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Movie Review: Poor Things

Max Weiss — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 18:56:32 +0000

Poor Things is a steampunk, quasi-feminist reimagining of the Frankenstein story—an overstuffed odyssey that takes us from a mad scientist’s gothic lab to the streets of Lisbon and Paris, to a brothel, a luxury cruise ship, and beyond. And yet, in a strange way, it is one of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ most conventional films.

I say this with a slight bit of disappointment. I liked Poor Things—especially the super game lead performances from Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo. And I enjoyed the film overall—I’m recommending it. But I really wanted it to have a little more madness, a few more things that made me recoil, provoked me, shocked me, especially from the director who gave us the unsettling Dogtooth and The Lobster. Somehow, despite the wild-eyed and rococo premise, the film is a bit…decorous.

Let’s start with Willem Dafoe as that mad scientist. He is disfigured—because his own mad scientist father experimented on him when he was a boy—but just enough so that you take in his appearance, acknowledge the ungainly flaps of skin on his face, and move on. Now, there is at least something grotesque about him—because his innards were also experimented on, he can’t properly digest and needs a contraption to expel nearly solid burp bubbles whenever he eats. That’s the kind of bonkers imagination I was looking for throughout. It comes infrequently.

The film starts with an image of a pregnant woman about to hurl herself off the London Bridge. Then we cut to that same woman, the now gloriously named Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), no longer pregnant but with the mind and physical aspect of a baby. Yes, Dafoe’s Dr. Godwin Baxter has taken the dead woman’s body and implanted her fetus’ brain in her. Now, he will see what becomes of her and raise her like a kind of twisted father, of sorts, in a house filled with cadavers, mutant animals (a duck with the head of a French bulldog a goat with a duck’s head, etc.), and one forbidding housekeeper. Eventually, he will be joined by an earnest medical student, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), hired to chart Bella’s progress, who is devoted to both the scientist and his subject.

Stone is, indeed, incredible as Bella—it’s a performance that requires all the acting chops: physical comedy, as she stomps around like a drunken toddler; uncommon grace, as she contorts her adult-sized body into childlike shapes and positions; emotional depth, as Bella becomes more and more curious and cynical about the world; and carnal fearlessness, as she explores Bella’s mounting lust.

Inevitably, Bella wants to get out of that house. It starts when she goes on the roof and sees a vast world out there. Then, reluctantly, Godwin allows her to ride in a (closed) carriage and enjoy a remote lakeside picnic. Max becomes even more devoted to her—he’s falling in love. (A credit to Youssef, in a tricky role, that Max comes across as kindhearted, not predatory.) Godwin proposes that Max and Bella get engaged, which they do.

Her ultimate ticket to freedom comes in an unlikely form: A caddish lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo), who’s a rake, a lothario, and a bit of a dandy. He seduces Bella, easily—she has discovered touching herself and is now super excited about sex—and they run away together.

When Bella has her first orgasm with him, the film turns from black-and-white to color. (I won’t dwell on this, but this “feminist” fantasy—written and directed by men—tells on itself a bit when it takes a man to achieve this feat.) The peripatetic Duncan expects to have some sex with Bella, turn her onto a few of life’s worldly pleasures, and be done with her—but there’s a bit of a role reversal. He becomes obsessed, besotted, and doesn’t know what to do with himself. It’s great fun watching Ruffalo, who we are used to seeing in naturalistic roles, take on this preening narcissist. Duncan can’t quite figure out whom he’s angrier at—Bella, for enrapturing him, or himself for allowing it to happen.

In one of the film’s best sequences, Bella and Duncan end up on a cruise liner (he’s trying to kidnap her, essentially), where she meets a wizened grand dame (Hanna Schygulla) and her jaded young companion. The grand dame loves Bella’s insatiable nature, her lust for life—but her young companion (Jerrod Carmichael) is threatened by it and tries to corrupt her. It’s an intriguing sequence, seeing these various responses to Bella, and a bit too short in my estimation—but this is what happens, I suppose, when you turn a 336 page book into a two-hour movie.

The next bit involves Bella earning her way at a brothel—she does is partly because she likes sex and partly because she needs the money. Either way, this is another example of the film’s questionable feminist bona fides, but it does allow for another great performance: Kathryn Hunter as the rapacious madam who can’t decide if she wants to seduce, exploit, or devour Bella.

The less said about the final act—involving Christopher Abbott as the husband of Bella’s late “mother” coming to claim her—the better. It feels unnecessarily on the nose—and a bit dreary after all the romping.

All in all, Poor Things is a fun, occasionally bewitching diversion, with a pair of truly remarkable lead performances. I just wish it had gone further. Watching it, I felt a bit like Bella—intrigued, amused, but ready move onto my next adventure.

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Movie Review: Dark Waters

Max Weiss — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 16:10:00 +0000

There’s a famous scene in the film Erin Brockovich—which, like, Dark Waters is about a greedy corporation knowingly poisoning drinking water in a rural community—where our smart and sassy working class heroine played by Julia Roberts is confronting a room full of suits. “By the way,” she says pointedly. “We had that water brought in special you folks.”

It’s a show stopper of a moment, as the lawyers get a little green around the gills and put down their glasses.

You won’t see any moments like that in Dark Waters.

The film isn’t boring, per se, but it is serious-minded, almost to a fault. It stubbornly eschews crowd pleasing theatrics. It doesn’t pander. It leaves big moments (the receipt of a fat settlement check; a death in the family) off camera. It’s the rare American film that trusts in both the intelligence and patience of its audience.

In some ways, the film’s sober tone matches the personality of its protagonist. Mark Ruffalo, who also executive produced, plays the real life corporate lawyer Robert Bilott. One day, a farmer named Wilbur Tennant (remarkable Bill Camp, who deserves Oscar consideration) shows up at his offices in Cincinnati. He explains that DuPont is poisoning his livestock and he has videos to prove it. Bilott is baffled. “I’m a corporate defense attorney,” he explains. “I defend chemical companies.” “Well, now you can defend me,” Wilbur says stubbornly.

Turns out, Wilbur is an acquaintance of Bilott’s grandmother—who also lives in West Virginia, where Bilott himself was raised—so out of a sense of duty, he follows up (he’s also able to throw in a visit to grandma while he’s at it). He’s shocked by what he sees: sick cows staggering around with open wounds and a big field essentially serving as a cow graveyard. Naively, he believes that if he tells DuPont executive Phil Donnelly (a wonderfully unctuous Victor Garber), the matter will be cleared up. Donnelly feigns concern but does nothing. Bilott continues to look into the matter and the more he learns, the more horrified he becomes. It seems DuPont is not just poisoning cattle, but the community of Parkersburg’s drinking water as well, all to make their wildly popular Teflon products.

Of course, trying to take on a corporation as massive as DuPont requires money, time—more than a decade as the film underscores—and support. And Bilott gets that support from an unlikely source: his own law firm. Yes, there are many at the firm who want Bilott to drop the case (it’s particularly irritating to the partners because they were hoping to go after DuPont . . . as a client), but Bilott’s boss (Tim Robbins) mostly has his back. Corporate lawyers may get a bad rap, he explains, but even they draw the line at poisoning small town America.

There’s another source of resistance—and a surprising one at that: the residents of Parkersburg themselves. Many of them work for DuPont. Causing DuPont to pay off massive law suits, or possibly even shut down their chemical plant, could cause them their livelihoods. Here, the film shows how corporate America has us all in its grips.

And yet Bilott doggedly does the right thing—digging through the hundreds of boxes of data that DuPont dumped on him in discovery, interviewing scientists, and visiting community members. It takes a toll on his life. He becomes obsessed. His patient wife, played by Anne Hathaway, gets frustrated. Hathaway is given a fairly substantial part, as such things go, but make no mistake, it’s still the supportive wife role. (One of the many reasons I adore Erin Brockovich is because the supportive “wife” is played by Aaron Eckhart.)

Ruffalo plays Bilett as a mild-mannered man, not prone to histrionics. Don’t expect a lot of grandstanding in this film. He’s a put your head down, purse your lips, and get the job done sort of guy. Ruffalo is good in the role, but in keeping with the rest of the film, he dials down his charisma a lot. (If you’re looking for charisma, Bill Pullman provides it in abundance, but his role as a courtly but savvy trial lawyer is woefully small.)

Dark Waters is directed by Todd Haynes, a director I love to the point of hero-worship. But this is not an auteurist film by his usual standards. It’s an exceptionally made procedural with an urgent, earnest anti-corporate message. Everyone who made the film cares deeply—and it shows. I almost feel guilty for preferring Erin Brockovich. Sometimes I just like a little more movie in my movie.

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