From the neglectful mother in “Mary Poppins” to prissy spinsters sipping tea in silly hats, “Suffragettes” have long been vilified and mocked in popular culture.
The fact that these brave women were the foot soldiers in a long and bloody war to win the right to vote has long been either ignored or forgotten.
Sarah Gavron’s stirring new historical drama remedies that lamentable gap in our educations by finally giving these unsung heroines a voice. Steeped in real events in the pre-World War I era and framed by the grainy newsreels of the day, this riveting film gets inside the hopes and dreams of these martyrs to the cause of women’s emancipation. It’s an unforgettable history lesson for a society that rarely wastes time looking back.
A riveting chronicle of life for the rank and file of the British women’s movement, this 106-minute film is anchored by memorable performances from Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter. Make no mistake, this is a harrowing period piece, raw and powerful, that may well leave you in tears for days.
It’s also a highly-charged piece of social analysis, and some critics have knocked it for putting politics before psychology. But Gavron is a clever filmmaker and she never sacrifices suspense and emotion in her pursuit of message. Abi Morgan’s (“The Iron Lady”) script is both exhaustively researched and tautly plotted, which gives the picture a spare, muscular feel that captures the urgency of the period.
Gavron lets the tale unfold though the eyes of an outsider to the cause, an ordinary woman. The Oscar-nominated Mulligan (“Far From the Madding Crowd,” “The Great Gatsby”) gives the film its heart as Maud Watts, a young wife and mother who toils in a squalid London laundry. She is content to keep her head down and her mouth shut despite suffering through sweat shop conditions, chronic sexual abuse from her boss and lower pay than the men around her. Mulligan nails the meekness that comes from having no hope for the future. Maud takes comfort only in her son (Adam Michael Dodd), glorying in the few moments out of every day she has to spend taking care of him.
She has no interest in joining the women’s movement, whose proponents are degraded in polite society as “filthy Panks,” because they rally around the words of leading suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst (the always fierce Meryl Streep in a small role). The idea that things could be different seems unfathomable to her. She also knows her husband (a nuanced turn by Ben Whishaw) couldn’t stand the shame of watching his wife acting uppity in the streets.
Hounded into hiding by the government, the unstoppable Pankhurst urges the women to soldier on in the face of beatings, imprisonment, force feedings during jail hunger strikes and general brutality because she believes it is better to be “a rebel than a slave.”
Mulligan, who deserves every bit of Oscar buzz she gets for this role, carefully charts Maud’s awakening from cowering victim to an activist willing to die for the right to vote. Stripped of all she holds dear, including her son to whom she has no legal right as a parent, she has nothing to lose. She joins the ranks of militant suffragettes who fight the powers that be with any means necessary, from bricks to bombs. They target mailboxes and store windows; they don’t want to harm people, only attack the status quo.
Bonham Carter grounds her character, the indefatigable pharmacist Edith, with her usual level of gravitas. Interestingly, the actress is the great-granddaughter of H.H. Asquith, who was Prime Minister during this time period. Natalie Press imbues the doomed Emily Wilding Davison, who was brave enough to stand tall after nine jail sentences and 49 force feedings, with warmth as well as steel.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the film is its ability to put this historical struggle into the wider context of women’s lives today. The closing credits includes a timeline of when women got the right to vote around the world — yes, Britain was the first — and where the struggle continues (Saudi Arabia), although you may have a hard time reading them through misty eyes. The archival footage of Davison’s funeral procession, which thousands attended, is also quite moving.
To be sure, the film has its flaws, including too few male characters who don’t border on the villainous, but that is a quibble in the face of an all-too-relevant historical film. Streep, for one, has been an outspoken critic of rampant sexism in Hollywood, from the dearth of female movie critics to the gender pay gap.
“Suffragette” urges us to look at the dynamics of gender, class and power then and now with fresh eyes. It’s a potent reminder that rights are never given and that a grim and brutal fact of history is that rights are always battled for and bled for.
This particular fight is one we may not have been taught in school, but something we forget at our peril.
Contact Karen D’Souza at 408-271-3772. Read her at www.mercurynews.com/karen-dsouza, and follow her at Twitter.com/karendsouza4.
‘SUFFRAGETTE’
* * *
Rating: PG-13
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter
Director: Sarah Gavron
Running time: 106 minutes
