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Carey Mulligan gives Suffragette its emotional impact
B-While the civil rights movement in the United States has been the subject of many movies over the years, few, if any, films depicted women’s struggle for equality. Now, director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan attempt to remedy that shortfall in Suffragette, a movie that sacrifices historical accuracy in favor of sometimes overwrought melodrama. Fortunately, a solid performance by Carey Mulligan rescues the movie,
Suffragette tries to depict the women’s suffrage movement in early 20th century England largely through several fictional characters, primarily Maud Watts (Mulligan), a laundry worker. Maud is recruited into the movement by fellow worker Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) primarily in an attempt to get better working conditions for women, However, once she is picked up by the police, events spiral, and she loses her job and her husband (Ben Whishaw). Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), a suffragette leader, provides shelter for Maud and involves her more heavily in the group’s activities, which soon turn from protest marches to setting off bombs.
Suffragette suffers from a problem common to docudramas of historical events; namely, it loses track of the history in emphasizing the drama, or, in this case, melodrama. Only a couple of its secondary characters are real, most notably movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst, played by Meryl Streep in a one-scene cameo. The occurrences depicted in Suffragette are real, including the forced feeding of women involved in hunger strikes and rampant sexual harassment of working women. However, the movie loses its perspective by turning all these outrages into Maud’s personal travails. Worse, Suffragette pulls its dramatic punches by making Maud a woman who stumbles into activism only after continually being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately, Mulligan delivers a powerful performance, especially when she has to cope with the loss of her family. The filmmakers also rely on the audience’s unfamiliarity with the suffrage movement’s history to successfully build suspense during the climactic sequence involving Maud and another woman attempting a very public protest in front of King George V at the Epsom Derby. Those bits and pieces of history that Suffragette does depict, along with Mulligan’s powerful lead performance, make the movie worthwhile, but the full story of the women’s suffrage movement remains to be told.
Continue reading on Suffragette: Mini-review
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