(courtesy IMP Awards)
Despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary, most people still adhere to the fairytale notion that life is orderly and predictable, a rom-com meets Hallmark card mentality that believes wholeheartedly that everything will work out just fine in the end, just believe.
But of course, fervently idealistic belief is one thing and the real world quite another, and while we may think reality works to a nicely clean and tidy logical approach, it of course doesn’t, never has and really never will.
One of the many glorious aspects of Poor Things, the Oscar-contending, Victorian-London-set masterpiece of charming weirdness from Yorgos Lanthimos (who directed to an adapted screenplay based on the book of the same name by Alasdair Gray) is that it wholly embraces the fact that life is messy, cruel and brutal while recognising in ways that really touch your heart, that there is light, hopeless and love sitting at its heart.
That inner core of good and wonderful things often doesn’t get to scrabble to the surface and nor does it always win in the messily combative game of life, but it is there and it does rise up to make our lives better and while things may go bleak and brutishly unkind, we can rest assured that somewhere somehow it will rise up to meet us once again.
But it has a lot to contend with because life is really strange, really nasty and quite cartoonishly odd much of the time and no amount of self delusional self talk will make that go away.
Not that Bella Baxter (Emma Stone in a stunning performance that deserves all the Oscar accolades and more) is going to even indulge in anything so divertingly false and unproductive.
Described at one point, in the beautifully accurate and astonishingly honest way that characterises much of this liberatingly odd but emotionally authentic film as “a woman plotting her course to freedom”, Bella is someone who can’t help but say what’s on her mind, driven by a childlike outlook on life (that comes from quite an amazing place, the divulging of which is far too much of a spoiler to be shared here) and an inner goodness that refuses to allow some of the outlandish and odiously terrible ideas prevalent in society to gain much currency in her onetime naïve and endlessly questioning mind.
Hers is a spirit that partially accepts things as they are if they are fair and true and cleave to the best and fairest parts of being human, but which is also bravely willing to challenge the darker parts of humanity and society and which refuses to accept that just because something has been done a particular way that it must always be so.
Some of that drive for calling out the status quo, first innocently and without fully understanding why it matters (simply that it does somewhere deep inside) and the knowingly and with purpose as she matures as a person, comes from her father and creator Dr Godwin aka God Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who is kind and loving for the most part though he is broken physically and psychically from childhood abuse, who urges to challenge a world that has treated her terribly and which she is not allowed to have access to.
That is until two pivotal people enter her life – Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), a medical student in God’s surgery class who is brought on to chart Bella’s progress from physically awkward, inarticulate Frankenstein-esque monster and who falls for her in a way he does not expect, and Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), God’s lawyer, who whisks Bella off for a lifechanging adventure through Lisbon (“of the Portugal” as Bella delightfully and idiosyncratically describes it) across the ocean to Alexandria and Paris, all of the cities and the ship rendered in all their playfully imagined light steampunk glory.
This journey remakes Bella and while there is much discovery and wondrous excitement at the thrilling possibilities of life – Bella is especially taken with “furious jumping” aka sex as she amusingly but breathlessly, enthusiastically calls it, and Portuguese egg tarts which she takes to with gluttonously euphoric gusto) – there’s also a slew of bitter lessons as Duncan, realising he is becoming the lesser to Bella’s ever more aware and curiously alive persona, begins to treat his companion with fury and cruelty than self-serving wonderment and pleasure.
The crueller and darker things become, especially aboard the ocean liner where Bella progressively comes into her own, propelled forward to more and greater by fellow passengers, impish octogenerian Martha von Kurtzroc (Hanna Schygulla) and her suavely handsome, travelling companion Harry Astley (Jerrod Carmichael) who find Duncan’s capriciously erratically abusive behaviour to be both amusing and alarming in equal measure, the more Bella grows.
It’s a momentum that can’t be stopped and as Poor Things gathers eccentrically heart and vibrantly fun-filled, strangely charming speed, Bella goes from a otherworldly oddity in the gilded prison of God’s mansion to a woman who knows her mind, her heart and who is brave, clever and caring enough to stand up for who she is and what she knows to be right.
Bella is quite simply captivating, enthralling and lovely and while the film may have weirdly stylish accoutrements and a graphic way of looking at the world – nothing is left to the imagination and you have to be prepared to handle a LOT in the course of a movie which is not afraid to nail its true colours to the flag of the moment, no matter how much it may shock you (the key is that Bella takes it all in her increasingly confident stride) – it is, at heart, sweet and honest and very true to the idea that the world and life may be often cruel but people, though not all, are capable of great beauty, inclusivity and love.
You may be tempted after watching the trailer to think Poor Things to be too confrontingly bizarre and unsettlingly fantastical and yes, while there are dog-chicken and duck-goat mutants wandering God’s home and a rich cinematographical style that may seem bleakly though sumptuously peculiar, the film is at heart a sweet and charming thing that, armed with intelligence, empathy and a joy at life’s capacity to surprise and delight even amongst its bitter moments, and a thrillingly imaginative story, inventively oddball visuals and stunningly engaging performances, celebrates the good that can come from opening yourself to the darkness and finding that light dwells within.
Check out this fun and informative interview …