Suffragette – Accents and handheld overwhelm

I would love to be able to provide a legitimate analysis of Suffragette.  To the extent that I could make out what the actors were saying, I was left with no emotional attachment to the film.  Since I wear hearing aids I asked several others around me at the theater for their reaction and all said they missed the majority of the dialogue.  My problem was surprising since I am a Brit and usually can handle British films.  Not sure if the problem was the theater or the soundtrack.

Most if not all of the film is shot with a handheld camera.  Accordingly it suffers from the usual problems – too much extreme close-up, jerky confusing shot changes and often lack of perspective.

The biggest criticism I have of the film is the lack of tension.  There are some great emotional scenes but overall the story telling is flat.  There is no real depiction of exactly what the opposition to the movement was saying and why their fear existed.  It would have been meaningful to have the scene of parliament’s debate and eventual decline to change, after Prime Minister Lloyd George allowed the women to testify.  The film did not seem true to life and the director and writer both agree they tried to get away with compilations rather than portraying actual suffragettes. It did not work.  Although admittedly of a different time and different issues, the 2014 documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry affected my mental, physical and emotional reactions much more.  It conveyed the message of the struggle with much more conviction than Suffragette.

The acting in Suffragette was very good and I would expect one or more of the actresses to receive award nominations.  However, Meryl Streep is not going to pull a Judy Dench with her one scene.

The class wars depicted were interesting but again not played out effectively.  The focus of the film is on the working class foot soldiers with some support from the middle class.  Then we have the liberal rich women, pushing the movement and making the public statements but never getting involved in the street protests.  Sort of like a general waiting in his tent to see how many of his soldiers get killed so he can plan the next move.  Finally there is the upper crust Parliament members who are petrified that giving women the vote will lead to too many female rights and equality.  The male dominance was played out in several ways from the shop foreman, to the treatment of the women by the husbands, the viscious manhandling by the police and the refusal to give fair consideration by the politicians.

One scene struck a nerve to me, where the lead protagonist returns home to see her child only to find that her husband is giving the child away to another couple.  She is told that she has absolutely no say over the child’s welfare under the law.  Here was a man claiming not to be able to cope with working and raising the child, but yet he would expect a female to handle the same situation. On the other side of the coin is the fact that the woman made no attempt to give up the fight for the vote in order to keep her child.  This one scene provides great fodder for several discussions.