★★★
It’s surprising to see just how hard Suffragette has kicked the hornet’s nest, particularly as it has seemingly perturbed more feminists than it has patriarchal supporters. Regardless, it’s a significant step forward in the representation of women’s stories as mainstream film, and well worth seeing for its emotive impact.
Bethnal Green laundry worker Maud (Carey Mulligan) lives an unpleasant life, paid a pittance and given no real opportunity in life. But after witnessing a co-worker, Violet (Anne-Marie Duff), smashing windows as an act of civil disobedience, Maud is swept into the burgeoning suffrage movement and the fight to get women the vote.
Firstly, let’s dispel the elephant in the room – this is a fictional film about a fictional character who experiences several key moments in the real struggle for women’s suffrage, and is intentionally narrow in its focus. This one story cannot hope to represent everyone who fought for the vote, but it can perhaps hope to stimulate further exploration of the subject. It’s a timely and potent film, and while the debate of its white feminist leanings is a vital one to have (there are no women of colour present in the film), a boycott will only do the movement a disservice.
But therein lies the rub – if Maud is to be our cipher, why then is her story not given due narrative closure? She is, as the film goes to pains to explain, a foot soldier; no more than a pawn in the greater game. Once the main event has played out, we are given no reason to believe that Maud’s life has changed. The film ends abruptly with the funeral of Emily Wilding Davison, merely a side character in the plot, and seems to lose Maud in the crowd. It’s a crippling oversight in a narrative aiming for our heartstrings.
However, the film is of high quality across the board. Mulligan’s central performance is beautiful, as is that of the incomparable Helena Bonham Carter. Duff puts in the hard yards, too, making for a very believable incendiary. As for the men, Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson excellently perform the largely thankless roles of a surly husband and a sympathetic but law-bound detective, respectively – but they would be, one hopes, the first to tell you that this film is not about them.
Sincere and challenging as Suffragette is, it suffers from flaws in both execution and intention, but makes for a powerful surge forward in the fight for the rights of women everywhere.
Suffragetteopens in cinemas on Saturday December 26.
