The British women who fought for voting rights in the early 20th
century wouldn't recognize the listless, passionless versions of themselves
seen in Suffragette.
Starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, and Meryl Streep, there are a
number of powerful actresses who could easily embody the fire burning within
the women who risked all to gain the right to vote, and yet the mediocrity of
the screenplay gives them all little to work with. The film certainly gives the
impression of being about something important, but never captures the emotion
necessary to be stirring in any way.
While there are a handful of real-life women depicted in Suffragette, such as lead
rabble-rouser Emmeline Pankhurst (Streep) and Emily Wilding Davison (Natalie
Press), the rest are purely fictional. This isn't a big deal; the degradation
and violent oppression the protesters faced is a thing of fact, and these
stories surely happened to some of them. It's just that there isn't anything
especially memorable about Suffragette despite its heavy tones and bleak
atmosphere. This is a film so heavy on message that it forgets to tell the kind
of rousing story it hopes to be. 
Mulligan grimaces her way through the role of Maud, a regular,
blue-collar laundress who just wants to stay out of the suffrage crossfire. And
who can blame her when women are being beaten up in the streets, thrown into
jail, and fired from their jobs just for demanding voting rights. It gets even
worse at home as husbands have full authority over their wives, threatening to
leave them destitute and alone if they join the political movement. The abuse
is just as bad at work, and when Maud attends a hearing on it she's compelled
to give testimony when her friend Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) is badly beaten. The
experience sets Maud on a course to join the brick-throwing militants ready to
wage war on the men keeping them from their rights to vote. 
On the other side of the fight is...well, every single guy in the
film. Maud's husband (Ben Whishaw) is doomed to be a jerk the moment he first
warns her not to get mixed up with the suffragettes. It only gets worse as
she's frequently arrested and interrogated by the film's chief villain,
Inspector Steed (Brendan Gleeson), whose chief job seems to be enduring a
fuselage of feminist catchphrases; "We’re half the human race. You
can’t stop us all"! But catchphrases and slogans are all usually-reliable
screenwriter Abi Morgan has to offer. Her trite, unremarkable screenplay
undersells Maud's transformation from quiet observer to someone willing to blow
up houses to make her point. As the suffragettes' tactics take on a more
threatening tone, Morgan and Gavron go out of their way to keep the women
sympathetic rather than allowing audiences to decide for themselves. Some of
the actions taken by the suffragettes were indeed terrible and caused harm to
others, but the film barely stops long enough to examine their part in the
escalating violence. 
Only Duff's character Violet is depicted with any complexity but
she's also one of the few with the least screen time. That said; she more than
quadruples what Meryl Streep gets as Pankhurst. Sure, Streep is plastered all
over the promos but she gets literally one scene in which she delivers a hammy
speech and jets off to parts-unknown. She'll probably get an Oscar nomination
for it, anyway. Mulligan would be the most deserving actress, though, as
she injects far more humanity into the role of Maud than the screenplay
provides. She has some terrific scenes in which she's faced with a decision
between her family and her convictions. In the film's best moment we see a
glimmer of hope in her eyes at just the thought of women gaining the right to
vote, something she had never even considered to be possible.
Unfortunately, Morgan's screenplay doesn't connect the dots
between the suffragettes' fight and the victory they would achieve years later.
It dulls the crowd-pleasing affects of an undeniably powerful and important story about the
seismic social and political shifts these women sacrificed everything for.
Rating: 3 out of 5
