Film Review: Suffragette

Suffragette
Director Sarah Gavron
Writer, Abi Morgan
In cinemas from December 26

A popular view of the suffragette movement is a group of highminded women who dressed in purple, carried banners in mass demonstrations, petitioned Parliament and then got the vote.

There was Emmeline Pankhurst who was their spokeswoman and she and others occasionally chained themselves to places like the Houses of Parliament.

The reality was very different for a movement which took decades, ruined the lives of many and perpetuated the sexist class system for longer than was necessary.

While it was movement in which wealthy middle class women played a part, there were also, as in all revolutions,  ordinary people.

It is the story of these common people that the film “Suffragette” tells, female workers who had jobs which were often more gruelling and less well paid than their male counterparts, and who had few rights either at work or in the home.

Central to the film is laundry worker Maud Watts, sensitively played by Carey Mulligan. She is buffeted by the demands of a groping boss, a husband with little sympathy and an inner commitment to a cause which she slowly, even unwillingly becomes part of.

The film is set in the years leading up to World War I when the Suffragette movement was becoming increasingly demanding, and becoming a genuine revolutionary movement where individuals wanting social justice were pitted against  the forces of conservatism and the controlling apparatus of the state. In much of this it parallels, although only brief mention is, made of it, the Irish demand for Home Rule.

While much of the film follows the journey of a couple of fictional characters, they move in and out of events with Maud making a submission to a parliamentary hearing and accompanying Emily Davison (Natalie Press)  on her fatal disruption of the Epsom Derby in 1913.

On one side of these historic moments there are violent demonstrations and bombings on the other are the brutal responses of the police and prison authorities. 

Maud Watts is imprisoned and forcefed but the police also try to recruit her as an informant. Trying to get her to turn is Inspector Steho played by Brendan Gleeson, who makes a great job of the part which could have portrayed the police as merely brutal fascists. Steho’s job of upholding the law also reveals traces of humanity.

Managing to combine the personal stories of a couple of the characters the film is also able to provide an insight into the social and political background of the times with great dialogue and shrewd observation.

At one point a wealthy woman, married to a politician, is being bailed by him after a demonstration. She asks him to write out a cheque to cover another four women, a request he refuses. When she remonstrates, telling him that it is her money, he replies “No it is mine” – a reminder that at the time and until not all that long ago a woman’s assets became the property of the husband upon marriage.

While Carey Mulligan gives a brilliantly pitched performance as the working woman fighting for the cause and workers rights, Helena Bonham Carter, with her restrained performance as a chemist / bomb maker, combines ethical, political and personal motivations that guided the middle class women.

The ads for the film show a third top name in the cast – Meryl Streep who plays Emmeline Pankhurst. They must have had her on the set for a few hours filming as she only makes a brief appearance as the driving force of the movement, making a speech from a city balcony, only to be whisked away from the crowd, the police and the audience.

It may not be a great film but is a film which is important in making people realise the huge changes which have occurred in the last 100 years, not just that women have obtained the vote, but that it was a battle requiring revolutionary fervour and commitment and was not merely a matter of social; and political evolution.

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