The Best Movies of the Year: Poor Things Showcases an Emma Stone Tour de Force

There’s a lot to process regarding the audacity and originality of director Yorgos Lanthimos and writer Tony McNamara’s Poor Things. However, perhaps the greatest compliment I can give this reframing and feminizing of The Modern Prometheus story is that it made me wish that the sheer power of this adaptation was strong enough for Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to be dug up and reanimated so she could witness one of the best interpretations of her text and themes 200+ years later.

A crude thought? Certainly. But one keeping with the strident and impenitent countenance of Poor Things’ societal monster, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone). Of course, reanimation remains impossible, but who’s to say there isn’t a bit of Mrs. Percy Bysshe Shelley incarnate ghosting through the veins of Stone’s stellar performance?

In Bella, Stone channels the spirit of Shelley’s era-defying ideas and existential curiosity that was tempered because of the patriarchy’s view of women in the literary arts. Stone gets to play out not only what we can imagine might be the unfettered dreams of Shelley’s agency for herself, but essentially for all women. Bella is the aspirational proxy for all of us who dream of a version of ourselves allowed to roam the Earth without the conditioning of our parents, our social circles and eventually our sexual partners — all of whom, intentionally or unintentionally, whittle us down to the version of ourselves that is accepted most when we contort ourselves to please others. There’s a breathtaking freedom in witnessing Bella’s evolution from a monosyllabic, gangly-limbed woman-child to the worldly explorer who comes back home possessing certitude in her potential.

Of course, Stone isn’t the first to portray a female character who unapologetically claims her own space. From Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson to Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, up through a whole roster of women in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie who personify that struggle, including America Ferrera’s character, who so passionately articulates the minefield separating us from it. But Poor Things actually achieves that rare, destined confluence of Stone, the performer, and Bella, the outlandishly crafted character who makes such uncommon space for herself within her own story.

Stone is so singular with the choices that she makes embodying Bella, that it’s hard to imagine anyone else pulling off this tightrope walk of a performance with equal measure. Only Stone’s unique road to Poor Things — comprised of Olive’s overly dramatic lip-sync to Natasha Bedingfield in Easy A; Hannah’s sexual awakening at the hands of Ryan Gosling’s Jacob in Crazy Stupid Love; the theatricality of her Cruella and the machinations of Abigail in Lanthimos’ The Favourite — could have readied her for all that Bella would require. And having come through all of that with such presence and commitment, it was then that Stone could bring Bella to life. 

While there’s so much to admire about everything Stone accomplishes in Poor Things, one of the most mesmerizing is her precision in fine tuning Bella’s maturation journey from a creature of pure impulse to the world-weary woman who orchestrates an adult existence that is intentionally bold, bizarre and full of baser delights. Even with a script that separates the journey into distinct acts, in lesser hands, Bella could have devolved into a caricature of experiences. In Stone’s hands, she’s able to find that balance between Bella’s pragmatic observations regarding the world around her, while also imparting an actual life being lived, in real time, right before our eyes. 

Before Poor Things, I had a lot of admiration for how committed Stone could be in her comic pursuits. Whether she’s killing the execution of that sobbing Adele sketch on SNL, or currently going full, entitled, eco-Karen next to Nathan Fielder in The Curse, Stone has always been an expert in nailing the full spectrum of comedic tones. But her physical comedy work as Bella throughout Poor Things is nothing short of genius. Adroitly skirting past any ableism, she is utterly convincing at portraying the gangly, exploratory wonder of a child discovering (and using) all of her parts, while in a grown woman’s body.

Going back to her mastery of calibration, it’s in tiny increments that Stone imbues more confidence into Bella’s limbs, which allows her to make the steps getting there hilarious. Stone is channeling Buster Keaton’s dexterous use of body for punchlines along with shades of Peter Boyle’s wailing Young Frankenstein take on The Creature, and distilling them into her own more elegant amalgamation of a woman wrestling the potential of the flesh. Somehow, Stone makes the act of Bella grabbing her nanny’s “hairy business,” or experimentally giving herself “happiness” at the dining room table earnestly innocent. And then she bolsters those comedic choices by deftly weaving in an equally believable path for Bella’s verbal progression, from monosyllabic grunts to the proper use of “empirically.” Every line reading in Bella’s path to enlightenment is a masterwork of Stone bending the text to her witty needs. In her evolution of control, it’s when others seek to dictate the propriety of her actions that the tentative nature of her growth shifts into acts of defiance that will service Bella well for the outside world.

When Bella expels herself from the insular control of God/Dr. Baxter’s (Willem Dafoe) mansion, Stone gets to be her most daring as she propels Bella into womanhood. Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) whisks her away to Lisbon, brazenly biting off way more than he can chew in the self-appointed role of her new teacher. He has no idea that his initial arrogance in exposing her to the pleasures the world has to offer, be it decadent foods or the non-stop carnal delights of their furious jumping, will ultimately be the undoing of his insecure male ego. To wit, it’s so admirable that Stone is resolute in expressing every ounce of Bella’s pleasure while not worrying about what Duncan, or anyone else, is getting out of her experiences. In general, women are so conditioned to bend to the needs of others, it’s kind of remarkable to observe Stone be so true to Bella’s wants and needs without capitulation. She’s her father’s daughter in terms of exploration. The world is one big canvas of science experiments she ingests with precise and practical eyes. 

By the time Bella returns home to an ailing God and a non-judgmental Max (Ramy Youssef) — after the turmoil of Alexandria and the sexual anthropology of Paris — Stone presents us with a woman transformed through the acquisition of knowledge, language, perspective and the earned certainty of knowing whom she wants to be with, and what she wants to be. The impulsive little gremlin she once was is now the mistress of her curated Garden of Eden, replete with satisfying goat hybrid exes, a Sapphic companion and a doting husband. Stone’s self-satisfied smile at the end of Poor Things represents the rare woman character getting to live the dream that she created. She’s cast off the suffocating requirements of being Dr. Baxter’s living experiment, of being Duncan Wedderburn’s obliging lover, of being former husband Alfie Blessington’s possession. What’s left is a performance and a character that slays more monsters than Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley could have ever imagined.

Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, Total Film, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios and the upcoming Avatar: The Way of Water. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen