Poor Things - Libidinous
Thoughts On: Poor Things (2023)
A Frankensteinian surgeon reanimates a woman with a will overrun by libido.
Poor Things is Lanthimos' most complex, narratively layered and vast film to date; it sees him continue to innovate new cinematographic approaches to his absurd tuphlodramas, requiring brutal honesty in the pursuit of basic human elementals. For this, I would say that this is perhaps one of his best films, falling just under The Lobster, and perhaps Dogtooth. Mark Ruffalo and his character are intensely brilliant in this film, placing within it such admirable heart and foolish grounding. The humour is more biting and real than any other Lanthimos film, which is a shift in comedic style that I embraced with Poor Things being the least understated of all of Lanthimos' films for sure.
There is only one element of Poor Things and Lanthimos' current cinema that I feel an active absence in: Efthymis Filippou. Lanthimos works again here with Tony McNamara, who also wrote The Favourite - which I am inclined to say, after reflection, is the weakest movie in Lanthimos' catalogue from my perspective. What lacked in The Favourite presents an absence here again in Poor Things; a base morality. As cold as Filippou and Lanthimos' writing is, as brutal and absurd as it attempts to be, it is grounded by a sentimentality, a softness of the morals and a preservative precaution that I don't feel in McNamara's plotting and his construction of characters for Emma Stone. Both Stone and McNamara feel, to me, to bring an element of bleakness, perhaps of an American variety, that wasn't there in the quieter and more conservative writings of Filippou/Lanthimos. It is possible I speak only of personal taste here, but there is something of a slight pretence about the liberality of Poor Things that I found, not distasteful, but a little distracting and, ultimately, dissonant. This is most overt in its representation of prostitution. While there is great accuracy in its presentation of its facticity and the numb, dull meaninglessness of its horror, the fact of it is not complete. As much as it is then willing to present the insipid nature of the old profession, to deride the masculine impetus within, it does not reveal just how disgusting it is in all facticity, how twisted the female dimension is, with its omission of certain common acts that one could not deny to be demeaning. I need not tiptoe too much around it: Stone is depicted receiving oral - a height and light of the film's descent into the world of working girls in fact - but no one dare visualise her reciprocation; nor is it emphasised that she is letting strangers nut in her without protection (which is perhaps the most immoral aspect of the film and a betrayal of the working girl's way and indignity). It would indeed be far more difficult to numb oneself to certain assertions of Stone's character if the reality of her working as such was put to screen as bluntly as her belittling of its destructiveness. And herein lies a slight pretence about Poor Things. Stone's character is allowed to retain a dignity and image that the subtext of her character transformation does not necessarily deserve; there is a destruction and pain of the general movement of the narrative and its tracking of the obsessive libido that does not balance. We laugh a little too easily at Ruffalo's character then, when we ought to - in all morality - be far more willing to cry with him. In sum, a flash of a bj or, God forbid, semen would change the tone of Poor Things irrevocably, which has you question why it is disavowed. It is entirely presumptuous of me to say so, but I believe Filippou would have made us cry where McNamara has us laugh; Filippou would have done this story justice where McNamara protects Stone's image.
With that said, I will reassert that I find this to be one of Lanthimos' best films, with credit to McNamara's writing and Stone's performance. In its complexity it blunts its final punctum, and yet I found the narrative's nebulous and unresolving nature agreeable. We are presented notions of freedom and personal growth through self-subjugation in a tale that is ultimately concerned with libido as a life-force. The uncomfortably female telling of this is daring, but limited. I would want to watch this again before drawing conclusions on its meaning-making however. And so I eagerly await my chance to re-watch Poor Things.
