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About half a million babies are born each year via IVF. It is now frequently (though not always) covered by insurance. The procedure is so common that it became a particularly confusing political talking point during the recent election—with Vice President Kamala Harris underlining how draconian laws related to reproductive rights have placed limits on access to such treatments and former president Donald Trump asserting that he wants the government to help out with the costs.
Amid this backdrop of widespread acceptance, it’s a little hard to conceive of just how controversial the technology once was—and how recently this was the case. The new film Joy, starring Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton, and Bill Nighy, offers a gently potent reminder of the technology’s recent history and how often women’s bodies are the sites of vigorous public debate, even when it comes to the most personal of family and medical decisions.
Joy tells of the conception of what was called the first test-tube baby, born from IVF technology that was, at the time, untested and unproven. Norton plays scientist Robert “Bob” Edwards, who joins forces with an innovative surgeon called Patrick Steptoe (Nighy), as well as an enterprising nurse and embryologist, Jean Purdy (McKenzie), who is tasked not only with keeping the operation on track but recruiting, liaising, and generally shoring up the morale of the desperate women who volunteered for the trials.
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The film is full of laboratory scenes, with a white-coat-wearing McKenzie gingerly shuttling petri dishes from one dim room to another, betraying an unstudied ease in these scientific settings. McKenzie did her research for the film by visiting hospitals in London and interviewing a personal contact who happened to have a unique connection to the technology: The grandfather of a family she used to babysit for back in New Zealand was, incidentally, the first doctor to perform IVF in the country.
But alongside these steady, quiet scenes of scientific progress, Joy is filled with more aggressive tableaus of protest and objection. In one, Jean and Bob have to pass through a line of protestors that resembles what you might see outside an abortion clinic today. In another, Jean is quietly but forcefully shunned from worshiping in her church. Her own mother wants nothing to do with her once she starts this work. When it comes to reproductive health, the personal has always been political.
At 24, McKenzie acknowledges that having kids is not at the forefront of her mind (though she says she would very much like to do so someday). She is, when we speak, in Bordeaux with her boyfriend, having just finished filming The Woman Clothed by the Sun, a new film starring Amanda Seyfried about one of the early leaders of the Shaker movement.
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Nonetheless, McKenzie says, “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been aware of the pressure that women feel to give birth and be mothers.” As an actor, she describes her awareness of her “biological clock and wondering when I might have the time, the opportunity, to have a kid.” Even more acutely, she describes periods when she struggled with her weight, which left her concerned this might have impacted her reproductive health. Growing up, she didn’t know if any of her friends had been conceived by IVF; it wasn’t something that people spoke about. “I think there is an innate shame around it,” she says, “because there is a lot of shame around women feeling like they’re not working properly, their bodies aren’t working properly, and a lot of blame that is placed on women.”
The dynamic McKenzie describes is reflected more dramatically in Joy. “The film is a faithful account of a major development in the science of childbirth and a story that hasn’t been told in this way before,” says Nighy. The women that McKenzie’s character recruits have been leading lives of quiet desperation; the science is both a lifeline and a last hope. McKenzie describes how her character, who suffered from endometriosis and was not able to have children, held herself apart in relationships, believing that her health struggles made her insufficient as a partner.
While Joy shows a common struggle that has not received its dramatic due, it also has as its subtext another struggle: that of female scientists to gain recognition. The best-selling novel (and Apple TV+ series) Lessons in Chemistry recently dramatized the often virulent misogyny that existed in scientific settings; Joy looks at a subtler dynamic, where women’s roles in scientific discovery were downplayed. “It highlights Jean Purdy’s contribution,” says Nighy, “which, in the regrettable and time-honored tradition of those times, had been airbrushed or simply dismissed because she was a woman.”
When a plaque was positioned at the hospital where the first successful IVF treatment occurred, it bore the names of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe but not Jean Purdy. The real Edwards voiced his strong objection, writing: “I feel strongly about the inclusion of the names of the people who helped with the conception of Louise Brown. I feel this especially about Jean Purdy.” And this appreciation is reflected in the film as well. In one of the final scenes, we see Norton usher McKenzie into the frame as a photographer takes pictures to commemorate the successful birth of the first IVF baby. That moment, brought alive to a new audience, should shine additional light on the extraordinary individuals behind this remarkable discovery.
Joy is available on Netflix on November 22.
