Suffragette Review [London Film Festival 2015]

Less than 100 years after all adult women in the UK were finally granted the vote, a film about the struggle to gain that basic democratic right emerges. With a dream team of female talent in front of and behind the camera, Sarah Gavron's Suffragette is a gripping start, but it becomes clear that there is far more of this true story of tremendous sacrifice left to be told.

Suffragette makes the interesting decision to follow fictional character Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) from washer woman and poverty-stricken working mother to militant suffragette engaged in escalating actions against the government. To the detriment of her own family life, she joins Edith Ellyn’s (Helena Bonham Carter) group of East London women who are spurred on by the currently in-hiding Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep). As Inspector Steed (Brendon Gleeson) keeps a close eye on the women, their civil disobedience becomes more volatile and threatens to land them all in prison.

To a young audience raised in a world increasingly full of strong women who may never have even questioned their right to vote, the suffragette's struggle looks at once completely ludicrous, and at the same time teeth-grindingly infuriating. How dare men decide that women didn't deserve the vote? It’s an unimaginable situation that seems preposterous, but is still sadly relevant. The closing crawl of the film indicates the year that women got the vote in other countries of the world, and unbelievably the UK was far from the most recent.

Suffragette sits neatly alongside 12 Years a Slave as a document of the Western world's recent history where depressing barbarity was carried out in the name of old white men who were desperate to never let any power slip from their hands. The working class washer women in Suffragette are little more than slaves, being paid far less and working longer hours than their male counterparts. Those that speak out against the unfairness of the system are beaten, threatened, humiliated, ridiculed and made to feel ashamed.

And this is where the true tragedy of Suffragette lies. Because while it covers the famous incident involving Emily Davison's brave sacrifice involving the King's horse, it's really the story of ordinary women engaged in everyday action. Even Streep's Pankhurst only appears for a single scene, though her inspiration and influence is felt throughout. Maud sacrifices so much for the cause, including her beloved son and her job, and it is this tension between doing what she wants (to see her son) and what she must do (make the world a better place for future generations of women) that is so heart-wrenching.

Suffragette feels just as relevant today as it would have been in 1912. Women are abused, belittled and laughed at by men. But they also face the impossibly difficult choice of often wanting to manage a family with a desire to do something potentially more fulfilling outside of the home. It's a choice which Suffragette pointedly shows a single father tragically failing to consider. It also deals with the notion of what is basically terrorist action, as the women have become fed up with not being listened to, and decide on a policy of non-violent but destructive disobedience. In its mentions of police surveillance and brutality, and the media's tendency to ridicule those who threaten the status quo, Suffragette constantly reminds of none-more-contemporary issues.

For a period drama, Suffragette feels righteous and urgent in its fury. The performances are uniformly excellent, particularly Mulligan and Anne-Marie Duff, while Gavron's direction is best when highlighting the horrors of hard labour in the laundry and more so, the barbarity of the women's treatment during prison stints. It’s a shame not to learn more about Emily Davison as she plays such a fundamental role in the climax, but Suffragette's focus on the fictional Maud makes for an incredibly emotive journey.

Suffragette is a vital film, but feels like a strong start, rather than the definitive suffragette movie. More films on this movement would be most welcome, and for those dumb enough to think feminism is a dirty word; this is a timely reminder of its fundamental potential.

Watch the trailer:

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Fight Club, Feminism and Misogyny: A2 Film Studies Exam Answer

It's that time of year again when the A2 Film Studies exams are nearly upon us. As usual I'm doing lots of revision with my students and also practicing exam answers. Here is one I wrote on Fight Club and whether the film could be considered misogynist or not.

'Marla is at the root of it’, says Jack in Fight Club.  Discuss what this statement says about the film as a whole.

When Fight Club’s narrator Jack begins to tell his story, he believes that it all starts with how he came to meet and begin a complex relationship with a woman named Marla Singer. Played by Helena Bonham Carter, Marla is a gothic looking, free spirited, depressed and deviant woman who spends her time in support meetings for people with serious illnesses. Jack blames Marla for much that is wrong with his life and many have suggested that this makes the film misogynistic. However, it is far from that simple.

 In Fight Club, the protagonist who the audience is encouraged to identify with at first seems to hate Marla. She ruins everything for him once he finds that he can cry when in support groups and that this allows him to sleep at night. He calls her a ‘bitch’, a ‘tumour’ and finds her presence threatening and annoying. The viewer learns this through Jack’s voiceover and so audiences are encouraged to identify with his feelings of hatred. The fact she is dressed all in black, smokes constantly and steals clothes from launderettes also makes her appear to be a negative character, very similar to the femme fatale figure of film noir who often lures the male protagonist to his death. Later in the film, Jack treats Marla terribly, often being rude to her and trying to get her to leave his house. This is made all the more offensive to audiences when they learn the twist in the story and that Jack is actually having sex with Marla before sending her on her way.

 On the other hand the film could also be seen to be about men needing to mature in order to have a healthy and loving relationship with another person. Jack is like a baby when we first meet him, nursing at the giant breasts of a man who has had his testicles removed and now resembles a mother figure. Jack cannot deal with the fact he may like Marla and so creates an uber-masculine alter-ego who treats women poorly and distances them from him. The end of the film sees Jack rejecting Tyler and accepting Marla as an equal and potential partner when the pair hold hands to watch the destruction of credit card company buildings. This shows that by the end of the film, Marla is a source of happiness for the protagonist and after reverting to being a baby then acting like a rebellious teen with Tyler, Jack is now mature and ready for a grown-up relationship with a woman.

 Fight Club could be also be read as a film that attacks the feminisation and emasculation of men in modern society. While Marla is not a very ‘feminine’ woman, it could be argued that Jack has been feminised by his job and the commercial culture he lives in. He is a consumer who loves nothing more than buying from the IKEA catalogue and satisfying his nesting instinct. He has never been in a fight, hunted for his food and never had a father figure around to teach him to be a traditional man. The film answers this problem by giving Jack his alter-ego Tyler Durden who is fearless and tough, rejects advertising and material possessions and uses women only for his sexual desire. Tyler wants to return to a vision of the past where men were hunters and did not have to go to work and be treated poorly by bosses for low incomes that allowed them to buy comforts such as duvets. It could even be argued that Marla finds the masculine Tyler side of the protagonist more sexually attractive than the more feminine Jack side.

 While the statement ‘Marla is at the root of it’ suggests she is a major character, women in Fight Club are barely present and could be seen to be ignored or dismissed in the narrative. They do not participate in the fight clubs or Project Mayhem and Marla and Chloe are the only named female characters. Women are either not invited or do not want to attend fight clubs and we learn little of Marla during the course of the film. Chloe is a cancer sufferer and is made a bit of a joke out of as she wants to just have sex one more time before dying. Both Marla and Chloe are tied to the idea of sex and although Marla seems quite strong and fearless in many ways, she also keeps returning to a man who treats her incredibly poorly.

On the other hand the men in the film are also very negatively represented and actually Tyler appears to be the main cause of problems for Jack in Fight Club. The men in the film are at first seen as whimpering support group attending victims. They cry and hug and many have literally lost their testicles. The men who join the fight clubs and are later sucked in to Project Mayhem are easily lead followers. They become like a cult, never thinking or questioning anything they are told. They are silenced by Tyler and become terrorists and moronic. Tyler becomes increasingly thuggish and dangerous until Jack if forced to fight and then kill him. Even though women are negatively represented in Fight Club, Marla appears to be the sanest person in the film by the end.

Marla is indeed at the root of Fight Club but she is not the cause of all Jack’s problems as he originally suggests. When he meets Marla, his psyche splits and in order to deal with the fear of falling in love, Jack creates Tyler in order for him to become a mature man. The film ends with the protagonist rejecting the macho rebellion of Tyler and accepting Marla as a source of love and affection. Marla is at the root of his salvation and the film is therefore neither as misogynistic nor radical as some have suggested.

Fight Club and the Doors of Perception

These are the all singing, all dancing SPOILERS of the world

 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch Fight Club once every six months for the next five years. Each time, keep a written record of how you felt about it – where your sympathies lay with the characters, what you felt their real motivations were, what the message of the film was. Do not read your previous entries until you’ve finished the last one. Do not read criticism or watch documentaries regarding it. Do not do anything that could fix your opinion of it moreso than it is already fixed. Do not talk about Fight Club.

I can’t think of any other film that I have interpreted so differently each time I’ve watched it. I will of course admit that how I watch it is always affected by what’s going on in my life at the time. In my opinion that’s a major part of its brilliance – and on one occasion, its downfall.

Of course, there are some themes, plot-points and nuances of characterisation that are central to the film and sometimes made quite obvious for us. Sometimes it annoys me that the third act of the film goes to such lengths to explain that Pitt’s Durden is one and the same as Norton’s unnamed character -  who I will refer to as ‘Jack’ after the subject of the first-person bodily organ narratives he finds. We could figure that for ourselves- but it leaves the question of whether or not test audiences could. I guess not, if it was necessary to include such explication.

Casting my mind back, I remember seeing a very different film for the first time when I was sixteen or seventeen. Yes, it was on VHS so it looked like crap, but that’s not what I mean. As I prejudicially believe teenagers are wont to do, I found it to be a very ‘cool’ film. It had a stylish protagonist in Durden, a twist and an intellectual, establishment-defying message to it. Naturally, I really enjoyed the anti-Capitalist idea. Now I realise of course that Durden is a cult of personality and simply cannot tolerate anything as being perceived as more important than him.

The biggest difference between my perception of the film then as opposed to now is Marla Singer. Casting my mind back, I am certain that my younger self despised Marla as a moody, fickle attention-seeker. The film does an excellent job of aligning us with Jack though his narration and his placement in the foreground of scenes involving himself, Durden and Marla. It seems that Jack constantly takes the flak from Marla for her relationship problems with Durden. His politeness is stretched to its limit and the only indication of suppressed rage is the frantic scrubbing of his toothbrush on a shirt-stain. Her flirtation and groping seem to mock him, giving a glimpse of what she has with Durden, rubbing in her prior sexual rejection of him. When she speaks of the bridesmaid’s dress she is wearing and how special it was to someone, she seems to be building a self-absorbed adolescent tragedy around herself …

… until you realise that she is of course talking to Durden and alluding to the way he actually treats her – throwing himself into other tasks to avoid any kind of post-coitus bonding and eventually ejecting her from his home as if she no longer means anything. While it is true that Marla does nothing to help herself whatever way the film is watched, on second viewing she becomes an intensely sad, sympathetic figure.

Knowing that Durden and Jack are one and the same throws many other points into sharp relief. Suddenly Durden’s revelations about being “a generation of men raised by women,” and wondering “if another woman is really what we need” become elaborate rationalisations for ignoring Marla when he isn’t boning her. An enlightened visionary becomes a selfish asshole long before the third act.

It’s not to say that Fight Club is without failings. There is some painful exposition, but at least it is brief. Where the film fails, some of the blame can be laid on the audience. Watch Fight Club disengaged after the first viewing, suffering under the assumption that all its mysteries are unravelled, and you might find it tedious. The journalist knows this, because the viewer knows this. Time and space can vastly improve this film – after being bored by it once, I left it almost two years, and then found it revelatory when I came back to it.

There is so much to discuss, but I don’t see much reason for any more glib assertions about my interpretations.

What are your experiences of Fight Club?

-          David ‘Piler Turden’ Jackson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

You can feed his despicable lust for gold buying his first novel by clicking here. It’s called ‘Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity’ and sees cybernetically enhanced super-cop Jennifer Carter uncover a terrible plot to overthrow the British government while on the run from the very institution she is trying to save. It’s very violent, which he knows you’ll love because you’re a sadist. It’s mainly racists that get hurt, so it’s OK. He recommends waiting a while for the improved second edition, because the formatting didn’t transfer properly to all devices, goddammit!

More from David M. Jackson at I Love That Film:

 

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Why I Love That Film: Aliens 

More on Fight Club:

Is Fight Club a film about power and control rather than liberation? (written version)

Is Fight Club a film about power and control rather than liberation? (video version)

Lots more Fight Club links

Using Critical Approaches to Study Fight Club

Fight Club Video Essay

The other day I posted an essay answer to the question of whether Fight Club is a film about power and control or liberation. As I haven't done any video editing in a long time, I thought I'd throw together this video version of the essay. It's just me speaking the essay with lovely pictures and gifs to look at while you watch.

I quite enjoyed making this little video though I am a bit worried about my utterly monotonous voice. I thought this was me sounding excited! I tried to include video clips but couldn't find a way to download video clips from YouTube anymore. People must rip clips from films to put in their videos on YouTube but unfortunately I have no idea how to do this either. As usual my lack of technical skills are completely limiting what I can do. This video could have been so much more exciting with frequent clips from the film to throw in.

While browsing around for images to put to my words, I found a huge range of pictures. There is so much cool Fight Club fan art out there and I love the gifs people have made. I hope they don't mind me using such things on my video!



I'm thinking I make some more of these though I might see if this one actually gets any views first as I guess there is not much point in making more if no one is going to see them. What I really need to find out is how to get clips from film to put in and then I could break up the monotony of my voice over with something far more exciting!

I'd be very interested to know what anyone who reads this or watches the video thinks. If anyone has some technical know how and could point me in the direction of a site that allows me to download YouTube videos to avi. files, I would also be incredibly grateful.

Is Fight Club a film about power and control rather than liberation?

Fight Club is the story of an unnamed narrator (from here referred to as Jack) who unconsciously creates an alter ego for himself in the form of revolutionary anarchist icon Tyler Durden. This split in the personality of the hero manifests itself in a whole new person being created who helps Jack to become free from the trappings of modern life. However Tyler is also an agent of control with great power over Jack and therefore Fight Club is both about power and control as well as liberation.

Tyler is virtually a fascist. His ideology is centred on the idea that pain and violence can be progressive. Fascists believed in the benefits of war, particularly for men as war can bring out the best in people. War allows people to come together to fight a common good, allows men to fight and be brave and strong and also helps society to advance technologically. Tyler believes that by creating his own army, he can change society for the better. These changes will include acts of destruction, damage and violence or at least the very real threat of violence. For example he intends to blow up credit card company buildings and threatens to kill a man if he does not strive to reach his potential by becoming a vet.

Tyler also controls his army like a fascist dictator. He shouts slogans at them like ‘you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake’, therefore controlling what they think and taking away their individuality. He makes them dress in an all-black uniform and shave their heads so they look the same. He refers to them as space monkeys who should be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. He has great power over his army and controls their actions, their words and their thoughts. Project Mayhem members begin behaving like indoctrinated cult members, unable to think for themselves and chanting ‘His name is Robert Paulson’ simply because they fail to question authority.

Fight Club itself turns into Project Mayhem and the rules state that its members should not talk about it. Similarly Tyler insists that Jack does not talk about Tyler to Marla. Jack even says that sometimes Tyler spoke for him, almost like he is an abused and silenced housewife. Tyler may have some revolutionary politics and appear as a liberator but he is also a very controlling and domineering force in the film.

On the other hand, Tyler is also a liberator, a revolutionary and an anarchist. He is created by Jack because Jack is unhappy with the state of his current life, desperate for an escape from the boring existence of the modern corporate man. Tyler offers him freedom in the form of giving up his possessions, his job and learning to live without the trappings of IKEA catalogues and comfy living. Tyler teaches Jack to let go and ‘hit bottom’. This seemingly cures Jack of his insomnia and allows him to speak up for himself at work, scaring his boss and finally leaving his job. Tyler believes that having unnecessary possessions and media marketing keep people enslaved in their jobs and consuming products that they do not actually need. Tyler attempts to convince young men that they do not need to work boring jobs and keep buying whatever advertising tells them to buy. He wants men to free themselves from the comforts of modern living.

Tyler also tries to start a revolution against capitalism and the culture it has created. He wishes to blow up credit card companies in order to erase the debt record. In this way he is a socialist as he wants everyone to be free from debt so that all human beings can be equal again. He believes that destroying these companies, he can bring about real change in an unfair and unequal society. Marxists believe that a revolution will be necessary in order to bring about social change and to redistribute the wealth of the world to all people equally. Tyler appears s to be a revolutionary but he has to be a dictator to begin the revolution. The question is, in a freer and more equal society after erasing the debt record, would Tyler relinquish his power, leaving society to run itself or would he become an even more tyrannical dictator?

The film is also critical of corporate control over men in the modern world. Jack is bored and depressed because of the monotony of his job. His boss talks to him like a faceless robot and it seems that much of Jack’s life is dictated by work. He has to travel where work tells him and do as he is told. This allows him to afford the life he lives and the life that Tyler tries to get him to reject. Jack even mentions in his voice over that when space exploration develops, it will be the corporations that take control of the planets, naming them after themselves like ‘Planet Starbucks’. This shows that he thinks that corporate control is total and that their profits will allow them to explore and dominate the universe in the future. It is the banks that control the debt that keeps people working all their lives in order to pay it back and that Tyler wants to overthrow.

Advertising also is a key form of control that Tyler criticises for telling people what to buy, what to wear, where to eat and drink and how to look. Fight Club seems to stand against these sorts of control but in the end, the protagonist Jack rejects Tyler so perhaps it is more complex than to say Fight Club is simply anti-capitalist and against corporate control.

Marla appears to be the most liberated character in the film. She does not fear death, she does not let her gender stop her from attending testicular cancer support groups and she steals from others with reckless abandon. Jack/Tyler does seem to have some control over her as he manages to mess with her mind and she keeps coming back to him. She is also literally restrained and dragged back to Jack in the final scene of the film, showing that again, Project Mayhem is as much about power and control as liberating the masses.

The question of whether Fight Club is all about power and control or liberation really comes down to the intentions of Tyler and Project Mayhem. On the one hand their intentions to make a more equal society can appear noble and could help to set free a lot of the wage slaves of the world. On the other hand Tyler is a dictatorial presence and a hypocrite and it is only once Jack destroys him that he can truly be free. Fight Club is therefore about power, control and liberation. It questions corporate control over the world and has a character that advocates revolution but it also represents the revolutionary as a character to be critical and cautious of. Tyler is as much of a dictator as he is an anarchist and contrary to his demands, Tyler must be discussed. We have to talk about Fight Club.


More A2 exam answers:

Using Critical Approaches to Study Fight Club

Is Fight Club a film about power and control rather than liberation?

Analysing La Haine

World Cinema: Distinctive Visual Features

World Cinema: Social and Political Context

WJEC A2 Film Studies Exam Practice Section B

A2 Film Studies Exam Practice Section B

 

WHY I LOVE... FIGHT CLUB

Here I go again; breaking the first two rules of Fight Club!

Fight Club opens with a pounding, fast-paced, Dust Brothers-scored, computer-generated ride through the protagonist’s brain. It sets off at a terrific pace and rarely lets up.

So much of this film feels, if not experimental, then at least bold, daring, challenging and thought-provoking, in terms of its visuals, its structure and its themes.

Utilizing a circular narrative structure, the voiceover is used to guide the viewer through the story. The postmodern and sardonic drawl of Norton’s voiceover demonstrates his awareness of being in a film, even stopping the progress of the story and skipping to an earlier scene to ‘back up a little’.

I love Fight Club’s visuals because they are dazzling. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and director David Fincher pull off a dark and dirty film shot with bold visual ideas that look like they cost the earth. The pioneering and stunning use of photogrammetry combines live action with computer-generated imagery in several amazing sequences such as the camera pulling out of the bin full of rubbish and the camera whizzing down a building, into the building’s car park, into a van filled with explosives and then whizzing through the streets to another building’s explosive-filled car park all in a matter of seconds.

The film is full of incredible visual effects from the plane crash to the self-inflicted shooting of the protagonist. But it is the experimental elements that are the most eye-catching and memorable. Subliminal frames of Tyler Durden being spliced in to the early scenes of the film, the flash of a single frame of porn at the end, the visible sprocket holes as Tyler addresses the camera and almost seems to be leaping from the film itself all combine in making Fight Club a film that violently breaks free of Hollywood’s restrictive visual conventions.

Accusations of style over substance are unfounded as the film is full of ideas and many of its visual flourishes serve the story and develop the ideas of the film in interesting and creative ways. It may not have answers, but it is filled with food for thought.

Released in 1999, after a delay due to the recent Columbine High School massacre, Fight Club divided critical opinion. Presciently referencing the massacre in its scene where Norton threatens his boss with a similar rampage, the film is also an eerie premonition of 9/11 with its final scene of the destruction of capitalist towers of power (by a group of indoctrinated young men) and repeated references to ‘Ground Zero’.

Like another 1999 film ‘The Sixth Sense’, much was said about Fight Club’s rug-pulling twist. It’s a shame as this is such a small reason to discuss the film. However it does make for fulfilling repeat viewings of the film spent spotting its liberal peppering of hints throughout. The narrative does not fit easily into a genre, lacking conformity with any rigid set of conventions. Some call it a thriller; some have called it a dark romantic comedy. Either way it is bleak but hilarious, exciting and strangely romantic and definitely not predictable, leaping from scene to scene with pace, wit and unexpected escalations of the action.

I love the script because it is littered with dark as dirt, blackest of black humour. Occasionally uncomfortable and insensitive with its cast of cancer sufferers, it still makes you snigger. And who wouldn’t laugh at a little girl crying at the sight of a single frame of porn spliced into a harmless family film?

But of course the film would be nothing without its central trio of brilliant characters and the talented cast’s performances. Norton plays troubled, depressed insomniac with a childlike quality but the film belongs to Pitt and Bonham Carter. Pitt plays hunky and alluring, charismatic and crazy while Bonham Carter is cast against type as dingy, dirty femme fatale Marla.

Marla looks as though she has walked in off the set of a film noir, smoking, dressed in black and ruining the life of our protagonist. She seems fearless, in control, independent and contrasts with Jack’s reserved, uptight personality. Marla punctuates the film; like an annoyance she disappears and keeps reappearing in Jack’s life. She is the one who comes across as a sympathetic victim on repeat watches. It is a gutsy and funny performance.

Meanwhile Tyler may come off as an initially enthralling and exciting character but on repeat viewings, comes across more as a bully and a hypocrite; he manipulates and pressures people to conform to his expectations. He is a modern day preacher but his word is anti-God, anti-capitalist and anti-society. He ridicules the unnecessary consumption of modern life but then smokes a cigarette (no doubt made by a huge multi-national corporation and in no way necessary to his survival). However he comes across as charismatic and intelligent, filled with little nuggets of information like why they give oxygen on planes and how to make napalm. Nevertheless for all his speeches on freeing yourself, Tyler turns into a drill instructor and for all his anti-authoritarian mischief, Tyler ends up a Fuhrer figure, manipulating the masses into becoming thoughtless pawns.

But really it’s the films themes, ideas and messages that are why I love Fight Club. Getting to the bottom of what this film is really about is tricky and pointless. It has no answers and has no message. It is nihilistic and bleak but very funny. It deals with corporate life and the corporate world but has product placement in many scenes. It touches on corporate practices with its brief explanation of formulas and protection of profits over consumer safety. It deals with consumerism, capitalism and the emasculation of modern men.

Some have called it a fascist film for its suggestion that violence is good for men and the world. Spill blood and you will feel alive it seems to say at some points. Follow and obey your leader unquestioningly to attain enlightenment. But the film does not fully endorse this. Yes bleeding and fighting do come across as self-help remedies that hugging and sharing will never get close to. But compassion is also shown as Jack realizes the error of his ways.

Some have called the film misogynistic but Marla is the most interesting and sane character in the film. Tyler may show contempt for women and there may be some strong homoerotic undertones, but the resolution delivers a reconciliation of man and woman that could easily be seen as conservative.

 

Fight Club also deals with religion and the Space Monkeys of Project Mayhem become parodies of cult members. The early stages of Fight Club are often compared to religious gatherings with ‘shouting in tongues’ and the aftermath of feeling ‘saved’.

The film is neither right-wing nor left-wing; it walks a tightrope of extremes. Ending with one of the most memorable and breathtaking shots of modern cinema accompanied by the haunting music of the Pixies, it is a film that I love and I can watch again and again and again.