Suffragette

Seen from the perspective of composite fictional character Maud Watts, the timely and heart wrenching film "Suffragette" closely follows the real stories and players from British women's fight for the right to vote.

Played with subtle depth by Carey Mulligan, Maud, a lower class worker since age 7, is inexorably inculcated into the movement by her fellow underpaid and overworked laundresses in 1912 London, including Violet (haunting Anne-Marie Duff) as well as pharmacist's wife Edith Ellyn (powerful Helena Bonham Carter), who considers herself a soldier, whom Carter interprets as someone who "ignited confidence, to encourage women to make their own destinies."

These courageous women congregate under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst, a woman "unafraid to be a leader in a time when women were never leaders" (a marvelous yet brief turn by Meryl Streep; the filmmakers said they "wanted an icon to play an icon"), who called for civil disobedience after 50 years of verbal protests went unheeded, saying "now deeds and sacrifice are the order of the day."

In one of her few public speeches - she was often in hiding to evade incarceration - Pankhurst says, "We don't want to be law breakers; we want to be law makers."

"I would rather be a rebel than a slave," she adds. She moves her supporters from rhetoric to action - bombing post boxes and government minister's houses, cutting telegraph wires, "attacking the sacred idols of property" - because "war is the only language that men listen to."

The Blu-ray extras are powerful reminders that this battle is still being waged. The mostly female artistic team - director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan - and cast remark that, despite all the research and historical consulting, this is still a story of real women who, less than a century ago, lost their jobs, children, families and lives in search of female equality.

Mulligan said she had never been in a film with so many women. The project was also the first ever to be shot in the real Houses of Parliament. Gavron noted the power in being able to shoot the female riot scene there, where, after much petitioning, the ministers announced that women wouldn't get the vote; a place that barred women for centuries.

"It shows how far we've come," she said. "Young women should be reminded how hard the vote was fought for."

And yet, the crawl at the end of the film enumerates how slow progress has been: Swiss women could only vote as of 1971, Nigerian women in 1976, and Saudi women were promised the right to vote in 2015.

Streep said, "Humans have been the same way for 40,000 years, and a lot of it has changed in the last 100." The Suffragettes were considered more of a threat because they were of all classes, from the gentry to prostitutes, so much so that smaller and zoom cameras were invented to conduct surveillance on them.

And the fight continues, says the "Looking Back, Looking Forward" featurette. The historical women (and the cast wearing mostly original garments from the time) had only newspapers in which to share their agenda (as women, they were unable to rent halls in which to meet). The death of Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison during the June 1913 Epson Derby by King George V's horse was reported around the world.

"Today," says Gavron, "it's Pussy Riot and Malala."

"Suffragette"
Blu-ray
$24.79
http://suffragettethemovie.com/#landing/home