For those of us who haven't always been DC fans but who found this summer's Wonder Woman to be phenomenal, this new film serves to increase our appreciation and love of the character. But before you take the kids to enjoy this real-life origin story, you may want to read up on your history. Or at least double-check the title.
William Moulton Marston, the American psychologist who created Wonder Woman, was inspired by not one but two women to create the Amazon goddess superhero. One was his wife, attorney and fellow psychologist Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and together they created a prototype for the first lie detector test. The other, Olive Byrne, defies strict description, as she graduated from student to assistant to lover of both Marston spouses. Their work together challenged not only scientific and academic tradition, but defied normative sexual and marital dynamics we still have today.
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, as a no doubt fictionalized and dramatized account of their life stories, falls invariably into familiar biopic patterns. Their work leads to their love, their love is questioned and threatened by outsiders, and their lives ultimately transcend the bigotry and traditions of their community. The film succeeds exactly in this: its subject matter can't be so easily tied down by genre conventions. Its radical feminism (Marston himself would be a fascinating psychological study of a radical feminist straight man) and surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of polyamory and fetishes make this flick the most interesting and empowering biopic I've seen in years.
In an age of salacious scandals and voyeuristic sexual psychodrama, the human heart is often forsaken in favor of other organs located south of the equator. Not so in director Angela Robinson's movie, where the erotic exploits of its leading characters are so much a part of who they are that each sex scene is effectively riveting character growth. In many ways, that makes it even sexier than, for example, any scene where Mr. Grey and Anastasia Steele do the nasty in Fifty Shades, though at a glance motifs of bondage and polyamory would beg otherwise.
Bella Heathcote is mostly forgettable as third-wheel ingenue Olive Byrne, the wide-eyed student whose assistance to the Marstons extends beyond the "vanilla". Luke Evans delivers a fascinating performance as an especially difficult character. He is not the piggish frat boy who gets turned on by two women making love; he is a radical feminist who experiments on his psychoanalytic ideas -- immorally, arguably -- with his livelihood and marriage in the balance. He is never afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, and his bare emotional state allows him to be frank and honest, even to a fault. But Rebecca Hall is the real MVP of this flick. She exudes a violent type of vulnerability I found at once hauntingly absorbing and a little too familiar. Encouraging her husband to adulterate and almost immediately harassing the object of his desire with threats, she defies simple description or clear motivation. She is a woman far ahead of her time but still in love with love, though perhaps in ways not socially acceptable at the time. Which is to say, of course, still not socially acceptable, despite some declarations that our culture is sexually free. This movie is far more timely than simply cohabiting 2017 with June's blockbuster.
IMDb: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
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