The origin of the origin story
‘Professor Marston & the Wonder Women’ tells a fascinating tale
As the movie we need right now, “Professor Marston & the Wonder Women” could not be better timed. News reports might be awash in abuses of authority and grievous misconduct within the movie industry, but here's a story that not only celebrates female power and open-minded idealism, but embodies those values in its very warp and woof.
As its title suggests, the factbased film tells the story of William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans), the psychologist and inventor who, under the pen name Charles Moulton, created the comic book heroine Wonder Woman. The character's origin story was adapted by Patty Jenkins into a rousing action-adventure this past summer. Here, writer-director Angela Robinson delves into the real-life inspirations behind Marston's creation, which included: progressive politics; the psychological theories of Freud and Jung; a long-term romantic
and domestic relationship between Marston, his psychologist wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and their student Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote); and the trio's discovery and enjoyment of the world of fetish objects and role-playing.
If that all sounds terribly edgy, rest assured: Robinson gives “Professor Marston” the classy, highgloss sheen of a rich period piece, introducing William and Elizabeth as they pursue their research at Harvard, and following them through the 1940s, when Marston introduced his feminist archetype. Marston was determined to give boys a positive role model of a female hero they could look up to.
The theme of honesty — living according to one's principles, embracing sometimes taboo sexual desires, pursuing love and friendship in good faith — pervades “Professor Marston,” which is consistently absorbing, sensuous and lovely to look at, but most interesting when it focuses on Olive and Elizabeth. Hall delivers a prickly, tour-de-force performance as the brilliant, disarmingly frank Elizabeth, who despite her superior intelligence is relegated to second banana in her husband's academic career, In one of the film's finest, most judiciously calibrated scenes, she and Olive embark on a tentative seduction, eventually inviting William to join them with a simple outstretched hand and direct, knowing look. It's a moment, like so many in “Marston,” that could easily have been played for maximum titillation. Instead, Robinson invests it with emotion, maturity and, perhaps surprisingly, a tone of wholesome reassurance.