On Chesil Beach

First Hit: Saoirse Ronan shows, once again, why she’s one of the top actors acting today.

When an actor can share a wide range of deeply felt feelings and emotions without saying a single word to draw the audience into each scene, pay attention.

This story is about two people, who've just married, attempting to sexually consummate their marriage. The film uses flashbacks to show their family history, issues, and the pressures they faced growing up and how it's affecting this new life together.

Ronan as Florence Ponting is a young lady with prodigious musical talents is being raised by her overbearing mother Violet (Emily Watson) and a pushy bullying father Geoffrey (Samuel West). Their opinions and control over Florence and her sister, Ruth's (Bebe Cave) lives is a key and important component of the film.

Then there is Edward Mayhew (Billy Howle), he’s living with a mother Marjorie (Anne-Marie Duff) who got hit by a moving train’s door and suffers mental issues. She can be found naked talking to birds in the backyard. His father Lionel (Adrian Scarborough) is long suffering taking care of his wife, the home, work and two daughters along with Edward. Their house is chaos and when he receives a letter stating that he’s #1 in the history tests he took, no one in his family cares.

Searching to find someone he can tell and who cares, he runs into Florence and it is love at first site.

The romance is wonderful yet void of much deep intimacy. They marry and when it comes to consummating the marriage through intimacy, they struggle.

The scenes during and after their sexual attempt are very strong and the amount and range of emotion shown by both actors was excellent.

The film takes the actors forward, some 40 years into the future and it is sweet to see how the film ends.

Ronan is phenomenal. As I’ve indicated in previous reviews, she’s the very best young actress around. She selects roles that are deep and complex and gives each character body and soul. Howle is very good here. He does a great job of portraying men’s insecurities and complexities. Watson is sternly great. West is strong as the intense demanding father. Cave is great. Duff is amazing as the mentally challenged mother. Scarborough is solidly good as Edwards’ father. Ian McEwan wrote a very strong screenplay. Dominic Cooke did a wonderful job of piecing this story together and getting excellent performances from his cast.

Overall: I loved the complexity of this film and how it addressed a difficult subject.

Suffragette

First Hit:  Just before the final credits roll, the audience gets a strong message about just how difficult it has been for women to have a voice in the country they live.

This story takes place in Britain, but when the end of the film comes, it is a testament to every woman in every country in the world.

In the US women didn’t get to vote until 1920. In Switzerland 1971. And there are many countries that women do not have the right to vote. It is one of the primary downsides of Muslim countries and some interpretations of Islamic law – women who make half the world’s population had little say in the way the world is run. It makes me incredibly sad, filled with disappointment and to me shocking that although we can make huge forward leaps in the world technology, we have silenced so many people by not giving them a voice in how the world is run.

The Suffragette movement in Britain was an underground affair where women would meet, with the support of a few men, in clandestine ways to organize marches and protests against the English government. Leading this movement is Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep) who in a couple of scenes sets the tone for the real foot soldiers, Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff), and Maud Watts (Carrie Mulligan). Watts has a young boy and she’s worked at a laundry company her whole life. She tries to stay out of trouble, but as her bravery begins to grow with the injustice she sees around her, she ends up being one of the stronger voices and leaders of this group of women trying to make a change.

The cost is high. Men run the country and families and she loses her son to her husband who then sends the boy off with another family. She’s living in the street, family gone, but sees that this is the only path for her – getting the vote, and getting more say in her life and country.

The dialogue is very strong and many of the scenes/sets are perfectly attuned to the time and feeling of this darkness coming to light.

Mulligan is terrific. She is believable and carries the inner strength needed to make her choices congruent with the part through and through. This is a wonderful role for her. Duff is equally strong as a woman having to also make hard choices, especially when she becomes pregnant again. Carter is very strong as a medical practitioner, who uses her connections and supportive husband to keep the movement going. Finbar Lynch as Carter’s husband Hugh is incredibly wonderful in his very subdued background supportive role. Abi Morgan wrote a great script which evoked strength and fear in strong reflective ways. Sarah Gavron had excellent control of the script and subject. She made this come alive in an intelligent manner.

Overall:  The film was very good, but when the list of countries appeared on the screen listing the years they gave women the vote, it put a very loud and strong exclamation point on the subject.