This awards season has been filled with praise and accolades for the cultural phenomena that were Oppenheimer and Barbie. These box office giants were competitive with a much more quietly released film about the evolution of a woman brought into the world without any care for societal norms and no desire to follow them.
Poor Things is a film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and based on a book by Alasdair Gray that takes an extremely unorthodox view of the concept of feminism. While Barbie was bringing in huge audiences with its easy-to-digest message that women can do anything men can do, Poor Things has created a complex fusion of Frankenstein and modern feminist ideals.
The film begins by showing the life of an eccentric scientist (Willem Dafoe) who brings back to life a young woman who attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge. He does this by replacing her brain with the brain of the child she was pregnant with. Therefore, Emma Stone had the unique challenge of playing a grown woman with the highly susceptible brain of a child. Throughout the film, we watch this woman, Bella Baxter, attempt to navigate the world while knowing absolutely nothing about it.
She is quickly whisked away by lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) who worked with her scientist father. He plans to take advantage of Bella’s naivety by teaching her about sex and using her beauty for his sole pleasure. However, this backfires drastically for Duncan, as Bella has no desire to follow the standards of polite society. She says what she wishes, and does what she wishes, even if her plans don’t involve Duncan.
As they travel around the world together, Bella learns more about the different parts of society, facing them without judgment or prejudice. For example, when on their journey she sees slaves mining under horribly inhumane conditions, she takes Duncan’s gambling winnings to give them to the poor. She wails about how horrible people can be, as she’s just learning this for the first time.
Naturally, this film wasn’t released without its share of criticism. Some feminists believed that the fact Bella was given the brain of a child meant that she was essentially mentally handicapped and that her quick addiction to sex displayed “a middle-aged straight man’s fantasy about nymphomania.” They disagree with the idea that Bella was meant to represent a sort of unorthodox coming-of-age story, believing that the sheer amount of sexual content was gratuitous and unnecessary.
However, many believe Poor Things is a feminist film because it’s focused on the journey of self-discovery this woman goes through, not being afraid to show both the good and the ugly. Bella Baxter is the epitome of freedom. Although we may look down upon her often extremely poor judgment, we cannot negate the fact that she is learning how to live. She knows nothing of the ill intentions of the men around her, and she doesn’t understand that many of the things she says are rude and crass. She is simply alive.
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