JOY
(director: Ben Taylor; screenwriters: Jack Thorne/story Thorne & Rachel Mason/story Emma Gordon & Shaun Topp; cinematographer: Jamie Cairney; editor: David Webb; music: Steven Price; cast: Thomasin McKenzie (Jean Purdy), Rish Shah (Arun), James Norton (Bob Edwards), Nikolay Shulik (Julio), Bill Nighy (Dr. Patrick Steptoe), Joanna Scanlan (Gladys Mays), Tanya Moodie (Muriel), Dougie McMeekin (John Brown), Charlie Murphy (Trisha Johnson), Ella Bruccoleri (Lesley Brown); Runtime: 115; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producers: Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey; Netflix; 2024-UK)
“An entangling dramatization.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Brit filmmaker Ben Taylor (“Divorce”/”Cuckoo”) in an entangling dramatization directs and Jack Thorne writes the pedestrian script to this uneven but diverting true biographical period piece that recognizes the Brit pioneers who researched IVF. It acknowledges the efforts of the young Brit nurse Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) studying embryos in Cambridge during the late 1960s, who teamed-up with the biologist Robert Edwards (James Norton) and with the surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy) for some groundbreaking research into what would later become known as in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Purdy was left off the official record after her early death from cancer at the age of 39–in this film she gets the credit she deserves for her part in the research.
These intrepid Brit scientists had to stave off attacks from the establishment, a somewhat skeptical public and religious groups to get financing and continue their work without interference.
The miraculous scientific breakthrough led to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby in 1978.
The scientific breakthrough gave women throughout the free world hope that they could have children.
Let’s hope the creepy Trump Republicans and hypocritical right-wing evangelicals don’t also try and take away this women’s right to her own body like they did when their appointed judges allowed the court to overturn Roe vs Wade.
It played at the London Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 11/28/2024 GRADE: B-
dennisschwartzreviews.com