Poor Things is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and adapted from Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel. The movie follows Bella Baxter, a young Victorian woman living under the thumb of an eccentric, disfigured surgeon known as Dr. Godwin Baxter, whom Bella affectionately calls "God." Godwin is a brilliantly mad scientist who had stitched Bella back together after she tragically took her own life, replacing her brain with that of her unborn fetus.
The trailer
What followed in the movie was an accelerated coming-of-age story, where Bella started out with the motor skills, speech patterns, and uninhibited impulses of a toddler trapped inside an adult body. As her brain rapidly developed, her hunger for knowledge, philosophy, and worldly experience grew exponentially.
What makes the movie great is that it refuses to play it safe, blending grotesque body horror, biting philosophical satire, and high art into something utterly unique. It treats the process of becoming a thinking, feeling human being not as a tragedy but as a messy and triumphant adventure.
The movie follows five plot points: the creation, the confinement, the escape, the awakening, and the reckoning. In the creation, Godwin brings Bella back to life, replacing her brain with that of a fetus, so she starts like a toddler. In the confinement, Godwin hires a young doctor to document her progress as she rapidly learns. Max, the young medical student, falls in love with Bella and proposes.
In the escape, Bella is sent on an international steamship by Duncan, a lawyer who seduces her before Max can marry her. In the awakening, Bella acquires knowledge in literature, philosophy, and sex work. She sheds her childlike innocence as she realizes the vast suffering of the world outside and the fragility of men's egos. Finally, in the reckoning, she flees from Duncan and the arranged marriage and returns to Godwin. She inherits his estate, completes her medical school, and becomes a doctor herself, building a liberated world on her own terms.
Underneath its surreal comedy and explicit nature, the film tackles heavy philosophical questions about autonomy versus ownership and taboo and social conditioning. Because Bella lacks societal programming from birth, she views the world without shame, class structures, or Victorian prudishness. Her journey exposes the deep hypocrisy, cruelty, and absurdity of "civilized" society.
The movie's pacing can be best described as follows: the beginning feels slow and claustrophobic, then follows with a rapid and frenetic acceleration, and finally, a reflective and grounded slowing that returns to Bella's mature intellectual purpose and peace.
One weakness of this movie is that the film features relentless, uninhibited sexuality and vulgarity that can feel jarring, exhausting, or deliberately provocative to mainstream viewers.
However, Poor Things is not a film for everyone; its eccentricities, dark body horror, and explicit sexuality can be jarring. However, for viewers willing to embrace its wild theatricality, it offers a breathtaking, hilarious, and deeply empowering cinematic experience.
Rating: 75/100
