Film review: Suffragette - Divine disobedience

Suffragette gets highest votes for aptly highlighting the first wave of feminism in Britain

The powerful are different from those who do not wield power. They guard power with a vicious ferocity; violence, cruelty and brutality come naturally to these people who stop at nothing to retain their dominance over the powerless. The 2014 Model Town, Lahore, massacre, the abuse and murder of religious minorities are but a few examples of the powerful breaking the laws of humanity, religion, society, decency and the Constitution in their depraved bids to retain power.

Sarah Gavron’s powerful and deeply moving Suffragette chronicles the extraordinary efforts of a group of women fighting for their rights in the early 20^th Century and the vicious response of powerful authorities determined to deny them the right to vote. Women had virtually no rights in 19^th Century England. They were disenfranchised, denied rights over their children, subject to lower wages and given no place in national politics. The role of women was seen to be rearing children, cooking and taking care of the home. The industrial revolution resulted in the full-time employment of large numbers of women. Unequal wages, sexual abuse and unfair treatment in the workplace encouraged, if not forced, women to come together, discuss politics and campaign for equal rights. This was the start of the women’s suffrage movement. A number of fragmented but highly organised campaigns were operating all over England by the end of the 19^th Century. At the turn of the century, women’s suffrage was a potent national movement. The movement had two wings, the suffragists and the suffragettes. The suffragists came into being in the 19^th Century and believed in using peaceful tactics to achieve their goals. The suffragettes were born in the 20th Century when peaceful campaigning failed to yield positive results. They believed that militant tactics were needed for the success of the movement.

Emmeline Pankhurst was an important leader of the British suffragette movement. Together with her daughters, she founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903 and set the stage for increasingly rebellious and decidedly combative campaigning.

Played by the luminous Meryl Streep, Emmeline appears for a short but powerful two minutes in Gavron’s film. Suffragette, thankfully, is not a biopic of Emmeline. It tells the story of the movement using the peripheral and fictional character of a poor working woman, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), who has no control over events in her life but enough determination to make a significant contribution to the movement.

Maud works under miserable conditions in an industrial laundry in early 20^th Century London. She is forced to endure sexual abuse, low wages, gross mistreatment and dreadful conditions at work but finds comfort in her warm, if austere, home where she lives with her husband, Sonny Watts (Ben Whishaw), and son, George Watts (Adam Michael Dodd). She gets caught up in suffragist activities, not necessarily by choice, and is introduced to the movement by a co-worker, Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff). Thanks to a growing friendship with Violet and the kindness of pharmacist Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), she gets involved in the movement. Soon, Maud is marching in demonstrations, participating in clandestine meetings, blowing up homes, attending rallies, planning the cutting of telegraph wires and bombing mailboxes. Her increasingly radical activities result in brutal beatings, surveillance, incarceration, force-feeding, ostracism and, most tragically, the disintegration of her happy family. She ignores the advice of the unsympathetic but concerned inspector Arthur Steed (Brendan Gleeson), who all but threatens her to mend her ways and, with nothing to lose, becomes a solid pillar of the cause.

Suffragette is a remarkable film; it tells an important story and it tells it well. The nuanced, understated and powerful performance of Mulligan is truly remarkable. Similarly, Carter’s portrayal of a determined woman who does not allow physical weakness to affect her unwavering commitment to her cause is pitch perfect. The supporting cast, most notably Duff, Romola Garai (playing the role of Alice Haughton, the well-bred wife of a leading MP) and Natalie Press (playing the role of a real-life militant activist Emily Davison), not to mention the regal Streep, are at the top of their game in Suffragette. The film makes a wise choice to not depict all male characters as conventional villains. Sonny and Arthur are believable and not entirely evil. The look and feel of the film immaculately captured (mostly with handheld camera) by cinematographer Edu Grau is unnervingly realistic. The astounding work of production designer Alice Normington and costume designer Jane Petrie, together with the muted palette of the film, evoke the stifling atmosphere of a time when women found it impossibly difficult to lead their lives with dignity, freedom and respect. Abi Morgan’s script is well researched, brisk and appropriately grim. The film’s greatest strength is, undoubtedly, its unflinching and accurate depiction of the powerful using fear, intimidation and the strength of the law to suppress movements that threaten their control.

Suffragette, of course, has its shortcomings: a dull score by French composer Alexandre Desplat, an excessive use of contrivance in the narrative, an untampered earnestness, a melodramatic strain and the omission of the role of women of colour in the suffragette movement. Women like Sophia Duleep Singh, Herabai Tata and Mithan Lam’s contributions cannot and should not be ignored. The noticeable, perhaps unintentional, whitewashing of history is unbecoming of a film making a case for fairness, equality and justice.

The suffrage movement was long, painful and fragmented. Gavron’s film focuses on a period of two years when the activists were most militant and the government most ruthless, and ends at a turning point when Emily gets killed after stepping out in front of King George V’s galloping horse, at the Epson Derby in 1913. Her sacrifice made headlines all over the world and attracted attention that electrified the movement.

The choice to tell an unfinished story and end the film on an equivocal note is both brave and smart. It serves as a tart reminder of the fact that the global fight for women’s rights is far from over. Women are still not able to vote in parts of the world and are subject to humiliation, mistreatment and cruelty even today. The powerful continue to guard power with pathological cruelty and people continue to fight for equality, fairness and respect in many countries all over the world. Pakistan, sadly, is one of those countries.



Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 29^th, 2015.