'Suffragette' is the movie feminists have been dreaming of: Column

In the early days of the women’s movement, we feminists dreamed of a time when movie theaters across the country would show a feature-length film that accurately depicted our work and the passionate energy of our movement — a revolution that we hoped would change the world.

A half-century later, that film is finally in theaters across the country.

While Suffragette specifically tells the story of the British suffrage movement of the early 20th Century — zooming in on the women who fought bitterly for the right to vote and other equalities — it also speaks directly to the longing for social change that has driven us on this side of the ocean, as well as the vision that has sustained us and the camaraderie that has empowered us.

“I was born a feminist,” some women of my generation proclaim, leaving my college-age students to fear that they’ll never measure up to the standard that was set by those who came before them. But, in fact, we’re all made feminists by our lived experience: the pat on the butt by our boss; the paycheck that pales next to our male coworkers’; the paralyzing daily fear that no matter what we do — in our homes or out of it — we’re not safe.

Suffragette is the story of just such a “made” feminist. Portrayed with haunting conviction by British actress Carey Mulligan, Maud Watts is a composite character who begins the film as a nice, keep-your-head-down-and-play-by-the-rules laundry worker and is slowly transformed into a militant suffrage soldier by the chronic injustices she can no longer endure.

It is a painful story to watch, but also captivating, primarily because of the film’s immaculate historical accuracy — down to the red pillar-like mailboxes into which the terrorizing suffragettes drop their homemade bombs.

Yet while period movies can often feel static or glued in time — becoming, in effect, one-dimensional fashion shows in which costume and lighting and set designers compete with one another to draw our attention — Suffragette is not merely an historical drama. In truth, it is a cultural mirror that casts a timely and unsettling reflection.

Even as the film rolls out in multiplexes around the country, our headlines are once again filled with stories about women’s ongoing battle for freedom. Planned Parenthood is under siege. Reports of sexual assault stream in from campuses nationwide. And a handful of Republican candidates for the presidency stonewall reporters’ curiosity about their women-unfriendly policies by calling their inquiries “gotcha questions.”

This is why Suffragette is not just a good movie but an important one. The six years that director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan spent working on the film — consulting with historians and scholars and modern feminists who fought the fight — shows in every frame, leaving nit-picking pundits with little to pick.

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Was British political activist Emmeline Pankhurst (played in the film by the indomitable Meryl Streep) a galvanizing force behind the suffrage movement, advocating civil unrest and violence as a means of achieving success? Absolutely. And yet was she able to convince ordinary women to throw rocks and blow up postal boxes and cut communication wires by sheer dint of her political savvy and personal dynamism? Why do you think they got Streep to play the part?

Even when Suffragette leaves loose ends, it does so intentionally. Judging from the film’s coverage in recent weeks — especially in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris — the most common question viewers and reviewers take away from the theater is: Should the suffragettes have been condemned for their political terrorism (which focused on property, not humans); or was it justified, given that the men in their lives were terrorizing them every day, at home and at the workplace?

In others words, is violence against things as bad as violence against people?

It’s a question worth asking and Suffragette is a movie worth seeing. At the very least, it is a bracing and breathtaking film, and a constant reminder that Women’s Lives Matter.

Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner has taught women’s and gender studies for 45 years, and currently serves as adjunct faculty in the Honors Program at Syracuse University. She is also a public scholar with the New York Council for the Humanities.

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