{"id":5060,"date":"2015-11-20T07:44:18","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T12:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5060"},"modified":"2015-12-16T08:18:24","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T13:18:24","slug":"suffragette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5060","title":{"rendered":"Suffragette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Suffragette,Cinema\u2019s efforts to dramatize major social upheavals are always somewhat problematic, either focusing too wide, so that the viewer doesn\u2019t adequately relate to individual participants\u2019 challenges, or too narrowly, pulling their struggle out of the necessary context. Despite the predictability of some elements in its story, Suffragette<\/em> (trailer<\/a>), achieves a pretty good balance between background and foreground. The movie was directed by Sarah Gavron, with a screenplay by Abi Morgan.<\/p>\n

By 1912, many decades of asking politely for the vote and expanded rights has achieved nothing for British women. Finally, their leader Emmeline Pankhurst declares, \u201cdeeds not words,\u201d ushering in a new era of militancy, including bombs in post boxes. In part this new tactic is necessary because government and media collude to keep the suffragette\u2019s demands quiet. No one knows the extent of the movement or public sympathy for it, and government wants to keep it that way. We see male officials fretting about the situation, but the film mostly shows \u201cordinary women\u201d whose lives have become unbearably suffocating. Some of them are torn by the choices they have to make, while others have moved beyond doubt and are determined to grab the government\u2019s attention, no matter the consequences.<\/p>\n

The movie is fortunate in the actors selected for these foreground roles. Carey Mulligan is, as ever, perfect as Maud Watts, a young mother who\u2019s worked in a Dickensian laundry since childhood and becomes involved with the movement by chance; Anne-Marie Duff is a true believer who has to reconsider; Helena Bonham Carter and Natalie Press have left doubt in the dust. (Bonham Carter is the great-granddaughter of H.H. Asquith, Prime Minister of Britain during the height of the suffragette movement, which he opposed.)<\/p>\n

The government brings in a Special Branch investigator, played by Brendan Gleeson, to track the women\u2019s movements, and he zeroes in on Watts, thinking she may crack. Meryl Streep makes a cameo appearance as Pankhurst, and of course it would have been great to see more of her, but that would have drawn light away from the everyday women who ultimately had to say to themselves, enough.<\/p>\n

British women received partial suffrage in 1918 and full suffrage a decade later. \u201cWhile nobody\u2014least of all Maud\u2014supposes that the vote will solve everything, it will at least be a start,\u201d said A.O. Smith<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>. As a scroll at the end of the movie attests, worldwide acceptance of women\u2019s suffrage is still incomplete and, for many, the start hasn\u2019t yet started.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 72%; audiences 74%.<\/p>\n

It would be difficult not to compare this movie with Sophie Scholl \u2013 The Final Days<\/a><\/em>, which I reviewed yesterday. Both are about young women standing up for their beliefs at the risk of their lives. Sophie Scholl<\/em> was the more moving, both because she was a real-life person and because her beliefs were so well articulated in the face of the inevitable penalty. In Suffragette, <\/em>the possibility, if not the certainty, of death was present and discussed. It is the more cinematic experience, with the lovely recreation of 1910 London, the grim laundry, and more women\u2019s stories, which increase its universality. More than a hundred years later women around the world can identify with at least aspects of the economic, occupational, legal, sexual, and other inequalities these women collectively suffered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cinema\u2019s efforts to dramatize major social upheavals are always somewhat problematic, either focusing too wide, so that the viewer doesn\u2019t adequately relate to individual participants\u2019 challenges, or too narrowly, pulling their struggle out of the necessary context. Despite the predictability … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Suffragette - Movie weekend? This is a good choice, with A+ acting!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[366,57,268,104],"tags":[286,128,333,416],"class_list":["post-5060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-movies","category-politics","category-the-morgue","tag-carey-mulligan","tag-history","tag-london","tag-real-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1jC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5064,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5060\/revisions\/5064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}