Suffragette Review

Suffragette Review

I had not seen the film Suffragette before but yesterday I had a good time watching it. Although is very predictable in every event that the characters suffer or do, it was still enjoyable to me. I did know about the real stories of some the characters like Emily, and I thought that the film embraces very well the construction of the reality in terms of the world they live in and how the characters moved around it. 

My favorite character is of course, Maud. Because she is the protagonist and we accompany her through the whole movie. She represents the very emancipation of women and every cost it had (and still has today for many other). I liked the use of the character and her transformation arch to unfold the stories and the themes represented. A very complex character with many narrative lines that leaded her to achieve that emancipation. I also liked the fact that the women represented are laborers and often poor (although they have that very "clean" poverty look), it helped the story to have a much more depth and sense of realism.   

The camera treatment is one of the things I liked the most, sometimes the movement made the film look very documental and the realism of the emotions and characters were expressed on such movements and decisions in the photography work. The closed shots at the beginning were evolving to wide shots at the finale and gave me a breath of the tension and monochromatic choices of the first part of the film. That is one the things I didn't like that much, the staging. As I said, the characters, the camera treatment, the film editing and so on made the film very realistic, not the staging, at least in those very yellow shots at night or at Maud's house. Those places were so not interesting and aesthetically appealing to me, specially the lighting. I don't remember those scenes too well in comparisons of the daring wide shots and bright-blue/green colors towards the finale. 

My favorite scene was the footage film of the real Suffragette women in the finale, because It was the first moment I felt impressed and actually felt something. The film was very predictable because of the classical structure, yet the footage moved me all of a sudden. The film has very valuable achievements that I liked besides all.