Joy: Netflix Movie Review

The review of Joy, the Netflix movie directed by Ben Taylor available on the streaming platform from November 22, 2024.

Image Credit: Netflix

There are important and necessary movies that tell equally important and necessary stories. This is the case of Joy, a movie directed by Ben Taylor and written by screenwriter Jack Thorne, coming to Netflix on November 22, 2024. The name Louise Joy Brown doesn't mean much, and yet, her birth on July 25, 1978, in Oldham, England, could be compared to one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. She was the first in the world to be conceived through in vitro fertilization thanks to a group of tenacious scientists who believed in progress at any cost. It's not just about history but also about the story of the pioneers who gave the world new possibilities for life, paying a high personal and moral price.

Joy: an important story that must be told

Cambridge, 1968. The young and stubborn embryologist nurse Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) shows up at the department of biologist Robert Edwards (James Norton) to participate as a laboratory manager in important experimental studies on the treatment of mammalian infertility. The meeting with the work group and with Edwards goes in the best possible way. Jean is a bright girl, passionate about the subject. This is where Joy starts, a classic film that has as its first aim to make a story known, to bring to light the intense work, the long and incessant study that was behind one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century. 

It is built around the three characters who paved the way for in vitro fertilization and who led to the birth of the first baby girl from an egg fertilized in the laboratory. Edwards is convinced that he can help those who cannot conceive naturally. Faced with his experiments, the local scientific community shows strong doubts and ignores the promising results of the older gynecologist Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy). In his hospital in Oldham, thanks to his laparoscopic studies, he tries new methods to cure women affected by anomalies in the reproductive system, unable to give birth to children. 

The two combine their results and put together a group of volunteers, sterile couples eager to have a child, and, using the eggs and seminal fluid, they try the new technique of extrauterine fertilization in the laboratory. Jean, who is an observant Catholic, attends the local church and lives with her very religious mother (Joanna Scanlan), is happy to be able to help women in difficulty but inevitably her dedication to work and her moral principles will clash. Jean's role therefore becomes fundamental, as she is perhaps one of those who will lose the most along this intense, painful, and adventurous journey.

Image Credit: Netflix

Jean and the others...

It becomes very interesting that the filter of the story is Jean, a woman like the women who devote themselves to science for themselves or for others who have a dream, to become mothers, the daughter of someone who denies her, and suffers twice for the rejection of her mother and that of her Church. Jean has doubts, sometimes she questions everything - when she discovers that abortions are also performed in the clinic, she wavers precisely in the name of her belief. It turns out that she too, due to a bad form of endometriosis, cannot conceive and, therefore, we understand the reason why she votes for this cause/mission because she understands well the disappointment for those who want a child but cannot have one. She represents all those women who work harder than others to be appreciated, it is never easy for women, even less in purely male worlds.

With great balance and rigor, Joy focuses on the story, putting aside any pathos and trying to dose that painful boulder that infertility is for those who want to have a child, and for this reason, chooses an almost surgical look at the story. The style is dry and emotionally sober, and the work relies on its protagonists, each perfect interpreter of a different system of feelings, and emotions. The three protagonists struggle internally with themselves between what is right to do and what is right to believe. An ethical dilemma that deserves further investigation. Edwards and Steptoe never retreat in the face of the arrogant, superior attitude of their colleagues and the scientific community who call them the fathers of Frankenstein. 

For the two doctors, it is also painful not to be able to explain to the distrustful what the significance of their discovery is. The issue related to Jean is even more complex: she perfectly understands the torment of those women - there are moments of very profound dialogue between her and the others in which all humanity emerges, the desires, the hopes not only of those who devote themselves to science but also of those who work for science -, she lives with them, and on the other hand she is also a "religious" who lives according to those principles (she is defined as a sinner) and who lives and works tormented by them.

Joy: conclusion and evaluation

Joy is a story that strikes for the sensitivity and dryness with which it deals with a delicate and urgent subject. The film combines work and private life, fatigue, and problems that concern the personal lives of the protagonists, dosing the fields well until the final victory, that is, the birth of the first child. At the center of everything is Jean who holds everything together, around and on her the various plans revolve. Joy is a simple work, there are no flights of fancy, but it is necessary because it brings an important and intense journey to the screen.