Suffragette (2015)

Emily Davison's (Natalie Press's) death was broadcast across the world and finally brought attention to the long battle of women trying and failing to get the vote.
But this film is not about her. She is only a minor character in this overall depressing film. Instead, a laundress Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) takes center stage. She is, at first, a reluctant suffragette, as her grueling job, husband and young son take up all of her time. But her boss is horrible. He is a pedophile. She also befriends the known suffragette, Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff), whose daughter, Maggie (Grace Stotter), is the subject of Taylor's (Geoff Belll's) attention. But her new activities come at a cost. She is arrested, and then her husband (Ben Whishaw) kicks her out of the house. If she hadn't of shown up on little George's birthday, she would have never known that Sonny was giving him up for adoption. She has no rights over her own child.
Maud is arrested again, for throwing a bomb in an official's house. Upon her return to prison, she refuses to eat so she is force-fed, which is a horrific experience.
Yet, she does not give up. The main point of the film comes when both Maud and Emily, whom Maud met in prison the first time, attend a derby to get the attention of the King. Emily has the banner and goes out to the ring while the horses are racing and she is struck and dies. Her funeral is well-attended and finishes out the film.
While this is a good story and one that needed to be told, it wasn't done right. It should have ended with the women finally getting the vote, something which would not happen until 1928, eight years after it happened in America. It did show realistically how cruel the police were to the women and how much the rest of the country looked down on them. it portrayed a simple woman and why she decided to change the future for her hypothetical daughters. She wants girls to have better opportunities than she had. Maud, a life long laundress, wishes for something more. Which brings up a problem. For someone who didn't receive much education, she is well-written and thoughtful with her letters to Steed (Brendan Gleeson), a police officer who tries, in his backhanded way, to help Maud and her letter which also ends the film on how women will not give up the fight.
It is a shame that this film isn't good. Giving the setting, costumes and performances it had the making of a good film, but Emily's death played such a big role, the film should have been told from her point of view. Yet, it wasn't. Though I know now that women have rights, and that they were fought long and hard for, the end left me without hope. Mulligan is great, along with Helena Bonham Carter who plays an extreme suffragette, a chemist and intelligent. Meryl Streep has a cameo appearance as Emmeline Pankhurst, another suffragette who is described by Emily herself as fearless. Unfortunately, all these performances are wasted in a lackluster film which should have been better. I'm not angry, just disappointed. Grade: B