PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN (2017) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Angela Robinson
Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote,
Connie Britton, Monica Giordano, Oliver Platt
In some dramatic ways, the real story of the origin of Wonder Woman could rival anything in a comic book. The center of it all was a Harvard psychologist and shameless self-promoter named William Moulton Marston, who in addition to creating the world's most widely recognized female superhero, developed an early prototype of the lie detector. Every bit as crucial were the two women in Marston's life: his wife Elizabeth and their live-in friend and mutual love interest, Olive Byrne. This movie follows their unconventional three-way relationship from the late 1920s to Marston's death in 1947, which means that Wonder Woman herself appears relatively late in the story. (She didn't make her first comic-book appearance till 1941.) You can see Wonder Woman's silver bracelets (Olive wore them), the preoccupation with bondage (Marston had an interest in that), and Wonder Woman's "Lasso of Truth" (a de facto lie detector) long before they became fixtures in ink on paper. You don't learn much about who drew the comic - Marston was the writer, not the illustrator - and while acknowledging that Byrne was the niece of Margaret Sanger, the film mostly sidesteps the influence of early feminism on some pf the imagery. It's probably not a movie for fans who just want to watch Gal Gadot soar through the air and slash away at the bad guys. It's more like a movie for grownups who aren't put off by a little discreetly staged kinky sex. Finally, there's Rebecca Hall as Elizabeth, smart, strong and lethally cynical, at war with how much she's willing to risk (a lot) and when to back off and play it safe. The real Elizabeth Marston lived to be 100, and watching Hall's performance, you can see why. Any time she's on screen, you'd better be paying attention.
For a more comprehensive look at this subject, the Movie Buzzard recommends "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" by Jill Lepore.
