“LADIES ON STRIKE”
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Andrea Riseborough, Bob Hoskins, Geraldine James, Jaime Winstone, Miranda Richardson, Rosamund Pike
Directed by: Nigel Cole
MPAA Rating: R for language and brief sexuality
Genre: Foreign, Drama
Running Time: 1 hr 53 min
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
By John Delia
Here’s a lesson in history that set the standard for equal pay for women. Made in Dagenham takes this subject and presents it in storybook fashion adding a lot of ‘Hollywood’ stuffing and pretty faces. I like the film, but subtitles would have had me liking it even better.
The dramatization takes place in 1968 England showing the lives of some of the Ford Motor Company factory women who make up the upholstery department where the seats and doors were covered. The film depicts the uncomfortable conditions that the women had to work under including no air conditioning. One day the announcement comes that the women in the upholstery division of the factory have been granted a vote in union activities. When they are invited to attend a meeting of the heads of the union, Rita O’Grady speaks up about equal pay for both men and women. Thus starts a battle of wits and strikes that even today may not have been equaled in women rights.
The acting here is incredibly good giving the feel of the era and the way women were being treated. Much like another period movie Calendar Girls where women protested by getting naked for a cause, the stage here is a factory and a call for equal rights. The film also reminded me somewhat of Norma Rae and the textile mills in North Carolina with Sally Field standing up on a table holding a sign that says STRIKE. Hats off in acting to Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady the insistent factory worker and Bob Hoskins as the cunning union worker representative Albert Passingham who guides Rita without regard to damaging his own future with the company.
I know I am being a bit cheeky, but here Nigel Cole takes liberties focusing on women disrobing in order to cope with the heat in the factory and using it to provide a comical tone that in reality was probably an incidental happening that was reported during the times. He also insists on dialog in the shanty dialect for the era, that in most cases made it difficult to understand. If he was looking for flavor he got it, but at what cost? I guess I will have to wait for the DVD to come out so I can put on the
subtitles to find out what I missed.
As for the movie as a whole, I liked it. Even the problems cited about are not enough to take away from the event itself and the challenges the women went through in order to bring attention to the unfairness that had been bestowed upon them. Cole tries to stuff a lot into his film showing many scenes where men treated women as rag dolls insisting that they have no say in business.
Hats off to the women who were insistent enough to hold strong in their amazing battle for right and freedom. This film is surly one that they can glean on as future reference to any further segregation of the sexes.
Made In Dagenham is rated R for language and brief sexuality. The language part is circumspect since due to their cockney I could hardly understand when they were swearing.
FINAL ANALYSIS: An above average film with historical significance. (3.5 of 5)