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The makers of the new British film Joy: The Birth of IVF likely had no idea how timely their work would be when it finally got released. Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Ben Taylor (a British TV series veteran of shows like Sex Education and Catastrophe, among many others), the film begins as an argument that young nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) deserves equal credit for the first successful birth of an IVF baby, Louise Joy Brown, in 1978. The person making the argument for her inclusion on a plaque being put up on the building where the lab work was conducted is research scientist Robert Edwards (James Norton), who, along with surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy), unlocked the puzzle of infertility by pioneering in-vitro fertilization, helping to fulfill the wishes of millions of women around the world who thought they were unable to conceive.
Purdy grew up in a strict, religious household under the watchful eye of her mother Gladys May (Joanna Scanlan), and when she first got involved in IVF research, her mother (and most of the religious community in the UK) thought it was a sinful practice and kicked her out of their home. Although Purdy herself was unable to have children, she felt that by helping other women, perhaps women like herself could one day know the happiness of parenthood. The small pool of women who come together during the earliest stages of testing became known as the ovum club, and the press hound both patients and doctors in hopes of showing that this was some kind of freak show or modern Dr. Frankenstein at work.
Instead, this core group of researchers and patients makes strides even as they're forced to defend their work in such a hostile environment during the late 1960s and most of the 1970s. Rather than see this type of science as something miraculous in and of itself, religious groups thought nature should be allowed to take its course, and if God didn’t want these women to have babies, why should doctors be permitted to say otherwise?
The work took 10 years, including two years off when no work was done because everyone gave up in frustration. But it was Purdy’s meticulous tracking of the research that kept the team on target and eventually made it possible for some of their patients to get pregnant.
I haven’t seen McKenzie on screen in a few years, and it’s great to be reminded what a strong and subtle actor she always is. Purdy is the definition of perseverance and never sets out to be any kind of maverick in the field of medicine. She simply wants to help couples start their families, and she was relentlessly harassed for her trouble. It’s meant to be frustrating, upsetting, even infuriating, and it all fuels the character and the movie.
On the other hand, Nighy makes every scene better. Dr. Steptoe is quiet, dignified, not particularly good with his bedside manner, but when they need him most, his patients know his cold professionalism is what they want on their side. It’s important to him that if something goes wrong, it’s not because of a mistake he’s made, and that matters to these people and exponentially boosts the authenticity of the story being told.
The film takes us on a few side stories that seem unnecessary, including a brief romance Jean has with co-worker Arun (Rish Shah), which only serves the story toward the end when she runs into him after years of being broken up to discover he has married and has a child of his own. It’s not enough to completely derail the film, but it does extend its already substantial running time. The film is a thorough, ambitious, and sometimes inspirational telling of a significant part of reproductive medical history, but it’s also a terrific reminder that good people can push back and overcome tremendous pressure because it’s the right thing to do. Who doesn’t need that message today?
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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