Examining the Psychological Meanings in Poor Things

I suspect that most men find themselves in an unenviable position when trying to say anything intelligible or wise about the lives of women. After watching Poor Things, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone, I feel no less confident in expressing that sentiment.

Poor Things is an interesting viewing experience. It’s a story that transports you to the past while simultaneously making you more aware of the present and making you ponder, sometimes solemnly, what the future will be like. It’s easy and tempting to say the film deals with issues that exist between women and men, but really it disabuses the audience of this notion. There really are no issues between women and men in the world of Poor Things. There are men with issues who, for lack of awareness, raise hell and wreak havoc on the lives of women.

The film quickly establishes the setting as one where women are objectified and lack the agency of their male counterparts. In the beginning, the main character Bella is treated less like a person than she is a psychological mirror for the men in the film who project their own thoughts and feelings onto her. For most of these men the content of their projections never rises above the level of their base desire. Bella’s cognitive shortcomings are easily overlooked by them because they are only concerned with her physical features. Their entire view of her is informed by and filtered through the lens of her beauty. A larger point is being made about male-female relations, which are often entered into and kept alive solely by the power of attraction, which moves people in the direction of what they would like to do without forcing them to consider whether or not they should do it.

Known Unknowns

There is an interesting relationship that exists between the characters and truth. They have an ambivalence about it, a selective amnesia that is used to blot out and hide certain parts of themselves and their reality. At one point the character Godwin, speaking about his father says “They pushed the boundaries of what’s known and they paid the price. That’s the only way to live.” This statement essentially summarizes his life philosophy and his view of how people should live, and yet, in several moments throughout the film he shies away from it. He fails to live up to his ideals and when he is confronted by those ideals through Bella who personifies them, he struggles to accept their presence in her.

It’s commonplace for the relationship between a parent and a child to develop like this. Parents somehow think they can instill certain ideas and values in a child without eventually being challenged to live up to them. Bella goes along with this contradiction early on because she has the mind of a child and cannot for one second fathom how Godwin could ever act without her best interest in mind. But as she continues to develop, she challenges him more and forces him to reveal what is hidden behind his paternalism. Godwin has his own desire for control, which he satisfies in part by instilling a sense of fear inside Bella. Watching this manipulation play out, it’s impossible not to think of other people like him, who twist and contort their own minds until they are able to believe that a human being is somehow something less than that. Godwin accomplished this by labeling Bella as an experiment, but all he really accomplishes is the recapitulation of his own experience with his father who also deemed scientific progress to be the most important thing.

Unfinished Business

The film goes through the trouble of hinting at Godwin’s past relationship with his father multiple times to show that he is still anchored to it and his inability to be honest about that makes it difficult for him to be honest about anything else. His stated goal is scientific progress but really, his existence has become a matter of running from the past and everything else about his life converges on that fact. So much so that he lies to Bella instead of telling her the truth about her backstory and lies to himself about his reasons for doing so. He denies the fact that his relationship with Bella is about more than his morbid scientific curiosity, and eventually he admits that his bond with Bella satisfies what he suspects is a parental urge in him.

What’s interesting is that in order for Godwin to wrestle with his own experience of family he had to recreate it, except this time he served as a stand-in for his father. He had to become him in order to make sense of him and the things he did. The crux of the issue is that Godwin, for various reasons, wants to control his environment and Bella, for reasons of her own, wants to be free. She tells him “You love me too tight.” Which is exactly what it feels like when you are trying to separate from someone you love so that you can find your own identity.

Discovering the Self

Separation is never an easy task. Alexis Carrel said that “Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor,” which is why redefining yourself and your relationships is nearly always done in dramatic fashion. For Bella, the force that compelled her to seek separation was pleasure. The discovery of which represented a seminal moment in her growth and development. To her mind she’s found the secret of life, and she not only wants to indulge it but share it with others, and she’s disappointed when she’s reprimanded by the lady of the house for doing so. From Godwin she receives nothing but silence, and her response was typical and no different than that of any young adolescent mind faced with this situation. She ran off with the first person willing to indulge her interest.

This escape marked the next and most exciting phase of her adventuring and for a brief period of time she was able to experience pleasure without consequence or consideration, but this was short-lived. What she came to find after the initial thrill of her escape was that golden, gilded, ornate cages are still tools of bondage, no matter how pretty and exciting. A different type of confinement is all her companion has to offer.

She indulges, but after a period of time Bella begins to realize there are limits to what pleasure and even freedom can provide to an individual. Her seeking and adventuring made her blind to the reality of others and their suffering, the realization of which mortifies her. She is overwhelmed momentarily but then she is energized by her feelings, and able to find another side of life worth exploring. The pleasures of the flesh subside and are replaced by the pleasures of the mind. She’s fascinated by ideas and starts to wonder about the world and her place in it.

Down & Out

The film is Kafkaesque in the sense that instead of helping Bella to rise up from her sunken state, she has to go even further down to find her way out. What’s interesting and important and difficult for us to understand about the character of Bella is that she embraces her descent with a sense of amusement. For her, difficulties shouldn’t be avoided because they are also opportunities. She views difficulties as the fertile ground on which she can further explore the possibilities of her existence. With this attitude, even time spent in a brothel is informative. Her time there allows her to continue to learn and receive an education that is more empirical, one based on the lived experience of others and her own. She is made to see that sadness and dysfunction make us whole beings, and wanting to be happy all the time is a childish state. Acceptance of suffering, and not avoidance of it, is what leads to the overcoming of it.

Going Back Home

With this understanding, Bella returns home to find out the truth about her origins. She confronts Godwin and in doing so is able to achieve something better than the separation she originally intended. She becomes an individual in her own right, capable of honoring the story she is living and creating about herself, while preserving the parts of her relationship with Godwin that are still important. Her example may be what makes it possible for Godwin to do the same. He is finally able to renounce and break the fantasy bond that he has with his father, and by doing so, is able to be present in his relationship with Bella. He can experience his world with wonder and curiosity instead of trying to control every aspect of it.

For Bella, it wasn’t until she resolved the issues with her father that she was able to establish a mature loving relationship with someone else. One that encompassed desire while preserving her freedom and individuality. What I appreciate about the film is that it doesn’t simplify Bella’s bliss. This new loving relationship isn’t an end, but a precursor to her greatest confrontation with the past. The order of these events speaks to the psychological truth that love does heal, but often not until it has brought us face to face with our demons,

Bella achieves her victory over the past, and most importantly she does so with integrity. She remains curious and hopeful throughout the film. At the end of her journey, having arrived at the place that she is in, she is able to say “I am never happier than when I’m here.” She has made important discoveries along the way about what really brings her happiness, meaning, and purpose.