The Meaning & Genius Behind Poor Things

Poor Things is a movie about a woman who gives birth to herself. It’s about her journey of finding her balance between all of life’s extremes, and is a beautiful and thought-provoking study of opposition:

· Black and white vs color

· Life vs. death

· Old vs. young

· Pretty vs. ugly

· Naïve vs. scheming

· Accepting vs. denial

· Truth vs. illusion

· Love vs. hate

· Good vs. pad

· Land vs. sea

· Rich vs. poor

· Kind vs. cruel

And many, many more.

The Garden of Eden, Eating the Apple & Knowing Good and Evil

In the Bible, God creates man and woman and gives them the Garden of Eden. Eve eats the apple and gains the knowledge of good and evil. In Poor Things, (Poor Things is a reference to those who don’t have the knowledge of good and evil) God creates Bella and brings Max into his Eden (their home and laboratory). Bella “works on herself” with the apple, the forbidden fruit (Historically speaking, sex and specifically pleasure from sex is forbidden to women. We are entitled to “taste” many things, but not the joy of our own sexuality.), and gains the knowledge of good and evil.

Duncan personifies the devil. He’s beautiful, (yet God is ugly) seductive, and he does not have Bella’s best interest at heart. Yet God honor’s Bella’s free will and lets her go with Duncan to learn about good and evil. Along the way she experiences every aspect and extreme life has to offer in furtherance of knowing about what is good and what is evil.

Bella Experiences Life

Along the way Bella is exposed to many extremes, and as the observer of life, she never has the burden of judgment, only observation. Good food (Bella loves the pastries in Lisbon) and bad food (she spits out the food in the fancy restaurant.), she sees people arguing and people in love, and she even experiments to see which of her thighs is softer. She Experiences life on land and on the sea which also personifies the difference between being emotionally trapped and physically trapped.

On board she meets a couple who represent another form of opposition. She’s white, old and accepting. He’s black, young, and resentful. She feeds Bella books attempting to expand her mind, while he crushes Bella, contracting her spirit and telling her that the philosophy she’s learning is meaningless. She sees both cruelty (man killing goose) and kindness.

Choosing Who You Want to Be

Here we witness Bella’s first opportunity to define who she wants to be. Because of her experiences she discovers that when she is around negativity, she feels like being cruel and she even takes giddy pleasure in cruelty. This is in stark contrast to earlier in the film when she sticks the knife into the corpse and says “squish, squish” without feeling. Before receiving the knowledge of good and evil, she behaved worse than she did once she received that knowledge. With Duncan (the Devil) she enjoys being evil, but she’s aware enough to realize she doesn’t like feeling that way. She wants to choose a different path. Because of this, she starts separating from Duncan and is no longer enamored with him.

In Egypt, Bella is shown poverty and pain as well as riches and extravagance. In a fit of despair, she gives all of Duncan’s money away but is too naïve to know she’s been taken advantage of or that money alone won’t help. She becomes despondent realizing she doesn’t want to be on either extreme or goodness or evil, but can’t yet find her balance.

Enlightenment

Enter Paris, the City of Lights where Bella reaches full enlightenment. This is where she begins understanding and integrating all that she’s learned. Because knowledge alone is not enough. Experience is necessary. Guiding her on this journey of enlightenment is the madam in the French brothel, who represents truth. The madam is old, covered in tattoos, is not chosen or wanted by customers, and she even bites Bella, causing her pain and to be a little afraid. The madam is also caring for a baby, who is hidden behind a curtain.

There is so much brilliance here I can’t even stand it! The madam represents truth. Truth hurts. Truth bites, truth is something we don’t want to see and often don’t choose. Like prostitutes, we often choose what is an illusion instead of what is real. The madam gives a powerful monologue about the difference between what should be, and what is. It’s a start reminder of how we like to cover the truth (with tattoos to make it more palatable) and don’t want to face or believe the ugly truth. Yet truth is what safely ushers in the next generation. A new generation that remains behind a curtain until we can’t deny it’s existence any longer.

In the brothel Bella learns to understand pleasure differently and the difference between connection and transaction in the giving and receiving of pleasure. She learns that connection brings meaning. The first time she has sex it’s transactional and leaves her feeling hollow. She changes that by asking the next man to first share a memory, second, listen to a joke, and third, to let her smell him. The memory and joke created a connection; they were human to each other after that. The use of smell in that section personified her ability to test and see if the interaction was satisfying to her or not. It represented her internal state, not the actual physical smell.

Lastly, Bella was visited by the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, showing her that even in the darkest of times, she was not alone. (i.e., the father and his boys, and the priest) and was surprised when the only love she experienced came to her in the form of one who was the opposite of what she expected. Instead of the educated white man, she found love from an uneducated black woman. Which allowed her finally, to bully become who she was. The strength of which, allowed her to withstand the temptation of the devil when he came to tempt her again.

The Prodigal Daughter Returns

Bella’s return home is a revamp of the prodigal son. She’s the prodigal daughter welcomed back without judgment by both God and Max. But before returning the Eden by marrying Max and moving back in with God, she is confronted once again by the Devil who returns her to the man who drove her to take her own life in the beginning of the movie.

Bella’s former husband Alfie is the exact opposite of Max, so of course Bella must experience him in all his fullness too. Max is kind, Alfie is cruel; Alfie wants to remove Bella’s sexual organs and impregnate her so she can become nothing more than an object to him. Max on the other hand, accepts Bella and continually asks for her permission and honors her desires. Including her desire to leave him at the altar. Alfie, the general, is awarded for conquest, and he desires to make Bella and their children his conquests, and Max, the pupil, has no free will of his own. He does what God tells him to do, he lives where God tells him, and he accepts Bella’s whims and directions without much question.

Bella removal of Alfie’s brain represents the concept of an eye for an eye. Alfie wanted to remove Bella’s genitals, which were the part of her that she was most driven by. In perfect symmetry, Bella removes Alfie’s brain, the part of him that drove him to be cruel and cunning, and presumably the part of him he honored most.

Shooting Alfie in the foot was also significant because it shows that truth will prevail. The phrase don’t shoot yourself in the foot means that we sometimes inadvertently hurt ourselves, especially when we are acting from a place of untruth, fear, or manipulation. When Bella goes back “home” with Alfie, gets trapped, and shoots him in the foot, we see the difference between pure intent, (Bella) evil intent (Alfie) and that the only way to save yourself is in fact to save yourself.

Back at home, safely in the Garden of Eden, but this time without God, Bella is free to give birth to herself in infinite ways. By studying and becoming a surgeon, by having both her friend and Max at her side, and with everyone in her world free to be as they are, not as they were told they should be.