Director: Ben Taylor
Writers: Jack Thorne, Rachel Mason, Emma Gordon
“You’re aware they’ll throw the book at us? The church, the state, the world. We will unite them all against us.”
“But we’ll have the mothers. The mothers will back us.”
In the early 2000s, when my brother and I were still school kids, we heard about a couple in the family whose daughter was a “test tube baby.” It sounded ‘cool’ to us — science helping out a couple after years of failures. Not long after, a close aunt of ours also welcomed her first child, a beautiful boy, through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). So, growing up, I saw IVF as a viable option for couples (who could afford it) struggling to conceive. But the world was very different in the 1960s! The 2024 film Joy follows the tumultuous journey of the IVF pioneers, who face numerous challenges in conducting experiments and trials to make their vision a reality. Being labeled ‘monsters’, and ‘satanists’, are least of their problems. (Because fertilizing a human egg in a petri dish is ‘unnatural’ and against God’s design)
James Norton portrays Dr. Robert Edwards, a pioneering British physiologist working to achieve the fertilization of human eggs in a laboratory. He joins forces with nurse Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) and Dr. Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy), a trailblazing gynecological surgeon from Oldham, to bring hope to infertile couples seeking to conceive. However, Edwards is swiftly labeled a “Frankenstein” by the media, and the team faces scathing criticism from all sides—except from aspiring mothers, who view them as their beacon of hope for achieving motherhood.
The film unfolds largely through the eyes of Jean Purdy, a rather devout Christian nurse, who is practically excommunicated by her church for helping out Edwards & Steptoe in their medical trials. But that doesn’t stop Jean from rebelling against those closest to her, if it means bringing new hope to millions of moms in the future. Jean’s personal struggles and her brief interactions with the participants in the trials, who begin to call themselves the “Ovum Club”, help lend just the right amount of sentimentality to the script, that makes “Joy” a humane watch, and not a dull, dry, scientific documentary about IVF.
The friendship and working camaraderie between James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie as Dr. Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy in Joy are a delight to watch, untainted by any romantic complications. Bill Nighy is effortless as Dr. Patrick Steptoe, the older, pragmatic, and ambitious medical practitioner who also forms a close bond with the duo. Tanya Moodie is memorable in her small part as the stern hospital matron Muriel, particularly in a pivotal scene where she delivers a sharp reality check to the devout Jean. When Jean, taking a moral stance against abortions, says, “I thought we are here to make babies,” Muriel pointedly replies, “We are here to give women choice.”
For a two-hour film, Joy is perfectly paced and engagingly understated in its storytelling. The cinematography vividly captures 1960s England, though much of the action unfolds within the confines of hospitals and labs. There are a few uncomfortable scenes depicting invasive medical procedures on women, which are, of course, unavoidable in a story like this. However, the filmmakers handle these moments delicately, avoiding any sense of gratuitousness while effectively conveying the physical and emotional toll reproductive medical trials take on women.
Some viewers might feel slightly emotionally detached due to the limited screen time given to the women who participated in the trials. However, this is ultimately the story of the medical team, not their subjects. True to its title, Joy concludes on an emotional high, celebrating the culmination of years of medical research, trial, and error with the birth of the world’s first “test-tube baby”—a breakthrough that would pave the way for millions more. For those, like me, who know little about the pioneers behind IVF, this is a great one-time watch! I highly recommend it.
Rating: 8.5 on 10. Stream “Joy” on Netflix.
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