Wednesday 2 March 2016

Suffragette (2015 Sarah Gavron)

A familiar story perhaps, but brought to a new audience with thriller-like efficiency by Abi Morgan and editor Barney Pilling (Oscar nominee Grand Budapest Hotel, plus A Long Way Down, Quartet, One Day, Never Let Me Go, An Education and lots of well-loved TV).

Gavron's only feature before this was Brick Lane (2007). She directs a gradually hardening Carey Mulligan, Ben Whishaw, Ann-Marie Duff, Helena Bonham Carter, Romola Garai, Brendan Gleeson, Samuel West, Natalie Press and Meryl Streep.

It's quite eye-opening how much of it is now illegal - unequal pay, force feeding, police assault on women, unfair working conditions - and thus how far we've gone in a relatively short space of time; and that the full vote for women was not until 1928, 1971 in Switzerland (bizarrely) and not at all in Saudi Arabia.

Music by the reliable Alexandre Desplat and shot by A Single Man Eduard Grau in a sombre, diffused style (told you it was back in fashion).

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