‘Joy’ Review: The Clash Between Religion and Science Over the Early Stages of IVF Feels All Too Prescient | London Film Festival

In Vitro Fertilization, IVF, is a modern miracle, with 12 million babies born out of this process since it was first pioneered in the 1970s. You’d assume, based on decades of overwhelming goodwill from the public, that a crowd-pleasing biopic taking the audience behind the science would feel triumphant – but it’s arriving at a time when, for a lot of viewers, a celebration of a groundbreaking discovery can only feel bittersweet, with the obstacles it depicts newly put back in place. Set to arrive on Netflix in late November, a potential change of Presidential administration in the United States just weeks before could wind up overshadowing its optimistic view of how science has helped millions start families, with the devout religious arguments against IVF by various antagonists within the movie now unleashed once again in the real world. A feel-good, underdog story could curdle and turn sour within the weeks, feeling like a relic of the past. 

This real-world context, albeit from the opposite side of the Atlantic to where this story takes place, is a huge part of why I’m being more forgiving of Joy despite more than a few concerns with its storytelling and characterization decisions. I haven’t got the heart of stone critics are required to be in possession of, and I wasn’t able to put up a wall of defense solid enough to stop me being moved by its broad emotional beats. No, it doesn’t totally succeed in its approach to focus on the scientists at the expense of the patients, nor does it really care about the specifics of the science itself so much as it does the power of it. But as an against-all-odds crowd pleaser, where the triumph is a breakthrough which could benefit people’s lives in the face of a culturally conservative pushback, it’s incredibly easy to be charmed by. 

In the late 1960s, Cambridge-based nurse Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) is introduced to physiologist Robert Edwards (James Norton), a man with one goal in life: to cure childlessness. His research into what would become known as IVF has made him into something of a punchline in the medical community and the media – one newspaper dubs him “Doctor Frankenstein”, and former Nobel Prize winner James Watson even goes as far as to compare his stated proposals to that of Nazi physician Josef Mengele. Without being too heavy handed, screenwriter Jack Thorne clearly draws parallels to the way science gets twisted by radical conservative talking points in the modern day; these same arguments are still being made by Evangelicals against “unnatural” conception but have also been adapted as TERF talking points too. Within a movie that otherwise refuses subtlety in its approach, this comparative restraint ensures that it doesn’t just feel like we’re watching an allegory. 

In attempting to find funding for their research, Jean and Robert make the acquaintance of obstetrician Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy), another outcast of the medical community. Working from a disused block of the run-down hotel where he works, we follow a decade in their lives as they start trialing this treatment on patients desperate to have children, who begin to call themselves the “Ovum Club.” Much is made of Robert’s lack of interpersonal skills when it comes to working with patients, but the film generally shares his awkward approach; the first time one of them gets an impactful scene, it’s to criticize the scientists for viewing them as guinea pigs in research, and never actually bonding with them as human beings. If I were to be charitable, this could be interpreted as a screenwriting confession from Thorne that he hasn’t done justice to depicting a group who were important collaborators – but that doesn’t excuse the continued thin characterization and slim screen time after this outburst. When we first meet Lesley and John Brown, who would become the first successful parents from this process, it’s belatedly during the third act as a footnote in someone else’s story. That the movie gets its title from their daughter’s middle name, but they appear as secondary figures within the narrative, is one of the big frustrations. I was swept up in the emotions of the finale, while knowing the changes that needed to be made for it to land even more triumphantly. 

As for the scientists, it’s McKenzie’s nurse who gets the meatiest material, exiled from her church and her family home by a deeply religious mother (Joanna Scanlan) angered that she would have a part in making life not shaped in God’s image. It’s clear, to even those who don’t know the real stories behind the scientists, that there is a hidden motivation compelling her to proceed with research separating her from her family and her faith, but it’s no less powerful when she finally gets to speak her truth. More puzzlingly characterized is Robert Edwards, played by Norton as an eccentric with a short fuse. His entire motivation in life is curing childlessness, but we never have a deeper understanding of why this is his most passionate cause; if it’s because he’s lucky to have a strong family unit – as shown throughout – then why does a movie in such a broad emotional register leave this implicit? The movie risks depicting him as the mad scientist he’s accused of being by keeping him at an emotional remove from the cause he’s claimed to be passionate about. 

And yet, despite all this, I left feeling charmed and uplifted. If the aim was to get people reinvested in the miracle of IVF without coming across as an overtly political lecture, then it succeeds handsomely – there’s just an even richer version of this story, a couple of script revisions away, constantly hiding in plain sight. 

Grade: B-

This review is from the 2024 London Film Festival. Netflix will begin streaming Joy on November 22.