Sunday, January 07, 2018

Dvd/150: SUFFRAGETTE (Sarah Gavron, 2015)

The struggle to win the vote for British women in the early 1900s oddly fits into a genre of British film: working-class group make a stand against their lot eg. MADE IN DAGENHAM, PRIDE...


SUFFRAGETTE is expertly directed by Sarah Gavron but Abi Morgan's script at times feels obvious.


Morgan's fictional heroine is Maud, an East-End laundress, wife and mother. While witnessing suffragettes smashing shop windows, Maud recognizes co-worker Violet among them. When the government refuse to change the law, a brutal attack by policemen leads to Maud's arrest and jail sentence which confirms her as an activist; her loss of job and family cannot make her betray the cause.


Carey Mulligan is wonderful as Maud with fine support from Anne-Marie Duff as Violet.  Helena Bonham Carter never quite convinces as a politicized pharmacist but there is a marvellous cameo from Meryl Streep as Emmaline Pankhurst.


Shelf or charity shop? A keeper in the dvd limbo of a plastic storage box.  No room sadly to mention the fine support of Ben Wishaw and Brendan Gleeson or that Helena Bonham Carter is the great-grand-daughter of Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister who refused the suffragettes the vote!

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