The cinema-goer
remembers his late mother, a laundry worker, as he watches the film
SUFFRAGETTE.
It's the
hard-hitting tale of a struggle for equality; a meditation on violence
and non-violence; a set of family dramas and a major historical story
very well told by the film-makers.
The cameo role for
Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst gives her some famous lines,
including the one that raised controversial publicity for the film.
I
would rather be a rebel than a slave
Rebellion and
(wage-)slavery, both manifestations of oppression and discrimination,
are very well shown by the film-makers in their choice of a laundry
worker and her colleagues as the main protagonists of the film. When
Mrs. Pankhurst calls for civil disobedience from the balcony of a
fine middle class London house
Deeds
not words
the cinema-goer
knows it is the women on the street who will face the violence of the
police riot that ensues. It is they who then enact the violence Mrs.
Pankhurst's words proffer. The women on the street blow up letter
boxes, cut telephone wires and bomb the country home of Lloyd George,
the parliamentarian they consider to have let them down.
It is the Special
Branch police man, Inspector Arthur Steed, ably played by Brendan
Gleeson, who delivers the reality-check when he insists that Lloyd
George didn't lie to the suffragettes. He didn't promise them
anything. So up goes the ante and the post-boxes and the second home
in the country.
The family
relationships of the day (and of today?) are ably captured by the
Branch man
Don't
bother arresting them. Let their husbands deal with them.
But those forms of
social and cultural control are weakening as the women, agitating on
many fronts and in many ways, complicating the given norms,
questioning and challenging them, bring pressure to bear for change.
The
film is driven by the terrific
performances
of the two laundry worker
leads,
Maud
Watts
(Carey
Mulligan)
and Violet Miller (Anne-Marie
Duff).
They
are presented as forthright and capable, with complicated lives and
conflicting
aspirations in regard to their work, their politics and their
families. The chemist and bomb-maker Edith Ellyn is played by Helena
Bonham Carter, whose great-grandfather, H.H. Asquith, was the Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916, during the height
of the suffrage movement. He
was a
staunch opponent of votes for women.
The frantic ferment
of anti-state activity underway by the women is set in the context by
other militancy by Fenians and anarchists. The indirect violence of
poverty, discrimination, imperialism and oppression leads to direct
violence by state forces and by their opponents There are many
tragedies. The Branch man, Inspector Arthur Steed, predicts that Maud
Watts could lose her life. The scene in which Maud Watts replies is
one of the most telling in the film.
The law means
nothing to me. I've had no say in making the law.
Notably The
Inspector becomes increasingly less voluble from then on, as even his
stake in the society becomes more fragile. He is speechless by the
final tragedy.
It is Emily Wilding
Davison, played by Natalie Press, not Maud Watts, who dies, mown down
by the King's horse at the Epsom Derby.
The scenes at Epsom
are shot magnificently, with the camera never very far from the
action and the individuals living it. It is rarely out of the crowd,
offering the cinema-goer full immersion in the action. Similar work
is used during the police riot scenes, to very good effect.
The
screenwriter, Abi Morgan, has harnessed a sweeping historical
tale by
writing
a
period in the lives of young working women, facing
challenges and decisions
of their
time
and place, that find them finally
walking
in the funeral of one of their friends
and
comrades.
Their
deeds and words contribute
to a degree of
emancipation
that presents further
challenges
and decisions to people living now.
Abi
Morgan
also writes the TV cop and mental health drama, RIVER, now on BBC.
Like SUFFRAGETTE, the cinema-goer considers it worth a look.
The cinema-goer is
reminded of a t-shirt a friend brought back from early Sandinista
days in Nicaragua. It bore the slogan
La lucha
continua.
The
Suffragettes held to
Never
surrender. Never give up the fight.
The
film
ably underlines
that. It
does not shirk the cost.
It brings
before us the challenge of achieving
social
change in a world of direct and indirect violence.
And it
does so
by means of an engaging
and exciting
film.
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