Reviews

Professor Marston & The Wonder Women (2017) - Film

Quick Summary: You would think that a movie about the man who created comic-book character "Wonder Woman" would be a paean to female empowerment. Unfortunately, Professor Marston & the Wonder Women is no such thing. While technically well-made, the film is shockingly misogynistic.

Title: Professor Marston & the Wonder Women

Release: 2017

Director: Angela Robinson

Starring:

Luke Evans (Dr. Willam Marston)

Rebecca Hall (Elizabeth)

Bella Heathcoate (Olive Byrne)

William Marston was an intelligent man with wide-ranging interests. A psychology professor, he developed the DISC personality profile, and invented the test for systolic blood pressure (Marston uses this discovery as a lie detector, however, it is not the same as the polygraph machine, invented by John Augustus Larson). He also, under the pen name Charles Moulton, was the creator of "Wonder Woman". Professor Marston & the Wonder Women explores Marston's relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, and with their partner in a long-lasting ménage à trois, Olive Byrne. Both women inspired the "Wonder Woman" character.

The three-way relationship first begins when Olive Byrne, an undergraduate student who wishes to be a journalist, enrolls in Marston's introductory psychology class. Marston is immediately attracted to the young student, and soon she is working as his research assistant. Elizabeth, also a psychology researcher, claims she never feels sexual jealousy, and that she is only professionally jealous of Byrne's relationship with her husband - except her first comment to Byrne is "Don't f**k my husband".

For a few months, Byrne's relationship with her mentors remains reasonably professional, until it is time to test Marston's new "lie detector". Marston tests the device on himself - and on his undergraduate research assistant, Byrne. To his delight, Byrne's answers reveal that she is in love - romantic, sexual love - with both Marston and Elizabeth. While Elizabeth is initially reluctant, she comes to admit that she is also attracted to Byrne (though still in love with Marston), and the ménage à trois is born.

Unfortunately for their employment prospects, none of the three participants in the affair is particularly discrete, and Marston soon looses his position as a university professor. The three consider breaking off their liaison, but it seems Byrne is pregnant, and so they set up housekeeping together.

Elizabeth, who wanted to be a well-respected researcher and denigrates women who are mere secretaries, takes a job as a . . . secretary. Olive, who dreamed of being a journalist, ends up keeping house for Marston and Elizabeth, as well as the four Marston children - two born to Elizabeth and two born to Byrne. Marston, on the other hand, takes up writing. After writing a few self-help books, he stumbles upon a new idea: a comic book featuring a heroic version of the "perfect woman" - which for him is a combination of Elizabeth and Olive.

Marston's goals with "Wonder Woman" are not only to make money and empower young girls, but to promote his own psychology theories. He also works in his sexual interests; he likes burlesque outfits and being tied up, so, therefore, Wonder Woman, who physically resembles both Olive and Elizabeth, wears clothing resembling the burlesque outfits of the day, and ties people up, forcing them to tell the truth with her magic lasso. Of course, it is only a matter of time before parents and others begin to notice that "Wonder Woman" has a lot of sexual themes for a children's comic book.

Around the same time as the comic book comes under scrutiny, a neighbour walks in on Marston, Elizabeth, Byrne while Marston is naked, both he and Elizabeth are tied up, and Byrne is kissing both while dressed as a nurse. The neighbour is shocked, and forbids her children playing with the Marston children. Elizabeth reveals that she doesn't like the life they have been leading. Elizabeth and Byrne argue, and Byrne leaves the home.

Following this departure and the continuing criticism of "Wonder Woman", Marston suffers a physical illness and is confined to a hospital bed. Fearing the worst, Elizabeth feels she must let Byrne know. And this is where the film becomes so painfully misogynistic as to be almost unwatchable. At the climax of the film, with music, lighting, and every other trick in the director's playbook supporting his statement, Marston berates his wife as an unjust, ungrateful prude.

Yes, you read correctly. The director wants the viewers to believe that Elizabeth's discomfort with the situation that has led directly to:

- the loss of her chosen career,

- the sinking of her family into near-poverty,

- her children being separated from friends and suffering discrimination,

is just a silly thing caused by her being a prude! If only she were more willing to share her husband and lover with one another, why, she wouldn't feel unhappy any more, and everything would be okay! Never mind the loss of both her career and Byrne's; never mind that Marston is now living a male fantasy, with not one but two loving women, one of whom is the main source of income for the family, and the other of whom does all the housework while he writes; never mind that Elizabeth was blatantly against sharing her husband, from the very beginning of the film; never mind that the relationship became sexual while Byrne was an undergraduate student and Marston was both her professor and her boss. No, the problem, according to Marston, is definitely that Elizabeth is far, far too much of a prude. Obviously. What a silly woman Elizabeth is!

Marston actually has Elizabeth beg on her knees for Byrne's return. Yours truly considered throwing popcorn at the screen, but realised that the stupidity of the film was not the fault of the theatre's janitorial staff, nor of the patrons sitting on the orchestra level (yours truly prefers the balcony). Also, she really did want to eat said popcorn.

Byrne agrees to go back, there is a shot of the three of them walking through the park, and the film ends. We are told by text on the screen over real photographs of the three that Elizabeth and Byrne continued to share a home after Marston's death.

The film's climax left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. Marston ends up in clover, but both women end up screwed (in more than one sense of the word . . . ). This film was one of the most misogynistic pieces of art I have ever had the misfortune to witness.

Don't get me wrong, though, the technical aspects of the film have considerable artistic merit. The performances, particularly that of Rebecca Hall (Elizabeth) are nuanced and thoughtful. The writing is snappy and, in some sections, extremely funny. While I did not care for the camera work (half the time the object that most interested me in a given shot was out of focus), the sound work is extraordinary. During the lie detector sequences, the audience knows what is "true" and what is a "lie" not from watching the little needle that traces blood pressure on a wax cylinder, but by listening for the sound it makes. If this film doesn't win awards for sound, I will be very, very surprised.

I do wish that this movie had actually been what it purported to be - a film focusing on female empowerment through the lens of the creation of "Wonder Woman", a comic which was, in the end, hardly discussed and almost completely superfluous to the plot.