Boasting exemplary
performances by the leading
actresses (Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham-Carter, Anne-Marie Duff) and skillfully blending the personal with the political,
Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette attempts to recount the stories of the ordinary
working class women, who got involved
in the Suffragettes’ movement.
The film had its world premiere at the Competition section of last year’s
Berlinale and is currently being screened at Greek cinemas. On this occasion, I
had an enlightening conversation
with the director.
How was your need to deal with
this particular subject at this particular moment in time born?
I wanted to make the film for many years. Over 10 years,
really. I started to realize that this subject has never been depicted in a
film and there’s this really extraordinary story, not widely known the U.K.,
even though it’s our own movement.
Even if you talk to university students, they only know a few details and I
wasn’t taught it at school. Only when I began reading about it and through
research I realized that there had been these women, who sacrificed so much for
this cause, went to prison, on hunger strikes, were force-fed, faced great
brutality in the hands of the police and lost jobs, homes and families, so it
felt really compelling, a story that needed to be told: not only because it’s a
hugely critical slice of our history,
which really impacted and changed the course of our lives now, but also because
it has resonance today. As we were researching it, it kept feeling more and
more oddly relevant. At the same time, we were discovering these police
surveillance operations being carried out against suffragettes and then we were
reading in the newspapers about police surveillance today, then about activism-
it seemed to echo many world events. Also, as we know, although we have a more
equal society than we had in Britain a 100 years ago, there are some countries
around the world, where women are fighting for basic human rights. So, it felt
that the story was timely.
How long have you been
researching on the film’s subject?
We spent about 6 years.
That’s a long time!
Well, films take a long time, anyway! We went on many
different “paths”, before deciding which one to follow, you know. Should we
make it about Emmeline Pankhurst? Which women, which period should we focus on?
As the movement spanned 50 years and there were thousands of women involved in
it, there were, consequently, many different ways to tell this story.
So, why did you decide to
focus on these particular characters,
which, as I understand, are partly based on real women’s stories and partly fictitious?
We were fascinated by the stories of the working-class
women. Often, women stories have been marginalized in history, generally, but
working class women’s even more so. And when we read the accounts of these women,
who were poor, worked in factories, got involved in the movement and really
achieved a lot in terms of activism, their voices felt very contemporary.
Moreover, they were dealing with issues of unequal pay, custodial rights over
their children and sexual abuse in the workplace. This felt like an interesting
and accessible introduction to the subject for a modern audience, rather than
telling the story of an educated, elite woman, like Pankhurst. We wanted to tell
the story of the ordinary woman, follow her journey and connect it with people
today. We created a composite character. Everything that happens to Maud,
happens to women we read about. We pulled together her character from a few
different women, not being overly constrained by one person’s life story.
I assume that your film is
quite accurate in historical terms.
Yes, very accurate. We had lots of historical advisors
collaborating with us, historians who have worked on the subject for more than
30 years.
Why did you decide to cast
Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham-Carter and Anne-Marie Duff as your leading
actresses? With regard to Meryl Streep, who interprets the role of Emmeline
Pankurst, were you concerned whether her presence would divert the audience’s
attention from the story itself, or did you think that it would attract more
interest in your film?
In terms of the casting, those were the actresses that
I very much wanted in the film and represent an eclectic range of the actresses
we have. I wanted to work with Carey Mulligan on this particular project. She
was absolutely right to me for this role. She’s an actress who can “inhabit” a
character so truthfully, she can convey so much on screen. She was the first actress we approached, said
“yes” and was glad to have her on
board of this film. Then, we “built” the cast around her. It was exciting also
to have Helena Bonham-Carter in a role that we don’t normally see her interpret.
And also she had a funny and personal connection to the history, as she’s the
great-granddaughter of Herbert Asquith, the prime minister of Britain at the
time of the Suffragettes. And, then, Anne-Marie Duff is one of those actresses
who are very truthful, as well, It sounded interesting to have all these women
working together, as an ensemble.
When it came to casting Emmeline Pankhurst, an iconic
figure who only appears in the film in one scene, we talked about who could
play this role and we decided to think about getting an iconic actress, so we
went for Meryl quite deliberately, knowing that, in a way, we would harness her
star power, as Emmeline Pankhurst did with the women at the time.
Has your film been negatively
criticized either domestically or abroad?
In Britain it has been critically well-received on the
whole and really did well at the box office, it was a commercial success. It
was a cross-generation thing, both young and old people attended its
screenings. Many young women became more politically aware, after watching it.
I also got a lot of messages from people, stating that it was the first time
they ever heard applause in the cinema. I was excited to hear that. In Britain
we are rather restrained, we rarely clap at the end of a film!
In America it was more complicated. I think it’s not
an American story, the Americans had their own movement at the same time, which
was similar in some ways and different in other ways. The key distinction is
that we had hardly any people of color in Britain, whereas America, because of
the immigration, had many and were involved in the movement, as well. And they
had this division, this prejudice running through
the movement, that women of color were excluded, a fact that characterized the
American movement. So, in America the audience was appreciative of the film in
some areas, less in others, but its story wasn’t known and it wasn’t the
American story, too.
As a politicized person and a
filmmaker, do you think that aggressive tactics, such as those employed by the Suffragettes’ movement, are necessary
for a class movement, in its struggle to gain more rights?
I can certainly understand
what made them turn to civil disobedience. For 50 years, they were trying to
constitutionally affect change with no result at all- petitioning and talking.
These efforts just resulted into a series of broken promises on the part of the
government and also an effective press blockade, where the press weren’t
reporting anything that women were trying to do. I can see that they were met
with this intransigence, which led them to seek other ways to reach the
government. They kinda “stumbled upon” militancy, in a way. This technique
certainly had an impact and drew attention to the cause. What’s important,
looking back, because the word “terrorism” has been applied to these women’s
actions, is that modern terrorists set out to target human life and they never
wanted to target human life. They wanted to target property. Nobody died as a
result of their actions, except for a couple of suffragettes themselves.
Any plans or ideas about a new
film?
This film has been my “baby” for a long time. At the
moment I’m doing a lot of talking at schools, universities, human rights
organizations and want it to prompt discussions. Beyond that, I am also
exploring the prospect of a new one, but it’s too early to say more.
I would like to warmly
thank Sarah Gavron for our phone conversation and Sophie Glover, Head of Publicity at Pathé
UK, for her valuable
help in setting it up.
Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette is currently
being screened at Greek cinemas.
