I saw Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things (2023) this week. I had read the Alasdair Gray novel it was based on and wasn’t crazy about it, so I was curious how it would play as a movie. I’m pretty touch and go with Lanthimos’ work, but I really liked this movie. It’s not perfect, but it’s weird as hell and the cast is fantastic from top to bottom.
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
Poor Things tells the story of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), who used to be Victoria Blessington, a victorian British woman who commits suicide by jumping off of a bridge while pregnant. Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) recovers her corpse from the river thames, and surgically removes her stillborn child from her body. Since the baby shows some sign of brain function, Dr. Baxter transplants her baby’s brain into Bella’s adult dead body.
Yup! It’s totally fucked up, and you should be ready for some absolutely gross surgery scenes. Don’t eat during this movie!
The newly resurrected Bella quickly learns how to walk, eat, and masturbate as she navigates through the world. Dr. Baxter’s assistant, Dr. Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) asks for Bella’s hand in marriage, but the womanizing foppish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) swoops in and convinces Bella to run away with him on a trip to Lisbon full of sex and adventure, the two things she wants to experience more than anything in the world. After gambling and fucking each other’s brains out, Bella and Wedderburn’s relationship starts to sour. Wedderburn wants to keep Bella all to himself, and not let her express her thoughts, so she ventures off on her own and learns that not everyone is having debaucherous sex and living life to the fullest. Some people are actually dying of starvation! After giving away all of Wedderburn’s money to feed the starving children of Alexandria, Bella starts working as a sex worker at a brothel in Paris, where she learns about socialism from her new friend Toinette (Suzy Bemba), and about the darker side of men’s sexual desires from Madame Swiney (Kathryn Hunter).
Upon learning that Dr. Baxter is dying, Bella returns to London to marry McCandles, but their wedding is interrupted by Wedderburn and the operatically cruel General Alfie Blessington, Bella’s husband when she was known as Victoria Blessington.
It’s revealed that Victoria wanted to kill herself, because she did not want to have a baby with the sadistic Alfie, who holds her captive in his mansion at gunpoint and threatens genital mutilation, because we gotta remember; he’s a really bad guy.
Bella wrestles the gun away from Alfie, shoots him in the foot, knocks him out with chloroform and escapes.
Godwin Baxter passes away peacefully, and Bella, McCandles, Toinette live together in Godwin’s mansion with Felicity, another girl whom Godwin “saved” after finding her dead body from who knows where (played by a wasted Margaret Qualley, who’s wobbling around throwing a ball for two scenes) and Alfie, who’s brain is replaced with a goat’s. The movie ends with Bella deciding she’s going to continue Godwin’s scientific research, and Alfie on all fours eating grass and staring off into space.
Whenever I watch a new release in theaters, I like to go home and curate a selection of movies that aligns thematically with whatever I just watched, creating a little marathon for myself. Godwin Baxter likes to put pig’s head on dog’s bodies. I like to do this. Let me have this!
After Poor Things, I thought about other movies that were about a woman trying to find a sense of autonomy in a male dominated society. The list is long, as you can imagine, but I have two pairings I thought would be interesting.
Pygmalion (1938)
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Starring Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson and Marie Lohr
This feels like a no brainer, because like duh, if you’re gonna tell a story about a woman who is literally being crafted by a man, of course you’re gonna reference either the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who’s statue Galatea came to life, or the 1913 play of the same name by George Bernard Shaw, and it’s 1938 film adaptation.
Pygmalion is about linguist professor Henry Higgins, who takes poor flower girl Eliza Doolittle and declares that he can turn her into a high society lady.
(I’m sorry I could only find this fan made trailer with Baba O’Riley by The Who underscoring the scenes from the ‘38 movie, which is pretty funny.)
I actually like this version better than the musical remake My Fair Lady (1964). Wendy Hiller’s performance as Eliza Doolittle is much funnier than Audrey Hepburn’s. I might be in the minority of that opinion, but there you go.
The way Mark Ruffalo plays Wedderburn reminded me of a hybrid of Leslie Howard’s portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins, mixed with Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire (a role Ruffalo has played on stage, and there’s even a scene of Wedderburn yelling “Bella” like Stanley yells “Stella.”)
Bella Baxter and Eliza Doolittle both manage to work their way into upper class British society by charming the hell out of the stuffy elite crowds with their wit and blunt manner of speech.
Also both films have the theme of water running through them. Poor Things opens with Bella (then Victoria) throwing herself into the river. The screen is corner to corner blue. Pygmalion opens with a rainy night on the streets of London, where we see Eliza selling trying (and failing) to sell violets to pedestrians.
Poor Things also moves back and forth between beautifully shot black and white scenes to scenes shot in what is practically technicolor. It was shot on film, which is nice to see these days.
Pygmalion is nowhere near as gross, but there is a scene where Eliza is confused about being asked to take a bath, because apparently she’s never taken one which is… absolutely disgusting.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)
Directed by Charles Waters
Starring Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley and Hermione Baddeley
This one might be a head scratcher at first glance. The Unsinkable Molly Brown is a musical from the 60’s starring Debbie Reynolds.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown Trailer
There’s another water through line here. This movie opens with a scene of a baby floating down a river in a basket, then crawling onto the shore. Eighteen years later, that baby grows up to be Molly Tobin (Reynolds), a woman who lives in the mountains of Colorado with her adoptive father (Ed Begley). She loves to climb trees, kill rabbits for stew, and horseplay around with her boy cousins by punching them in the head. She sings a song about wanting to learn how to read and write, and see what the world has to offer. She meets the heir to a mining fortune, Johnny Brown, who asks Molly to marry him. He ends up selling his mine and becoming a millionaire, setting Molly up to wine and dine with the upper class society who are charmed by her when she says quaint country things like “well, drop my drawers!”
Molly’s journey of gross mountain woman to high society lady ultimately culminates to the big scene at the end of the film, where Molly survived the sinking of the Titanic! Yup, because this is actually a fictionalized account of the life of American socialite Margaret Brown, who really did survive the Titanic. This quirky musical is actually a quirky musical biopic! Gotcha! The sub genre strikes again!
These two pairings are obviously not as grotesque as Poor Things, but they all have similar connective tissue; Women who want everything the world has to offer, and the men in their lives who want to keep them in a cage.
Poor Things is currently still in theaters.
Pygmalion is available to watch on HBO Max and Criterion Channel.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime.