very unique character to throw into the world to use as a lense to focus on problematic current issues, but I was left with nothing when it is handled in such a clumsy way.
I feel like Godwin, played by William Dafoe, was the most interesting and nuanced character, because he was the only one that managed to challenge me in some way. How he is clearly an absolute abhorrent crazy scientist torturing humans in the name of science, but as his background is revealed and we see how he influences the people around him in the end, makes for a much deeper character portrayal than the others.
Rating: 3.5