God, The Buddha, and Emma Stone

The Radical Spirituality of Jorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things"

This is an extra post I wanted to share before the Academy Awards on March 10. “Poor Things” has been rightfully nominated for several awards, and will likely win many. If you haven’t seen it yet, you will want to. Caveat: I’m not a movie reviewer, but I did teach film for a number of years, and I really couldn’t stop myself from writing this. It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t yet seen “Poor Things,” and plan to, read on at your own risk.

[It struck me as] such a good way of approaching your own work, seeing yourself as something early and something that could be made better. - Alisdair Gray, Author, “Poor Things”

Jorgos Lanthimos’ Academy-award nominated, Poor Things, is not an easy film to watch, but it’s an important one. Based on the 1992 novel by eccentric Scottish artist and writer, Alisdair Gray, the film is a visually and thematically rich, often disturbing, raucous tapestry. Reviewers have commented on its over-the-top scenes of sex and cruelty, while hailing it as a feminist masterpiece, an R-rated Barbie meets Frankenstein, a refutation of repressive Victorian ideals and Capitalist oppression, and a bawdy, coming-of-age story about women’s empowerment.

It is all those things and more, but it’s also a powerful spiritual exegesis exploring themes of redemption, love, suffering, and whether or not humans are “a lost species,” as one character says, or “improvable,” capable of becoming better people in a better world. It’s a mash-up between the stories of Eve, Lilith, and Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha), with a dose of rational philosophy, Socialism, and science for good measure. Think Genesis meets the Buddha meets The Enlightenment. And it’s brilliant.

But in the countless reviews I’ve read, not a single critic has mentioned this spiritual foundation. The dominant explication of the film is about the evil of the patriarchy, not about the evolution of humanity. I could chalk this up to theological illiteracy, but it’s more likely the result of marketing directors who decide the best angle to sell the film and send out press releases to reviewers with that viewpoint. Or, as one reviewer friend says, critics are just “godless pragmatists.” Either way, spirituality apparently doesn’t sell tickets. But when your main character’s name is God, it’s a gross oversight. This is a film about spirituality.

When your main character’s name is God, it’s a gross oversight. This is a film about spirituality.

The story follows the escapades of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman revived from the dead by a mad scientist/medical professor named Godwin (or God, for short). Early in the movie, we see her cared for in God’s opulent, black-and-white house, filled with a menagerie of fantastical creatures, as she learns to walk and talk. She’s an infant in a grown woman’s body, but she’s a quick study.

God clearly loves Bella with a fiercely benevolent paternalism and tries to protect her. He hires one of his young students, Max, to watch over her and it doesn’t take long for him to fall in love with her impetuous innocence. When Max discovers Bella’s origins, God gives him Bella’s hand in marriage, on one condition: they never leave his house.

Genesis 101 (but gender-bent). God has created Eve and given her an Adam, and arranged it so they can remain in innocent bliss forever in the Garden of Eden. But it doesn’t take long for Bella to get antsy, and soon she is demanding to see the world outside. This begins the reference to the Buddhist story of Siddhartha, the young prince (not-yet Buddha) who has every pleasure in the world but wants to leave the protected enclave of the palace to venture out into the city below.

Inevitably, Bella discovers pleasure and desire (yes, there is an apple involved. Don’t ask), and is seduced by God’s slippery, playboy lawyer into leaving God’s house for a European sex romp. At first, God says no, and Max tries to stop her, but Bella will have her way. God relents, knowing that she has already tasted pleasure and soon will taste suffering. He won’t stop her from experiencing all of life, but sews a wad of emergency cash into the hem of her coat…just in case.

So, off Bella goes. And the world becomes vibrantly colorful. She discovers the erotic pleasures of sex, music, dancing, and pastries, and her hunger is insatiable. Because she has not been conditioned by restrictive social mores, she shamelessly indulges herself in everything life offers with gusto, and in her quest for experience, cannot be contained. Her lover has become besotted with her, and is so attached and fearful of losing her that he kidnaps her to a cruise ship where she cannot wander.

Even stuck on a luxury liner, her hunger for the knowledge of life is voracious, and she befriends an older woman and her young male companion, an intellectual and a Cynic, who introduce her to books, especially the philosophical works of the Transcendentalists and the Enlightenment. In her usual manner, Bella consumes learning, much to the chagrin of her lover, in whom she has lost interest: the pleasures of the mind overcome the pleasures of the flesh. Her lover becomes enraged, but Bella dismisses him, pointing out, like a good philosopher (or Buddhist wanna-be), how hopelessly irrational he has become.

She desperately wants to see more of the world. On a stop in Alexandria, the young Cynic, cruelly determined to crush her illusions of life being all joy and pleasure, shows her Virgil’s pits of hell that lie just beneath the towers of the city. Like Siddhartha’s charioteer (they even arrive there in a suspended, steampunk carriage), he has revealed the suffering inherent in the human condition. There is illness, poverty, death. And the rich people above don’t care.

Bella, suddenly awakened to the reality of suffering, is overcome with grief and compassion, emotions she has not yet felt, and returns to the ship desperate to do something to help. Like Siddhartha, she has realized that suffering exists and wants to alleviate it. Her response is to take all the money her drunken lover has just won gambling and give it to the poor.

Like Siddhartha, she has realized that suffering exists and wants to alleviate it.

As a result, her lover is unable to pay their bills on the ship, and they are offloaded in France. In Paris, her man has become sniveling and pathetic, unable to deal with the reversal of his fortunes. But Bella is becoming a Buddha. She accepts the situation for what it is and is unperturbed by it. It’s another adventure for her.

She takes work as a prostitute to earn money (and some eclairs) for their stay in Paris. We could go here to Mary Magdalene (erroneously, but commonly, considered a prostitute) as the references are there, but the point is that Bella, like the Buddha, is seeking to understand life and it’s paradoxes, and holds no judgment about propriety.

Of course, her possessive lover is disgusted and becomes completely unhinged. His Eve is now Lilith, the temptress, seductress, slayer of men and babies (complete with Rossetti’s mythical wild, long hair). His attachment to his desire and his wealth have destroyed him. But, unable to see that he is the cause of his own suffering, he blames her.

Under the tutelage of a wizened Madame, Bella learns that good and bad, like and dislike are useless distinctions, and that the Dark Night of the Soul is a necessary part of Enlightenment. Day after Day, as Bella beds desperate, depraved, dangerous, and disgusting men, she becomes more Buddha-like. She does not judge her visitors, is no longer attached to her desires – even sex becomes just another thing – and, until she receives word that God is dying, seems perfectly content in her harlot’s house.

She returns home where God and Max are delighted to see her and accept her, even with her past. The Prodigal Daughter is welcomed and loved. She and Max decide to marry, but at the altar, her jilted lover shows up, this time with her “real” husband – a wealthy general - in tow. Because she remains curious about all of life, Bella agrees to go with this “husband.”

He turns out to be the cruelest of all the people she has met. As the epitome of patriarchal narcissism, he murders for fun and intends to imprison her as his own property (even to the point of surgically removing her clitoris so she will not enjoy sex– the killing of the Divine Feminine).

She also discovers something about her own past. It turns out that in her previous life as “Victoria,” she was heartlessly cruel, too. It is implied that she was so disturbed by her own – and her husband’s --self-centered cruelty, and the possibility of subjecting her unborn child to it, that pregnant, she throws herself off a bridge and “dies.” This, of course, is when God came in. He gave her new life (he literally re-births her with the brain of her unborn child), so she could be reborn and redeemed. Or, in the Buddhist reading, she “dies” to her illusions of self and is reborn self-less, so she can see clearly and know Reality.

Bella narrowly escapes her fate after accidentally shooting her husband in the foot with his own gun (He actually shoots himself in the tussle - nice little pun), and returns to God’s side just before he dies. As she is curled up on his chest (in the bosom of the Lord) with Max beside her, God utters his last words, which encapsulate the ultimate goal of Buddhist Vipassana or Insight meditation practice: “It’s all so interesting. What’s happening.” God, in his ability to observe his own death with total equanimity, has become enlightened. Or maybe he always was.

“It’s all so interesting. What’s happening.” - God

In the final scene, Bella, having taken over for God as Surgeon-in-Chief, sits Buddha-like beneath a (Bodhi) tree, and watches maternally as Max, Toinette (her French prostitute friend/lover), her former servant, Mrs. Prim, and the rest of God’s household frolic joyfully in the back garden, now lush and colorful; the return to Eden. Paradise Found.

When we look back at Bella’s character throughout the film, we see that she indeed behaves as her creator, Alisdair Gray, has advocated: “…seeing yourself as something early and something that could be made better.” Gray was fascinated with social philosophy and his instruction echoes Sir Francis Bacon’s belief that through the scientific method, humans had the potential to restore their minds to the “original condition” of Adam endowed with the knowledge of God, or a better one.

That explains Bella’s uncorrupted infant brain. From the beginning, Bella not only observes and offers impartial, Divine-like acceptance to all situations and people - including beggars, prostitutes, and those whose abuse she is forced to tolerate — but she continues to improve herself as the film progresses. By the end, she wisely and graciously presides over an equitable and just Eden.

The question posed at the heart of the movie is answered. Are human beings truly “poor things,” destined to be hapless victims of our basest appetites, or can we redeem ourselves? Can we become better people in a better world? It seems that the answer is yes: whether through God, Philosophy, Enlightenment, or even Science, it’s possible.

Of course, that’s the radical challenge at the root of the spiritual journey itself. Can we learn to do this thing called Life with a little more kindness and grace? Can we, like Bella, learn to accept and be present for all of it?