Rating: 4.5/5
In the Forest Gump and Benjamin Button tradition, this film explores an unconventional perspective on the world.
This movie, however, is good.
A depressed woman jumps from a bridge in London. A physically and emotionally scarred doctor named Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) finds her body. When he discovers she is pregnant, he experiments. He removes the living baby’s brain and puts it into the dead mother’s skull. He names her Bella (Emma Stone)
An adult-sized infant is a handful, so Dr. Baxter (or God, as Bella lovingly calls him) invites an admiring student, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), to assist him and observe Bella’s behavior.
Though God tries to confine Bella to the house, her advanced aging process and rapid understanding of the world (and her body) lead her to desire more than what the doctor can offer.
We follow Bella as she applies God’s empirical approach to her life, arriving at an array of conclusions through an ever-expanding logic.
The film’s visuals are reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, with a healthy dose of Karel Zeman’s The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. Everything has the hyper-saturated whimsy of seeing the world anew.
Emma Stone’s performance is the best I’ve seen this year. Her trust in Yorgos Lanthimos to make space for and give respect to her performance pays off.
This movie is Lanthimos’ most mature work. The film’s philosophy explores cynicism amidst the world’s cruelty. Here, he finds a more rounded, less jaded through-line.
My only major complaint is the runtime and pacing. The middle could have been tighter. While it doesn’t ruin the movie, it prevents me from fully loving it.
Still, one of the best of 2023!