Suffragette

An earnest, melodramatic and probably necessary history lesson, Sarah Gavron's Suffragette is a grim and grimy period piece about the struggle for women's suffrage in England in the early 20th century. Perhaps that sounds like a subject worthy of some twee and tasteful public television dramatization -- if so, prepare to be unnerved by the righteous anger and seriousness of this movie about women in soft blouses and pinned hair under elaborate hats. (There was a reason that Britain passed a law in 1908 limiting the length of hat pins women could legally wear -- anything over nine inches was prohibited as a potential lethal weapon).

The suffragette movement was as fierce and dangerous as any struggle for civil rights, with real people taking consequential risks. It produced its share of heroes and martyrs.

Our protagonist Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is meant as a sort of Everywoman, typical of thousands. She is a vivid creation, tough but tremulous: Mulligan gives her a proper combination of quiet gumption, desperation and terror. She starts out as apolitical, a highly competent working-class laundrywoman who's very much in love with her husband Sonny (an underused, conflicted Ben Whislaw) and young son George. Sonny works in the same laundry as Maud, but he's better paid and works shorter hours even though he's less skilled. (But after all he has a family to support.) And he doesn't have to fend off the lecherous advances of the boss either.

After she sees co-worker Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) participating in a rock-throwing demonstration, Maud's interest in politics is piqued. Violet explains that violent protest is necessary "because war is the only thing men listen to."

Though she's determined to stay on the sidelines, lending comfort while not actively participating in the movement, Maud is conscripted to speak on her co-worker's behalf after Violet is beaten by her husband on the eve of her testimony before the Chancellor of Exchequer Lloyd George (Adrian Schiller). Gently, the official coaxes Maud's own story out of her -- she's optimistic that he might be sympathetic to their cause. His ultimate decision to oppose them further radicalizes the suffragettes.

Maud is baptized by a stint in jail, which strains her familial relations and brings her into the orbit of Irish detective Arthur Steed (an understated Brendan Gleeson), a working-class achiever who may be secretly sympathetic to her cause but still means to stop the bombing of mailboxes.

None of this is accomplished ham-fistedly. Sonny isn't appalled by his wife's politics, he's embarrassed and cowed by the way they're now received at work. He's not able to keep his woman in line. And Steed, when he tries to turn Maud into an informer, seems genuinely interested in finding a pragmatic solution for her. He might hate the ruling class as much as any suffragette, but he has found his own place in the system.

Where screenwriter Abi Morgan (Iron Lady, Shame) may have faltered is in the creation of a fictional protagonist, when it's so easy to be distracted by the the sketchier stories of characters who seemed to be based on (or share names with) real movement figures. Meryl Streep has a brief turn as movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst in which she delivers the key line "I'd rather be a rebel than a slave," and Helena Bonham Carter appears as bomb-making pharmacist Edith Ellyn (who is, at least in part, based on the genuinely fascinating Edith Garrud, a martial arts expert who trained other suffragettes in ju-jitsu and carried a wooden club in her hand-warming muff).

But most jarringly, the third act is given over to a famous incident which Maud witnesses close up. Without spoiling the ending (anyone is free to pick up a history book at any time), it seems odd that we know so little about a character that emerges as so important.

Then again, maybe that the point. As someone once said, it's the ones you never notice that are the ones you have to watch.

MovieStyle on 11/13/2015