Suffragette chronicles the fight for women to secure the right to vote in Britain and considering all the blood, sweat and tears that went into that effort, the scope of the film could have been way too large to capture in one two hour narrative.
Thankfully, writer Abi Morgan and director Sarah Gavron have crafted tale that focuses on one woman and her introduction to the struggle and how it consumed her, nearly cost her everything and finally resulted in some sort of progress for women in her country.
Carey Mulligan gives an Oscar worthy performance as Maud Watts, a married mother of one who toils her days away working in a laundry facility, just as her mother did before her. She started working there when she was a teenager and has weathered all forms of abuse in the workforce, just so she can make a living.
When she accepts a colleague’s invitation to attend a meeting of suffragettes, she begins to see that the life she has been given doesn’t have to be the one she’s stuck with for the rest of her days. With the right to vote, women can make change at the national level that will improve lives for millions – in fact… half the population.
She meets a doctor (one who had to fight hard just to obtain that professional position), Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter) and they form a sisterly bond that finds each lifting up the other throughout the struggle. Unlike Ellyn, Maud’s husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) is not so supportive and winds up tossing her out on the streets and doesn’t allow her to see her son. See, in those days, the law was as such that a husband could take a child away from a woman. That is painfully portrayed in Suffragette. And that is just the tip of the excruciating iceberg that these women must endure simply to exist.
One of many things that Morgan and Gavron do impeccably well is give this movement a voice and a leader in Meryl Streep’s Emmeline Pankhurst. She is only in but a few scenes, but her presence is all-powerful. We see why these women would do anything she asks and how she translates the need for the cause in ways that these suffragettes would follow her to the end of the world… because they have right on their side. As history (and movies that chronicle those stories) have shown, when you have right on your side, the cost may be enormous, but right usually wins out over might.
Could Streep earn another Oscar nomination for this role? Heck, Judi Dench won one for about the same amount of screen time for Shakespeare in Love! And like that film, Suffragette has Academy Award potential written all over it.
Suffragette is also an incredibly important film that must be seen by all. The Movie Mensch encourages mothers and fathers to take their daughters (and sons for that matter) to witness something that is recent history. The right to vote may seem like something that is taken for granted by half the population, given the voting records of late in our elections. But we are not even at the 100-year mark to celebrate the anniversary of when women were granted the right to vote in this country. That’s astonishing. We have come far, sure, and still have much ground to cover until women are truly equal to men, but Suffragette is a pitch perfect reminder that it was not so long ago that women were discounted citizens not considered worthy of expressing their opinions in the voting booth.
As a presidential election year inches towards us, there would be no more powerful of a lesson for us all to experience.
Grade: A