A daring treatment of a rich and exotic
relationship between three people that rarely receives this kind of sympathetic
treatment from conservative Hollywood. (Review by Patrick Compton - 8)
Rebecca Hall is scintillating in this
entertaining and proudly feminist “origin story” about the creation of the
American comic book heroine during World War 2.
Hall, the daughter of the late founder of
the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sir Peter Hall, made her breakthrough in Woody
Allen’s wickedly entertaining Vicky
Christina Barcelona and then backed that up in the TV miniseries Parade’s End, adapted from four
interconnected novels on the Great War
written by Ford Madox Ford.
This wonderful theatre and film actress is
the best reason to see this movie – based on fact – about a psychologist,
William Marston (Luke Evans), who invented the lie detector and then poured his
unconventional psychological and sexual theories (and practices) into his
famous comic book creation, Wonder Woman.
His twin inspirations were his wife,
Elizabeth (Hall), and one of his students at Radcliffe College (Harvard’s
sister establishment), Olive Byrne (Bella Heatchote). Hall is splendid as
Marston’s straight-talking wife, a brilliant academic in her own right who
bemoans the fact that her academic career has been stymied “because I have a
vagina”.
The trio have a polygamous relationship
which would be startling enough today, let alone during the deeply conservative
inter-war years in the US, but it’s refreshing that writer-director Angela
Robinson chooses to celebrate their radical relationship and what springs from
it, though she doesn’t underestimate the powerful social forces that confront
them.
The strength of the film lies in the strong
performances by the three principals who have each been given fully realised,
nuanced characters to work with, with the real emphasis being placed on the
relationship between Elizabeth and Olive.
Marston only turned to Wonder Woman (whose
look is inspired by Olive) when it becomes clear that his academic career is
threatened by the exposure of his private life, which includes notions of
dominance and submission, generally categorised as bondage. It has to be said
that the trio’s one major sex scene together is brilliantly conceived, full of
restraint and humour.
The intellectual thread that runs through
the film is that a robust commitment to telling the truth at all times,
whatever the circumstances, makes life in this flawed world a particularly
tough proposition.
The movie’s only flaw, if such it be, is
that the genesis of the comic book is rather skated over, with little emphasis
on how the dialogue and graphics were created. For the rest, this is a daring
treatment of a rich and exotic relationship between three people that rarely
receives this kind of sympathetic treatment from conservative Hollywood.
Professor
Marston And The Wonder Woman is currently showing
at Gateway. – Patrick Compton
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