Suffragette-2015

Director-Sarah Gavron

Starring-Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter

Scott’s Review #291

Reviewed December 1, 2015

Grade: A-

Led by an excellent performance by Carey Mulligan, Suffragette is a British film that tells the true story of the fight for women’s suffragette, as a team of women fought endlessly to obtain their right to vote, a vote that today most (men and women) take for granted.

Several of the characters are real-life portrayals, however, Mulligan’s central character of Maud Watts is fictional. She is assumed to be a hybrid of other real-life characters.

Perfectly shot and giving a fantastic impression of life in England in the year 1912, the film centers around a bevy of working-class women- many of whom work endless and thankless hours in a sewing factory, working for and forced to tolerate a vicious, unkind man.

Their lives are bleak.

A women’s movement has developed, led by the mysterious Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep) and Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), both financially successful, but very passionate women, spearheading the “women’s movement”.

The main character is Maud. The film is told from her perspective.

She is a hard-working laundress in her early twenty’s, married to her husband, Sonny, and with a young son. Plain, yet pretty, the audience knows this is all her life will ever be.

She has worked at the same sewing shop since a young age and has been sexually abused by her boss for years. While delivering a package, she witnesses a co-worker smashing a window in protest of the women’s movement.

Initially reluctant to join the movement, Maud realizes the importance of it and loses her family and job in the process because of her devotion to the cause.

When women were finally granted the right to vote in England in 1928, sixteen years after the movement began,  this took a brave group of women who risked (and lost) their families, jobs, and was imprisoned, and in one heartbreaking scene, loss of one’s life, all in powerful devotion to what they felt was right and just, despite numerous powerful figures beating them down. How sad to think this happened.

The film accurately portrays the might and courage that the women possessed.

Two of the most powerful scenes in the film are as follows and one belongs to Mulligan- ostracized by her husband and community- and having been imprisoned more than once- Sonny decides to give their son away to an affluent couple. The boy is ripped from Maud’s arms and we realize she will likely never see the boy again.

It is tragic and painful to watch and Mulligan nails it from an acting standpoint. I have always admired Carey Mulligan- she chooses wonderful and challenging parts- never succumbing to mainstream mediocrity.

Think portrayals in Shame, Never Let Me Go, and An Education.

The second powerful scene comes at the end of the film. When a character sacrifices her life (a real-life person, mind you) at the Epsom Derby where King George V is present, simply so that the women’s movement can get major exposure by running onto the track and wielding a sign, she is brutally trampled to death.

Subsequently, a funeral parade results, finally leading the masses to take notice and realize how important an issue this was.

The filmmakers of Suffragette wisely dedicated real-life footage of the parade that took place in the time.

An important film with a powerful message, Suffragette is beautifully shot and led by bravura acting and a true, real-life historical story, to be appreciated for its honesty.