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Review: Suffragette

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Until this year there have been no feature films to dramatize the suffrage movement. The fact that it has taken this long is conspicuous at best. Still, with the arrival of Suffragette one would be forgiven for thinking that the film industry were making up for lost time. The film boasts an impressive cast, including Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff, Meryl Streep, Brendan Gleeson and Ben Whishaw. The posters feature Mulligan, Carter and Streep looking down camera. The statement is clear. This is a film about something. About women and fronted by women. The same is true off camera. Written by Abi Morgan and directed by Sarah Gavron, the film is in effect a product of the suffragettes themselves, helmed as it is by the very people who rights they campaigned for.

Taking all that into consideration, it would be a damn shame if it were a shoddy movie. Thankfully that’s not the case.

The film centres on Maud Watts, the character played by Carey Mulligan. Maud is an employee at an industrial launderette in East London. The embodiment of the early 20th century notion of the stiff upper lip, Maud has a hard life, her only joy is her son George (Adam Michael Dodd). Her husband Sonny is an unimpressive specimen played by Ben Whishaw her employer Norman Taylor is a sadist by Geoff Bell.

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Maud’s workplace is canvassed by local woman’s rights campaigners. A testimony hearing is to take place at Parliament that is hoped will lead to an amendment to the suffrage bill that will extend voting rights to women. A co-worker Violet Miller played by Anne-Marie Duff, an incognito suffragette, will speak at the hearing despite the derision she receives. Moved, Maud decides to accompany her. From here Maud’s involvement with the movement begins.

The film manages to depict the grueling realities of the life of women at the turn of the century without being preachy, pious or melodramatic. Maud is a reluctant revolutionary. Carey Mulligan manages to give a performance that is both compelling and understated at the same time. The circumstances and sufferings of women – such as treatment in the workplace, child-rearing, and of course the right to vote – are presented in such a way that is sympathetic without being cloying or clumsy.

Also impressive is Helena Bonham Carter as Edith New. The casting here is excellent as it plays – whether knowingly or not – with the common perceptions of the actor’s role. Helena Bonham Carter is often treated as a shorthand for eccentricity on screen. As a character New is penetratingly sober. Driven and confident she deviates fantastically from the characters like the Queen of Hearts, Bellatrix Lestrange and Mrs. Lovett that made Bonham Carter‘s name. More than that, the unshowiness of the character underscores the historical tensions at the core of the movie. The actress known for roles that are (in one way or another) at odds with the modern world, plays the part of a woman at odds with her time, at odds because she is fighting for the rights that most of the audience would find agreeable. If this was intentional, casting director should be applauded.

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The final member of the leading trio is Meryl Streep who plays Emmeline Pankhurst (endearingly referred to as Mrs P.). The film might be accused of hagiography if it spent more time with Pankhurst, but it’s not a biopic. The character is there to lend grandeur and scope. Being the calibre actor she is, Streep delivers in the style you’d expect.

If there is a problem to the movie it is the arch that concerns personal sacrifice for political gain. The tension is offense in the form of Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson plays a police inspector who sympathises with Maud but questions the ability for the suffragettes to be effective and the potential for the movement itself to be another form of exploitation. The character is not a caricature of misogyny. He is the one to put the question that every revolutionary, anyone involved in any movement, has to ask themselves: how much are you willing to give?

The trouble is that the antithesis never gets addressed. In the interest of avoiding spoilers detail can be omitted be here it is not necessary. There is a scene toward the end where a character makes a choice with fatal consequences. The trouble is the event in question is the death of Emily Wilding Davidson, the suffragette that was trampled by the King’s Horse at the Epsom Derby 1913. It was widely held that she threw herself under the horse as an act of protest. However, the motivation and intention remain disputed. While Davidson‘s death may have acted as a catalyst, it is not clear that it was a calculated event. For the film to present it as such does not sit well.

Still, the movie is the first time this story has been tackled in a major production and fictionalisations as teaching tools are often not ideal. The achievement is that it realises the grim state of womanhood in the late 19th/ early 20th Century.

A relevant and visceral portrait.

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