Movie Review Suffragette

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2015 – Spoiler alerts . A fictional drama set against the backdrop of real historic events at the height of the British women’s struggle for the right to vote in political elections, alongside men. Largely ignored and ridiculed by the press, government, and in some cases facing hostility from husbands and employers, women in the Suffragette Movement moved from peaceful demonstrations to desperate acts of civil disobedience and vandalism. Shop windows were broken, post boxes were blown up and even Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s new home was destroyed when close to completion. Women faced arrest, police brutality, and worse for involvement with the growing movement. The film centres on Carey Mulligan’s character of Maud, a laundry worker gradually drawn deeper into the cause and briefly meeting the movement leader, Mrs Emeline Pankhurst (played in a fleeting cameo by Meryl Streep). Maud faces arrest, beatings, abuse by her employer, being thrown out of house and home by her husband, with loss of contact with her son, and in a particularly harrowing scene when she goes on prison hunger strike, forced feeding. Steadily, the cause gains momentum, and the film builds up to the famous tragic event where Emily Davison (played by Natalie Press) threw herself or fell under the King’s horse during the Epsom Derby, an event captured by the World media, leading finally to women being granted the vote and other rights now taken for granted. Powerfully acted, often shocking, but always very accurate. It could perhaps make more of the real historic figures involved in the cause, but it I an important slice of history from a very real struggle that is still extremely important today for women and for all of us. Arthur Chappell