Made in Dagenham

Another week and another screening.  Here are my notes:

Made in Dagenham

UK 2010                      113 minutes

Director:                      Nigel Cole

Starring:                        Sally Hawkins, Rosamund Pike, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson and Geraldine James

Nominations and Awards

• Nominated for 4 BAFTAs including Outstanding British Film and Best Supporting Actress (Miranda Richardson)
• Another 8 nominations including nominations for Best Actress (Sally Hawkins), Best Supporting Actress (Rosamund Pike) and Best Supporting Actor (Bob Hoskins) at the British Independent Film Awards

“The unexpected thing about Made in Dagenham is how entertaining it is. That's largely due to director Nigel Cole's choice of Sally Hawkins for his lead. In Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky (2009) and again here, she shows an effortless lightness of being. If she has a limitation, it may be that she's constitutionally ill-adapted for playing a bad person”

Roger Ebert

Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins) unwillingly becomes shop steward at Ford’s Dagenham plant and then leads a strike of the 187 women sewing machinists, when they walk out against sexual discrimination and claim equal pay. The strike is successful and Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson), as Secretary of State for Labour in Harold Wilson’s government uses it to promote what was to become the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

The inspiration for the film was a radio programme which reunited personnel from both sides of the strike many years later.  Steven Wooley as producer heard the programme and realised its potential as a subject for a film: the key historical events of the story are true, some individual elements of the original characters reappear in some of the strikers, while other characters are entirely fictional.

In the central role of Rita Sally Hawkins is superb: she made her name in a series of films with Mike Leigh, but the tone of this film, despite the potentially grim nature of the subject, is closer to Calendar Girls (also directed by Nigel Cole).  Philip French also suggests a comparison with a naughty Carry On film rather than to Ken Loach’s Bread and Roses, another film about a strike by women, this time by Latino office cleaners in Los Angeles.  

However the film is far more than a vehicle for Sally Hawkins: the cast includes established actresses like Geraldine James and Miranda Richardson as well as rising stars like Andrea Riseborough (Brighton Rock and Never Let Me Go) and Rosamund Pike (Pride and Prejudice and An Education).  Bob Hoskins earned good reviews for his role as a minor union official who is both mentor and friend to Rita and there is a superb cameo from John Sessions as a pipe-smoking Harold Wilson.

Despite the good reviews and numerous nominations for awards, Made in Dagenham had the misfortune to be released in the same year as The King’s Speech which in total won more than 60 major awards.

Here's the trailer:

The King's Speech

We start our new season with a somewhat inevitible choice next week.  These are my notes:

The King’s Speech

UK 2010                      119 minutes

Director:                      Tom Hooper

Screenplay:                   David Seidler

Starring:                        Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter

Nominations and Awards

• Won four Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay) plus eight nominations (including Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Cinematography).
• Won seven BAFTAs (including Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Music) plus seven further nominations.
• A further 56 wins and 75 nominations

“Although the film involves a man overcoming a serious disability, it is neither triumphalist nor sentimental.  Its themes are courage (where it comes from, how it is used), responsibility, and the necessity to place duty above personal pleasure or contentment – the subjects, in fact, of such enduringly popular movies as Casablanca and High Noon.  In this sense, The King's Speech is an altogether more significant and ambitious work than Stephen Frears's admirable The Queen of 2006 and far transcends any political arguments about royalty and republicanism.”

Philip French

In the early1930s the Duke of York (Colin Firth), the younger son of George V (Michael Gambon), was struggling to overcome a speech impediment with help from Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist.  George V died in 1936, and his death was followed by one of those incidents when, in Alan Bennett’s memorable phrase “history rattled over the points”: Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) abdicated in order to marry the divorced Wallis Simpson (Eve Best) and the Duke of York, who had never even seen any state papers was crowned King just as Fascism was on the rise across Europe and Churchill was beginning to warn of the dangers of German rearmament.  Logue continued to work with George V and with his help the King was able to face the challenges of both his Coronation and the public speeches his position demanded of him, including a live broadcast in September 1939 on the outbreak of war.

David Seidler had lived in London during the Second World War and had subsequently developed a stammer from the stress that he had endured.  He had been inspired by the example of George VI’s struggles with his speech impediment and, having moved to the US where he became a scriptwriter in Hollywood, he decided to write about the King.  Lionel Logue’s son committed to give him access to his father’s notes, but only if the Queen Mother consented: she gave her permission, but asked him not to do so in her lifetime.  Seidler subsequently discovered that Logue had treated one of his own uncles, and from him learnt about the techniques that Logue used in his treatment.  From this original source material Seidler produced an initial screenplay that he subsequently turned into a play script, and it was after attending a reading of this that Tom Hooper’s mother called him with a simple message: “I’ve found your next project”.

Although depicting the key historical events of the period, the film makes some changes to enhance the dramatic nature of the story: the Duke of York started working with Logue ten years before the Abdication and the improvement in his speech was noticeable within months rather than years; during the Abdication Crisis Churchill had been a staunch supporter of Edward VIII; and far from distancing themselves from Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement George VI and Chamberlain appeared together on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, an act of endorsement by the King described as “the biggest constitutional blunder that has been made by any sovereign this century”.

The film received rave reviews for its acting, screenplay and direction. Colin Firth received his first Oscar and both Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter received Oscar nominations for their supporting roles.  David Seidler won his first Oscar in his mid-70s, and after a long and successful career as a director on TV and having only directed one other feature film Tom Hooper won Oscars for both Best Director and Best Film.

Here's the trailer: