I love the movies. When the lights go down and the music starts up I always get excited. I went to see Suffragette this week and I was not disappointed. Often historical movies patronize the audience with “look how far we’ve come” morals that don’t really leave anything for discussion. But "Suffragette" doesn’t just leave us with the past, it points out the lingering flaws and shortcomings of our present society. Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter, and Carey Mulligan portray women in early 1900s London fighting for a woman’s right to vote, and the basic human rights that many women still cannot be guaranteed. With a cast like that, it is no surprise that this movie is going to pack some serious punches.
For the first half of the movie, Maud Watts (Mulligan) quietly ekes out a life with her husband, Sunny, and her son, George, working endlessly all day at a laundry then going home, making dinner, taking care of her son and husband, then getting up early and starting over. She is eventually roped into a ring of suffragettes who protest by throwing rocks through windows and blowing up mailboxes. Watts insists again and again that she is not a suffragette, and I was reminded of the women now who claim they aren’t feminists. Both words have been stigmatized as hateful towards men, the true victims of all these movements. In nearly every review of this movie it is made clear that the men are not all characterized as monsters or villains, they are just part of the patriarchy. This isn’t to say that men are evil or we should get rid of men: it's just that sometimes, women are not allowed the same privileges. "But its ok, really, I mean, they should be glad they were allowed to work, they didn’t really need the vote... nevermind." While the movie itself portrays unapologetic women and their relationships with the men in their lives, the reviews do the apologizing for them.
The women in "Suffragette" do more than just portray the past. Watching them fight made me remember my part in the legacy. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel yourself in the web that we are all in. Each of us is at the end of a chain of people fighting for our freedoms and our rights. I watched the characters clawing for freedom and saw myself in them. While Suffragette is about women earning the vote in London, it was also about me. It’s about the people who fought so that I could vote, so I could live a life better than the one they had. And it made me want to stand in the streets and scream about something I care about. It made me want to fight for something with everything I had. This is a movie about more than just the battles we’ve won: it’s a reminder that the fight is ongoing.
This movie is uplifting in the best way. It lifts your head and reminds you to be proud and to be strong. I encourage anyone who wants to be moved to see it.
