Review of Suffragette (2015) by Byron B — 30 Apr 2016

There are too few movies about this topic. British suffragettes, women of every class fight for the right to vote. Brendan Gleeson plays the main detective trying to stop the women's efforts to be heard.

Helena Bonham Carter's character has experience with protesting and the support of her pharmacist husband. Anne-Marie Duff's character is a sister factory worker with a teenage daughter who works in a laundry with Carey Mulligan's character.

Mulligan's Maud Watts loses her husband, her son, her livelihood, and generally suffers tragically. Meryl Streep's face and name are all over the marketing materials. Streep plays a famous suffragette who rallies the troops through speeches organized at secret locations, though it seems like she appears on film for only five minutes.

Maud Watts is at the center as a representative of all women who fought for women's rights despite having very few resources to begin with. Stories like these should be told more often, so perhaps a future filmmaker will succeed with a more finely crafted tale.