Movie Review: 'Professor Marston and the Wonder Women'

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women stars Luke Evans as Professor William Moulton Marston, the man who created the Wonder Woman comic book. Marston was an academic who studied and taught psychology before he somehow found himself creating a comic book as a way to sneak his psychological theories into mainstream thought. The character of Wonder Woman was created, according to the movie, as a composite of the two women in Marston’s life, his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and Olive (Bella Heathcote) their lover.

In 1928 Professor William Marston and his wife Elizabeth were working on creating the lie detector when they brought on a student helper named Olive. The attraction between Marston and Olive was immediately evident but what came forward, in something of a surprise, was Elizabeth’s equal desire for Olive and Olive’s similar feelings for Elizabeth. When the relationship is consummated, it's not long before word spreads around campus and all three are shunned.

For the next several years the trio lived together, raised children and explored the depths of their sexuality, an exploration that led Marston to discover bondage and S&M, an area that appealed to his libido and his intellect. In bondage Marston found an area of human psychology that matched his theory regarding Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance or DISC Theory. Marston believed that DISC theory was the ultimate way to understand human interaction, even stating that it could stop wars.

Marston also believed that DISC theory proved that women were better for world leadership than men. Women are more caring and thoughtful than men and thus are better suited to keep from going to war. The theory reflected in Marston’s own life where he was essentially married to two women who defined his life, whom he submitted to and who submitted to him equally. Luke Evans effortlessly communicates the intellect of Marston and his willingness to explore his own theories inside himself.

While Marston is in the title however, the story belongs to his wives, unofficially, he couldn’t marry Olive but she was mother to his children as was Elizabeth. Parts of Olive and Elizabeth make up the whole of the character of Wonder Woman far more than her superpowers or the bondage and submission images that Marston worked into his otherwise straightforward heroine story. Not long after Wonder Woman was created, Marson’s not so subtle images would come under fire by the same forces that kept him from being able to live his private life in a more public fashion.

Director Angela Robinson is a wonderful director who brings a soft eroticism to the film without making things uncomfortable, unless you are terribly prudish. Robinson is fascinated by Marston’s theories as much as she’s fascinated by his life with two women. She weaves DISC theory into the story throughout Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and it’s a lovely tribute to the man, showcasing Marston as more than just a comic book creator.

Rebecca Hall and Bella Heathcote are a fiery combination. The scenes between the two throb with attraction. Their sexual chemistry is off the charts but what’s more interesting is the romantic chemistry that Elizabeth tries so hard to fight but can’t. It’s fair to wonder in this conception of these two women if they might have been together without William Marston in the picture. Indeed, after Marston died from lung cancer in 1948, Elizabeth and Olive lived together for 40 plus years until Olive’s passing.

Rebecca Hall’s fierce intelligence is incredibly sexy. She’s forceful yet elegant, unconventionally beautiful and effortlessly erotic. She’s the perfect foil for the girl next door beauty of Heathcote who wonderfully deconstructs her own beauty and the preconceived notion of that girl next door veneer. She’s every bit as brave and even more bold than Elizabeth who, surprisingly, is the first to crack when the pressures of society begin to invade the Marston’s unusual home life.

I absolutely adore Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. The film is beautifully and skillfully directed. It’s genuinely romantic and arguably the sexiest movie of 2017. It’s far from pornographic and is easily far more intelligent than it is kinky. I might have liked a little closer look at the strange images that William Marston was sneaking onto the mainstream pages of comic book history but I understand that that is not what this movie was intended for.

If you like your historic fiction with more than a hint of kinky eroticism, Professor Marston and The Wonder Women is definitely for you. It’s also a good movie for our times as it’s the rare movie that presents an unconventional love story in a fair light without obsessing over the kink or how it’s viewed by others. The fact that the Marston’s were shunned and mistreated is mentioned but it is rarely the only thing the film is interested in. Rather, the movie treats the three-way romance with the reverence and respect usually reserved for straight couples in movies. For that, the movie is rather revolutionary.