Suffragette—Movie Review

Suffragette

by Peter J. O'Connell

Suffragette. Released: Oct. 2015. Runtime: 106 mins. Rated: PG-13 for some intense violence, thematic elements, brief strong language and partial nudity.

Suffragette is the story of how one Englishwoman in the years before World War I came to join the movement to obtain the vote for women and how her life was changed by that decision.

In 1912 Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) and her husband, Sonny (Ben Whishaw), are workers in an industrial laundry in London. The work is grueling and the conditions harsh. Among other things, female employees are subject to sexual harassment by the foremen.

One day Maud encounters a demonstration by women for the vote. The previously nonviolent suffrage movement, frustrated by the adamant refusal of the establishment to grant political equality, has begun to use militant tactics. The women in the demonstration throw rocks and break windows.

Maud seeks to avoid involvement in what is going on. Like many working-class women, she has tended to view the suffrage movement as something composed of upper-middle-class women, such as the famed Emmeline Pankhurst. But when the demonstration is brutally broken up by the police, Maud protests.

Her protest leads to gradually increasing participation in the movement, which more and more working-class women begin to support. It also leads her to dramatic acts of resistance against the exploitation of women in the workplace. Eventually, she even testifies before a parliamentary committee.

Betrayal by politicians leads Maud to more and more activism, as some women even plant bombs. She forges strong bonds with an apothecary (Hugh Ellyn), who is a male supporter of the movement, and his wife (Helena Bonham Carter). She finds a memorable speech by Mrs. Pankhurst (Meryl Streep) to be inspirational.

Maud's activism, however, draws the attention of a police inspector (Brendan Gleeson) and leads to rough times for her. Even worse, it causes severe problems in her relationship with her husband and leads to a heartbreaking development with reference to her beloved child (Adam Michael Dodd). Eventually, Maud finds herself in a protest directed at the king himself, an event that results in a tragedy but also a historical turning point.

As Maud, Cary Mulligan, who played an independent-minded woman of Victorian times earlier this year in Far From the Madding Crowd, is appealing in her sensitivity and impressive in her gradually increasing strength. The rest of the cast appropriately surrounds and supports Mulligan's depiction of Maud's evolution. And the script by Abi Morgan (a woman) thoughtfully shows how Maud came to resist various forms of subordination imposed on her as a woman—political powerlessness, workplace exploitation, inequitable traditions and laws of family life.

One might perhaps wish that the film had been imparted a more intense quality by director Sarah Gavron, but Suffragette is definitely a fine work reminding us how far women have come in the past 100 years, what it took to make that journey, and, perhaps, how much more there is yet to travel.

“Footnote” to the film: (1) Helena Bonham Carter is the great-granddaughter of H.H. Asquith, who was the LiberalPrime Minister of Britain, 1908-1916, during the height of the suffrage movement, which he staunchly opposed. (2) Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, and her daughter Laura have small roles in Suffragette.