Oscar season is almost here, and December has seen the arrival of a potential frontrunner inPoor Things, and for good reason. Like Yorgos Lanthimos' previous films, it’s bizarre and bonkers, but it also brings the attention to detail in his craft to a new level and draws out an absolutely fearless leading turn from Emma Stone. It’s the kind of visionary work we get too infrequently these days, and to see something this certifiably strange get industry validation would be a greatly exciting prospect.
ButPoor Thingsshares much in common with another Oscar frontrunner,Barbie, the highest-grossing film of the year and an outright cultural phenomenon. At heart, both films explore feminism from a heavily existential angle, tackling what it means to be human just as much as it does gender. For all the hypeBarbiegot earlier this year for its successful pairing withOppenheimer, it arguably makes for a much stronger double feature withPoor Things.
What Barbie and Poor Things Have in Common
For as much hype asBarbiegot for its clever tackling of gender dynamics, becoming one of themost important and progressive films of all time, the film’s most fascinating angle was its exploration of existentialism. At heart, “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie), a sentient version of the titular doll, literally embodies an idea of womanhood. This is shown to have both positive and negative effects.
In Barbie’s mind, the fact that she can be anyone and anything gives an empowering message to young girls that they, too, can be anyone and anything they want. On the other hand, young Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) sees her as a symbol of corporatized feminism, setting impossible beauty standards and expectations for girls around the world.
Throughout the film, Barbie gradually gains sentience as she realizes that her idealism is complicated by the messiness of the real world. Women’s rights are far from solved, and the image of feminism that Barbie, as a product, sends out may be trivializing the issue (living up to an image also proves destructive for the Kens, who try and fail to embody toxic masculinity). Therefore, it’s only fitting that Barbie, at the film’s climax, chooses to become human as a result of her experiences. She’s learned that she can’t be entirely defined by one idea and wants to figure out who she really is.
Poor Things Cast & Character Guide
To celebrate the recent theatrical release of the outstanding dark comedy fantasy film, we will take a closer look at the cast behind Poor Things.
Similarly,Poor Things, abold and daring cinematicfilm, explores a young woman’s coming of age, this time in a more bizarrely literal way. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a recently deceased young woman, has been brought back from the dead after a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) replaced her brain with an infant’s. When we first see the resurrected Bella, she walks and talks like a newborn child, so her rapidly increasing intelligence illustrates an almost literal coming-of-age. Like Barbie, Bella begins the film with a fundamentally idealistic view of the world, and her naivety is shattered as she learns that inequality and oppression run rampant.
Through their protagonists, bothBarbieandPoor Thingsexplore the idea of a blank slate and how one’s identity is forged through experience, specifically through a female point of view. Barbie and Bella gradually learn that life is imperfect and that living as a woman brings a nearly impossible set of expectations from the larger world. However, as both directly deal with the social structures meant to oppress them, they come to a deeper understanding of themselves.
How Barbie and Poor Things Differ
Poor Things
Poor Things is a sci-fi romance film from The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos. The story focuses on the bizarre and fantastical world of Bella Baxter after a scientist named Dr. Godwin Baxter brings her back to life. The film is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray.
Of course, the two films differ in the details. WithBarbie, Greta Gerwig explores not only the nuances of feminism but also uses Ryan Gosling’s Ken, who could potentiallyget a spinoff, and his character arc to critique toxic masculinity as a social construct. Knowing Barbie will never reciprocate his romantic feelings for her, Ken embraces the idea of patriarchy as a way of coping (while also satisfying his love of horses), believing that dominance through power is the only way he can stay in control. In Gerwig’s mind, having to live up to social expectations, whether you’re female or male, hurts everyone affected.
Poor Things, in contrast, keeps its focus on social expectations of those experienced by women. However, as is befitting for a film with an R-rating, it explores feminism through more explicitly sexual material andcontroversial intimate scenes. Bella’s youthful awakening is shown through her discovery of self-pleasure. Throughout the film’s first half, she indulges in sexual activity with lawyer Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) with a seeming lust for life. By the second half, she’s out of money and turns to sex as a job to stay financially afloat. Some of her subsequent clients provide her pleasure, some provide pain, but all the time, Bella is the one in control of her sexuality.
The two films also differ in their approach to a “blank slate.” Barbie’s journey to the real world functions as a sort of Adam and Eve story, as she witnesses the human experience for the first time after spending her whole life in a literal utopia. Bella Baxter, however, is revealed to have been a cruel person in her previous life as “Victoria,” who mocked the socially oppressed that Bella treats with empathy.Poor Thingsthus becomes more of a nature versus nurture story, illustrating how one’s personality can be different simply through the environment they were birthed in.
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Two Fascinating Tales of Feminism and Identity
Poor ThingsandBarbieare easily two of thebest films of 2023, and they complement each other almost perfectly. Both explore what it means to be female in a world where expectations are seemingly impossible and how our experiences define who we are as people. And while the two differ somewhat in how they reach this conclusion, the ways they ultimately mirror one another are fascinating. In what’s been a fantastic year for cinema, one has to be grateful to see two films this visionary and imaginative find the audience and success they have.
