Riots occur when a group of individuals feels powerless. When a movement’s requests go unheeded or forcibly silenced, then action must be taken. However, a major contention against rioting is that when violence escalates, the rioters are deemed out of control, beyond reason, and beyond negotiation. Suffragette portrays both of these arguments in a clever, empowering way.
In the first half, the film establishes the daily life of Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan). The opening shot is of wheels turning in perpetual clockwork. The camera zooms out, revealing the cold-coloured laundrette and its panting employees, as voiceovers play of men opposing women’s peaceful protests. Following these voiceovers, there is a creeping sense that the suffragette movement is inescapable. Maud grins at some dolls in a store window, which is smashed within seconds as women in the streets hurl stones and scream, “Votes for women!” She is caught up in a movement from which she would rather abstain, standing in for her friend, Violet (Anne-Marie Duff), to speak to Lloyd George about pay inequality in her workplace. Building layers of tension through the abuse she and her friends face – mainly sexual at the grimy hands of their boss — the woman who once pleaded, “I’m not a suffragette” is pushed to her limit.
While the suffragettes promise sisterhood and solidarity, the purest moments of love occur between Maud and her son, George (Adam Michael Dodd). Maud is not a deranged activist, but a mother motivated by her belief that “there is another way to live this life.” Initially, Maud’s home life seems pleasant, albeit in cramped quarters, with a caring husband who also works at the laundrette. However, as she becomes more invested in the movement, her husband feels he is losing grip on the semblance of stability they once held, and kicks her out. Homeless, Maud’s one request is to see her son; when she is finally able to snag George away for an afternoon out, there is a bittersweet sense of bliss between mother and child.
Along with Maud’s familial rejection, the second half’s most important idea is that the movement is going too far, that Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep) may be leading the movement but is not a goddess, and that blowing up buildings is not the way to get attention. Though Maud herself is a strongwilled activist, she is by no means the most extreme. The extremists begin to decline in health or throw themselves into fatal situations; their intentions are good, the audience is on their side, but ultimately they too are crying out with Maud in the final scene to step back.
On a technical side, biopics have become quite fashionable in the film industry as of late. Not documentaries, but still advertised as “based on a true story”, movies such as The Social Network, Straight Outta Compton, Big Eyes, Love and Mercy and countless others provide audiences with a piece of historical fiction about a previously underappreciated figure. Some may sacrifice fact for drama, be it how a character is depicted or how events unfold, while others remain decently faithful to the story. Too often biopics become over-sentimental and qualify as “Oscar fodder”: a movie that appeals to the Academy’s standards by ostensibly trying to be good; it is popular with the masses, whilst cinephiles will disagree with its accolades. Heartwrenching and topical even today, Suffragette is worth seeing. It is not quite an Oscar-fodder biopic, and if nothing else, it allows audiences to evaluate the merits of rioting on both national and personal levels.
