Poor Things: A Visual Extravaganza and Oscar Favorite

“Poor Things” is one of the big favorites for the Oscars this year. And not without reason: the film scores with its visual extravagance and eccentric characters.

There is an extremely strange couple sitting at the breakfast table at the beginning of Yorgos Lanthimos’ film “Poor Things”. At one end of the panel, Willem Dafoe, whose face has been scarred by the makeup artists and looks like it was sewn together from old rags. Opposite him, Emma Stone crouches on the chair, picks at her food, puts some in her mouth and spits it out. Her Bella is a child in an adult body and the latest research project of surgeon Godwin Baxter. More of the experimental doctor’s creations are running around the garden. A dog’s body with a duck’s head, a pug with chicken feathers and various other crosses are part of the pet population. The head of the house’s cut face is also the result of surgical procedures that his father tried out in the service of science.

The heavily pregnant Bella, on the other hand, was already dead when Baxter pulled her out of the Thames after her suicide and did what seemed obvious to him: he implanted the unborn baby’s brain into the young woman’s skull and brought her back to life with an electrical device. “Body and mind are not quite synchronized yet,” he tells the good-natured medical student Max (Ramy Youssef), who was hired as an assistant and is more than fascinated by the “beautiful retard.”

“Poor Things” in the cinema: Bella wants to go out into the world

But Bella learns quickly and absorbs the world with childlike curiosity. At first it was just an experiment for Baxter, whom she affectionately calls “God,” but now the surgeon has developed fatherly feelings for his creation. However, with the daily learning processes, the test subject’s desire for freedom also grows. After her sexual awakening, the secluded life on Baxter’s estate soon becomes too narrow for the adventurous child woman. Without further ado, she runs away to Lisbon with the dishonest lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). With wide eyes, straightforward openness and the will to know, Bella steps out into the world, of whose strange contradictions she had no idea.

What began as a grotesque Frankenstein variation becomes a very special kind of “Éducation sentimentale”. Because this Bella absorbs experiences like a vacuum cleaner and, thanks to a strictly scientific education, a clear mind and a pure heart, draws her own logical conclusions from them have little to do with the normative world of thought of the 19th century. The concepts of propriety and jealousy that the increasingly possessive Duncan confronts her are alien to the sexually liberated young woman. She reads literature and philosophical writings on the deck of the cruise ship with increasing enthusiasm, encouraged by the cheerful widow Martha von Kurtzroc (Hanna Schygulla). However, the social injustice of the world, into which she is drawn into during a stopover in Alexandria and looking into the abyss of a slum, shakes her deeply. In a Parisian brothel, she explores the relationship between sex, money and patriarchal violence.

Childlike creature in an adult’s body: Bella (Emma Stone).

Foto: Atsushi Nishijima, Walt Disney Germany/dpa

Emma Stone’s acting range

At its core, “Poor Things” tells the story of female self-empowerment in the most bizarre way possible. The path here leads from the blank mental hard drive through a seemingly naive perception of the world to the radiant self-confidence of a woman who does not allow herself to be corrupted by social conditions. Emma Stone is terrific in this wonderfully strange and very physical role, in which she embodies the development process of her character with an incredible acting range. Having just been awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actress in Comedy, she is also likely to win an Oscar.

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In any case, “Poor Things” is considered the main favorite at this year’s Academy Awards and can already be celebrated as the craziest cinematic experience of the new year. This film is a great adventure, especially visually. Lanthimos designs a retro-futuristic setting that initially sketches a steampunk version of Victorian London in classic black and white, then, with the move to Lisbon, indulges in the colorful surrealism of Salvador Dalí and, a little later, bathes in expressive light and cloud paintings on a luxury liner. But “Poor Things” not only impresses with its visual extravagances, but also with its unusually warm-hearted attitude towards its eccentric characters. In “Poor Things” the director leaves the bitter cynicism with which Lanthimos’ “The Favorite” flirted far behind. It’s hard to believe, but in his bizarre world there is even room for a genuine happy ending.

2024-01-18 00:17:44
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