Weekend Watch: Poor Things, The Boy And The Heron
An unusual young woman and a wise, weird bird
Image Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Emma Stone’s on a journey of self-discovery and Hayao Miyazaki’s back. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite
The name Yorgos Lanthimos conjures up visions of weird worlds and quirky characters. Those from Dogtooth, for example. Or The Lobster. Or even his Oscar-winning period film The Favourite.
Yet if you dig beneath the stylish, oddball surface, his films also carry strong moral messages and fascinating journeys for their characters, and Poor Things is no different.
This is the story of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn.
Hungry for the worldliness she lacks, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.
Poor Things will most certainly divide audiences –– and I can hear the hot takes about the treatment of sexuality and morality being cooked up already. Yet while its defiant strangeness can seem initially off-putting, if you stick with Bella’s quest, you will end up finding something truly satisfying as she learns to deal with the world in which she has been unexpectedly born.
Stone is the standout, putting in a committed performance that morphs from naive vulnerability to steely intelligence, keenly aware of the men who look to manipulate her and slowly figuring out what it is she needs to do to survive.
Dafoe is similarly fantastic as her scientist “father”, who can’t quite stop seeing her as a project even as he tries to be a sometimes doting, sometimes distant, dad.
Ruffalo, meanwhile, is having a whale of a time as the grotesquely slimy and opportunistic Wedderburn, whose spoilt child turn is one for the books. He’s almost a panto villain, but the actor still makes him watchable.
Shout-out also to Kathryn Hunter, who shows up late in the film to offer Bella some world-weary wisdom and, as is her usual style, steals scenes.
This is possibly also Lanthimos’ most richly designed film, coming across as similar to the sort of worlds that Jean-Pierre Jeunet conjures. Does everything work on the level of Stone and co.? Not completely –– at least one subplot feels like a one-note joke that adds little to the rest of the film.
I cannot guarantee that you will like Poor Things. I can’t even predict that everyone reading this will make it through the whole film. But if you do, I firmly believe you will find something to appreciate here, and even, in its twisted way, love.
Poor Things is on limited release in the US now. It’ll arrive in the UK on 12 January.
Image Credit: GKids
If Lanthimos’ latest is about as far from family-friendly territory as you can find in cinemas this week, then those after something that everyone can appreciate –– though still has plenty of weirdness to offer –– can rely on filmmaking master Hayao Miyazaki.
The Japanese writer/director and his Studio Ghibli team have been making beautiful movies for decades, and despite him saying (more than once) that he’s retiring, Miyazaki keeps being drawn back to his favourite art form. And we can all be thankful for that, because his new offering, The Boy And The Heron is one of the best he and the studio have ever worked on.
After losing his mother during the war, young Mahito (Luca Padovan in the English language version) moves to his family’s estate in the countryside. There, a series of mysterious events lead him to a secluded and ancient tower, home to a mischievous grey heron.
When Mahito’s new stepmother disappears, he follows the heron into the tower and enters a fantastic world shared by the living and the dead. As he embarks on an epic journey with the heron as his guide, Mahito must uncover the secrets of this world, and the truth about himself.
Miyazaki’s new fantasy world is a completely beguiling, dreamlike vision of giant birds, ghouls, wizened wizards and so much more. Even before Mahito steps through the portal, there are beautiful, animated visions, including one of the most breathtaking portrayals of warfare’s impact on civilians ever committed to celluloid.
This truly is a genius at work and if some of the elements feel like Miyazaki taking a walk down his and Ghibli’s past, revisiting themes and concepts he’s explored before, there’s a reason for that, and they’re so well used here that you never mind it.
To put it on record, the screening I attended was the Japanese print with subtitles, but given that the English-language dub features the likes of Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Mark Hamill, Mamoudou Athie, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Karen Fukuhara and Willem Dafoe (it’s a good week for Dafoellowers, which no-one calls his fanbase but should), you’re in good hands –– or voice –– there.
The Boy And The Heron, with its gorgeous, hand-drawn (with some CG assists) style, is one to see in cinemas, lest Miyazaki announces he’s about to retire. Again.
The Boy And The Heron is in US cinemas now and will land in the UK on 26 December.