One of the best thing about Guillermo del Toro’s movies is they’re so difficult to cram into any box. Is it a horror film? Science fiction? Romance? Historical parable? Fairy tale? Musical comedy?
All of the above, I’d say. After its impressive win at the Academy Awards last week, “The Shape of Water” will surely go down as one of the kookiest Best Picture winners ever.
Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute woman who works as a cleaning lady in a secret government laboratory circa the early 1960s. Her world is tightly bookended: the routine of her job, her friendship with Giles (Richard Jenkins), the gentle illustrator who lives next door, and another with Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who works with her in the dank underground facility.
One day, a strange aquatic man is brought into the lab, where he’s prodded and tortured like a curious science experiment. But Elisa befriends the creature, and even learns how to communicate with it using sign language. She discovers there is a gentleness behind his fearsome exterior, which is like a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and a space alien.
Hawkins, Spencer and Jenkins all received acting nominations at the Oscars, and the movie could easily have gotten three more. Michael Stuhlbarg plays the chief scientist with conflicting impulses and loyalties; Michael Shannon is chilling as the military man running the operation, who sees the aquatic man as just another fish to be cut up; and Doug Jones, who elegantly plays the creature with the help of an elaborate costume and some CGI.
Perhaps the thing I liked best about “The Shape of Water” is that it manages to not only incorporate these six characters into the story, but it actually lets the audience follow each of them for a while, seeing how they became the people they are and how they will interact with each other, in commune or in conflict.
Bonus features are decent, but not great. They consist of five making-of documentary featurettes: “A Fairy Tale for Troubled Times,” “Anatomy of a Scene: Prologue,” “Anatomy of a Scene: The Dance,” “Shaping the Waves: A Conversation with James Jean” amd “Guillermo del Toro’s Master Class.”
The greatest compliment I can give to a filmmaker is they make movies that aren’t like anybody else’s.
I didn’t much care for director Guillermo del Toro’s first few American films, but then I discovered his early Mexican stuff and fell in love. Subsequent efforts like “Pacific Rim” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” are films I cherish deeply.
Even when he wandered into a hothouse of Gothic silliness with “Crimson Peak,” I appreciated that it represented a singular vision unlike no other.
Like all of del Toro’s films, “The Shape of Water” defies easy convention. It contains elements of fantasy, horror, science fiction, comedy and even, most surprisingly, romance. Like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” it has a timeless quality, as if the story could have taken place a long time ago or a few years from now.
It’s a deeply affecting film that makes us feel and also makes us think. And it boasts no less than a half-dozen terrific performances worthy of consideration during the awards season. Even characters at the edges of the story feel complete and fully drawn.
Sally Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute youngish woman. In the opening minutes we observe her go through the quotidian routine of her day: waking, getting dressed, boiling eggs, shining shoes, a quick round of masturbation in the bathtub -- timed to coincide with the eggs, no less.
I liked that del Toro, who wrote the screenplay with Vanessa Taylor, included this last bit. It’s shocking, and it’s meant to be -- watching the main character get naked and rub one out moments after we’ve meant her. But it clues us in that Elisa is not some sexless fawn who deserves our pity because of her handicap, but a vibrant woman full of corners and contradictions.
After her amazing turn in “Maudie” earlier this year, it seems clear that Hawkins’ biggest competition for the Best Actress Oscar is… Sally Hawkins. She shows us Elisa’s yearning and doubt, but also her bravery and pride. What women.
Her entire life seems to be taken up with two things: her job, working as a cleaning lady at a secretive military laboratory, and her friendship with her next-door neighbor, Giles. Played by Richard Jenkins with humor and grace, he’s a fussy, aging commercial artist who frets about his baldness and loneliness. He repeatedly visits an awful pie franchise simply to chat up the sweet young boy working the counter. We get the sense, without it ever being stated, that Giles lost his day job because of his romantic impulses.
The lab where Elisa toils with her loyal friend, Zelda (Octavia Spencer), is a dank underground steampunk denizen of white coat-wearing scientists and gruff military types tromping to and fro. We half expect to glimpse through an open door and see James Bond strapped down with a laser pointed at his nethers.
One day a hard man named Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrives with a secretive container holding a wild water creature that he has captured. Elisa is repulsed by the man but strangely drawn to the captive.
Strickland is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, the sort who wields his privilege as a weapon. He is the man who never fails, because he is always willing to take whatever steps are necessary to reach his goals. To him it’s a simple equation: do your duty, reap the rewards -- rank, prosperity, family, a glossy new 1962 Cadillac DeVille that is most definitely teal and not green.
Elisa starts spending her lunches in the lab with the creature, and soon finds he’s not the fearsome, mindless beast Strickland would have everyone believe. She starts to bring him eggs to eat, plays music to soothe and even discovers he can be taught to use her sign language.
Things go from there… though not in the way we expect.
Doug Jones, a master of costumed performance, plays the amphibious man, with the help of a little CGI. He slightly resembles the Creature from the Black Lagoon, with some outer space alien added in.
The other notable character is Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), the chief scientist overseeing the creature. He objects to Strickland’s rough treatment, including the use of a cattle prod. He wants to learn from their captive rather than experiment upon him. At first coming across as a soulless technologist, Stuhlbarg’s wide, wet eyes clue us into a man whose heart is pulled in several directions.
The best thing about “The Shape of Water” is that we feel like the story could follow any one of these characters down their individual path and still feel satisfied with the journey. And to a large extent, the film actually does that.
It’s a story of two that is actually about many. We’re all connected -- sometimes in ways that are obvious, often more mysteriously.
With every one of Sally Hawkins' endearing, deeply etched film roles, we fall a little bit more in love with her.
Hawkins' performance as Maud Lewis is essentially a portrait of pure love. Maud was a woman from Nova Scotia who was racked by crippling rheumatoid arthritis from childhood. She spent most of her life in a tiny shack without electricity or running water, living in abject poverty with her husband, Everett, a fish peddler who was gruff and ornery on his best days, a much worse on his worst.
Despite this, Maud became a renowned artist whose work was collected far and wide. Her paintings were bright, bold sweeps of unmixed colors, flowers or other nature scenes. She painted on almost everything: cards, pieces of scrap wood, virtually every single surface of their cottage. Today Maud's entire house is a work of art enshrined inside a museum.
Directed by Aisling Walsh from a screenplay by Sherry White, "Maudie" focuses not on the tiny, disabled body but the titanic soul contained within it. Hawkins portrays Maud's disease without fetishizing it, a slightly crooked, awkward woman who becomes more bent and bowed with the passing of years, her little hop of a limp turning into a tremulous stagger.
But that's not what the movie is about. Indeed, I don't think the word "arthritis" is even spoken aloud until near the end.
Like nearly all of Hawkins' other roles, even the most tragic of circumstances cannot bury her character's joyful essence. Maud smiles and twinkles, even when she is ignored or treated ill, always finding a way to carry on and hope for better.
Among those failing to give Maud her due are her Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose) and brother Charles (Zachary Bennett). They view Maud as a naive invalid, someone to be looked after and kept inside tight bookends of their own proscription. After Charles sells the family home to fund his business schemes, Maud is forced to live with Ida, under her strict rules -- a kept woman with no lover.
Certainly, Maud is not very smart in the traditional sense. She's a simple woman of simple tastes and desires. She wanders down to the local club to have a beer and do a little dance by herself, which Ida finds scandalous.
Then Maud spies a disheveled man coming into the local five-and-dime store to advertise for a housemaid. The man is obviously simple-minded, prone to outbursts of anger, and fiercely independent. Despite this, Maud answers the ad, seeing an opportunity to move out of Ida's place and have a piece of life that is her own.
The advertisement is for a live-in position, despite the fact the man's shack would qualify as what we today call a "tiny home," with a single walk-up loft bed. It soon becomes apparent that what the man was really advertising for was a wife to look after him.
We hear Everett before we see him, and it's hard to believe that sound could come out of Ethan Hawke. Low and guttural like a pair of stones being ground together, Everett's voice is that of a man not used to speaking, because he does not have much to say.
Everett is very particular about how things are done. He believes his home is his castle, and he the unquestioned lord. Everett is at once a very proud man and one who believes that everyone looks down upon him. Possibly there are undiagnosed mental health issues.
The arrangement causes a minor scandal in their little town -- "shacking up together" is tossed around. Maud doesn't really mind, and part of her is happy to be noticed at all, or spoken about in a romantic context.
The relationship, such as it is, gets off to a rocky start. There are outbursts, controlling behavior, even some physical violence. Everyone expects Maud to crawl back to Aunt Ida's. But she stays, the wavelength and intensity of Everett's rages become wider and smaller, and they settle into something like a routine, which finally becomes a marriage almost by default.
There's not much house to clean, so Maud passes the time painting little flowers here and there to brighten up the place. One of Everett's fish customers, a sophisticated woman from New York named Sandra (Kari Matchett), notices one of Maud's doodles and offers 25 cents for it.
Soon others buy them, painting becomes a regular source of income, and eventually people from all over stop by the little house to purchase a Maud Lewis original. Newspaper reporters and TV camera crews come calling.
Everett begrudgingly takes over the chores so Maud can have more time to paint -- which is as close to an overt expression of love a man like him can utter.
In its own plain way, "Maudie" is an incredibly beautiful movie. The photography by Guy Godfree has an unornamented charm, and the sweet strings of Michael Timmins' musical score sing a lullaby of humble passion.
Walks are used as a visual representation of Maud and Everett's evolving relationship. At first she walks behind him while he pushes his cart of goods about town; later they walk together, then she sits in the front of the cart facing away from him, and finally she rides nose-to-nose with her husband.
I think these are among the finest performances of both Hawkins' and Hawke's careers -- and that's saying something. Theirs is a duet of troubled love, expressing how two people with fierce challenges and emotional limitations can find contentment and a sense of permanency together. Both should remembered come time for Academy Award nominations.
"Maudie" is a quiet, candid movie that reminds us that beauty is not just found, it often must be made.
Asa Butterfield shines in this earnest drama about a super-smart British kid whose math skills far outpace his social ones. Nathan is an autistic lad who gets a chance to join his country’s team on the international math Olympiad. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime, perhaps the entryway to the highest tiers of academia, but his shy manner and trouble relating with other teens also makes it a forbidding challenge.
First-time feature film director Morgan Matthews and screenwriter James Graham show their inexperience, layering in too many supporting characters and tertiary storylines. It’s not these background players are uninteresting – exactly the opposite, in fact.
For instance, Rafe Spall as Nathan’s mentor, a former Olympiad now battling multiple sclerosis, is so compelling that he steals too much of the spotlight from the main character. He almost needs his own movie. Then the filmmakers have the teacher start a romance with Mathan’s mum, played by the great Sally Hawkins, which just comes across as distracting and even creepy.
Still, the film finds its footing once Nathan and his team arrives in China, where they begin a friendly contest of wills with the home team. The boy tries to incorporate himself with his teammates but struggles, especially with the strong-willed Luke (Jake Davies). Meanwhile, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) of the Chinese team offers her friendship … and perhaps something more, which Nathan is wholly unequipped to deal with.
“A Brilliant Young Mind” is a flawed but worthy cinematic effort. Too many movies nowadays give us lazy stories and unoriginal characters. Here’s a film that tries to do too much.
Alas, the film is being released on video without bonus features of any kind.
"A Brilliant Young Mind" is a sweet and sensitive tale, but it wants to be three sweet and sensitive tales -- maybe more. In exploring the world of an autistic teen boy who's also a math prodigy, the film gives into the temptation to have other figures in his life nudge him out of the frame, which diminishes him as a character.
It's still a lovely film about a troubled genius, along the lines of "A Beautiful Mind" or the more recent "Love & Mercy." I just wish the filmmakers were a little more disciplined in their storytelling choices.
Morgan Matthews is a veteran documentarian making his first foray into feature film directing, and screenwriter James Graham is a relative novice with credits in television. They make the sort of mistakes inexperienced movie-makers make, but show a deft touch toward building believable, relatable characters -- too many, in fact.
The movie's title everywhere but the U.S. is "x+y," which perhaps helps explain the movie's hazy focus. It's based on a documentary called "Beautiful Young Minds," about the International Mathematical Olympiad, also directed by Matthews.
Asa Butterfield plays Nathan Ellis, a Brit lad "on the spectrum" who has trouble connecting emotionally with others. He needs everything to be just so, from his food -- seven prawn balls, not nine! -- to his relationship with his mother (Sally Hawkins), whom he studiously keeps at a distance. His adoring father (Martin McCann) was killed years ago -- Edward Baker-Close plays Nathan as a child -- and he's been essentially floating above human contact since.
Rafe Spall plays Martin Humphreys, a former math prodigy himself, now stricken with MS and a crushing lack of self-worth, who takes Nathan under his wing and begins training him for the math Olympiad. Spall, who resembles a bearded Ryan Reynolds so much I actually thought it was him for the first half-hour or so, is tremendous in the role.
For awhile the film starts following him instead of Nathan, exploring his life away from the boy, and we grow confused. It's obvious Martin sees much of himself in Nathan, and has essentially devoted the entirety of his remaining ambition to seeing him succeed. Do we really need to follow Martin into group therapy sessions, where he lays out his doubts plain as paper? Or a burgeoning, ill-advised romance with Nathan's mom?
Similarly, once Nathan arrives in Taiwan for the math trials, the story sort of scatters into several pieces that, while engaging on their own, don't really fit together.
There is camaraderie and competition amongst the whiz kids, both within the British contingent and against the Chinese team and its adult captain, with whom Nathan's captain (the reliably nervy Eddie Marsan) has an enduring rivalry, barely concealed by convivial joshing.
One of the Brit boys, Luke (Jake Davies), seems to be the smartest and is certainly the boldest, but the others resent him, especially the more socially inclined Alex (Isaac Cooper). The power dynamic shifts this way and that, with Nathan as the neutral party. The team's lone female, Rebecca (Alexa Davies), clearly is attracted to him, but Nathan remains oblivious or unwilling to reciprocate.
Meanwhile, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) is the Chinese team captain's niece, and makes repeated attempts to ingratiate herself with Nathan. He gradually responds and a friendship forms. Meanwhile, his work on the math team suffers. Has she been conscripted to disorient the British team's top competitor?
So is "A Brilliant Young Mind" a story about math? Or love? Academic rivalries? Second chances? Autism? Father figures? All it once, it would seem.
I may not be a math genius, but I know a thing or two about movies, and one of the first equations one needs to know is that too much addition to the story always results in a deduction of value from the final result. This film is still a positive cinematic experience, but could've been exponentially better.
“Paddington,” a British film adaptation of the popular books by Michael Bond, opened in the U.S. without much fanfare or media. In the biz this is known as ‘being dumped into theaters’ -- a practice usually reserved for low-budget fare of dubious quality.
I’m puzzled as to why “Paddington” received this treatment, since it’s probably the best live-action family film thus far in 2015.
Paddington is a young bear from Peru whose home is destroyed, and his elderly aunt and uncle forced into the old bears’ home. He decides to seek out the British explorer who befriended his family years ago and introduced them to the miracle that is marmalade.
He takes the name of the London railway station where he’s stranded and is taken in -- albeit temporarily -- by the Brown family (Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville play the mum and dad).
Paddington is portrayed using some excellent CG animation and the tender voice of Ben Whishaw. He’s a wondrous creation, with his shy charm and signature floppy red hat.
Director Paul King, who write the screenplay with Hamish McColl, keeps the tone light and the action delightfully goofy -- such as a flooded bathtub on the Browns’ top floor that goes for a ride.
Samuel Joslin and Madeleine Harris play the Brown kids, and Nicole Kidman rounds out the cast as the villainess, who’d like to see Paddington stuffed -- and not with marmalade. She’s got a great Cruella de Vil vibe going on.
Here’s hoping this wonderful, gentle movie finds a home of its own on video.
Video extras are a bit skimpy. The DVD has several making-of featurettes: “Meet the Characters,” “When a Bear Comes to Stay” and “From Page to Screen,” plus the “Shine” music video. Step up to the Blu-ray and you add only “The Making of ‘Shine’” featurette.
It’s only been four months since the (latest) remake of “Godzilla” hit theaters, but already the movie has recessed into the dim fog of memory one keeps for so-so flicks.
This was one-half of a terrific summer action movie. Once big G finally arises from the ocean and starts laying the smackdown on his equally huge bat-like foes, “Godzilla” is as fun and entertaining a film as we saw all season. But you have to wade through the dreary first 60 minutes to get to the good 60.
Bryan Cranston plays a scientist whose life was turned upside by a deadly seismic event 15 years ago. Now he’s a loony loner spouting conspiracy theories, and is estranged from his son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a resolute soldier. But when monsters start wreaking havoc on cities in Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco, they put aside their differences to answer the call.
The middle section is truly stultifying, as talking-head generals and politicians debate the scientific and geopolitical repercussions of skyscraper-sized beasties doing a WWE imitation on their population centers.
Eventually “Godzilla” finds a sense of fun, but you may not find the wait worth it.
I would never advise people to buy a ticket to a movie but not walk in until the halfway point. But on video… well, let’s just say that if, during the early going, your finger gets a little jittery hovering over the Chapter Skip button of your remote control, I won’t judge.
The video comes equipped with a nice host of extras, divided into two sections. “The Legendary Godzilla” looks at all aspects of the production, from special effects to casting the actors, and creating the look of the M.U.T.O.s, Godzilla’s ancient enemies.
“MONARCH: Declassified” is supposedly a host of “evidence” showing how the governments of the world hid knowledge of Godzilla’s existence for decades. Fun, quirky stuff.
Features are the same for the DVD and Blu-ray combo pack versions.
"Godzilla" takes its sweet own time about getting to the Big G himself -- exactly halfway through the movie, to be exact. Though it's a bit of a slog reaching that point, from there to the end is exactly the big, loud summer thrill ride you've been expecting.
After starring in many low-grade Japanese films back in the day and a few half-hearted modern revival attempts, the radiation-feeding dinosaur is back after a lengthy hiatus. Instead of just being the heavy who smashes buildings and sends humans screaming, he also gets to fight against some other critters in his own considerable weight class.
Godzilla looks as nasty as ever, re-imagined with huge spikes on his back that resemble an outcropping of moving hills when he's swimming half-submerged in the ocean. He's got that big blunt head, the fire/energy breath, and that roar that sounds like a cross between an elephant and an air horn.
(He's also appearing a might chunky through the hips, though whether that's from age or artistic license is a matter for debate.)
Director Gareth Edwards helms just his second feature film; 2010's low-budget "Monsters" was essentially training ground for this flick. The story is told (screenplay by Max Borenstein) through the eyes of the humans, as they watch Godzilla and some vaguely bat-like foes battle it out through Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco.
This is a shame because, well, the people aren't nearly as interesting as the monsters.
It starts out OK, with Bryan Cranston playing a scientist who was at the helm when mysterious seismic activity destroyed the nuclear plant where he worked, claiming the life of his wife (Juliette Binoche) in the process. Flash forward 15 years, and now he's a lonely kook with some crazy theories about what caused the disaster.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson -- one of the few Brit actors who can do a convincing American accent -- plays his son Ford, now a Navy bomb expert with a wife and kid of his own. She (Elizabeth Olsen) plays a nurse because, have you noticed in big disaster movies the hero always makes desperate phone calls to check on his family, and the wife is always a nurse or doctor, thus requiring her to be at the center of the danger?
Ford bounces around from one action set piece to another, following the monsters and their wake of destruction. My favorite was a disturbingly quiet encounter across a long train bridge, with a bunch of soldiers trying to sneak across.
The plot is some ridiculous contraption about luring the monsters to the middle of the ocean with radioactive material, which for some reason involves transporting nuclear missiles from Nevada to the coast, instead of just unloading some from a submarine or what have you.
The second act is a chore to get through, with a bunch of scientists and soldiers (Ken Watanabe and David Strathairn among them) spouting gibberish about the origins and intentions of Godzilla. We learn that all those nuclear bombs the Americans and Russians set off in the oceans during the 1950s were not tests, but attempts to off him.
Once the title fight finally begins, though, it's off to the races.
This isn't a bad film, but it could have been a much better one. I don't know why all our new superhero and monster movies have to take themselves so darn seriously. This type of filmmaking is all about having fun, which "Godzilla" gets around to, eventually.
I know, I know … you’re thinking to yourself, why should I care about the (seemingly) 3,074th version they’ve made of “Great Expectations” for film or television?
Short answer: because the new version that came out at the end of last year is one of the most emotionally engaging adaptations of a Charles Dickens’ novel I’ve ever seen.
You may not even be aware of this iteration, directed by Pete Newell (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”) and starring an impressive cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Jeremy Irvine, Robbie Coltrane and Holliday Grainger. It didn’t get much traction, barely making it into U.S. theaters.
But this may just be the best film of 2013 that nobody saw. Fiennes and Bonham Carter both deserved Oscar nominations for their fine, vibrant performances.
You know the story: a young penniless orphan (Irvine) is given an inheritance and an introduction into London society by an anonymous benefactor. He makes a mush of it, squandering his fortune and falling for a chilly, distant girl protected by her brittle ward, Miss Havisham (Bonham Carter).
Dickens himself felt that “Great Expectations” was his greatest work, but previous movie versions have tended to be stilted and unapproachable. Give this one a chance, and you won’t find yourself disappointed.
Extra features include deleted scenes, a making-of featurettes, photo gallery and more.
Film adaptations of 19th century British and American literature have a tendency to be stiff and remote. The characters in those books were often more like archetypes than flesh-and-blood creatures. They spoke in lilted sentences adored in upper-class salons of the day, but which were unlikely to actually spill out of anyone’s mouth extemporaneously. Movie versions tend to translate this distance between author and audience.
At first I thought “Great Expectations” was falling into this fold, based on Charles Dickens’ classic tale of a blacksmith’s apprentice transformed into a young gentleman. The early section where we’re introduced to the main players and set the plot in motion drags rather badly. Pip is plucked out of obscurity and given a sizeable fortune by a mysterious benefactor.
But something happens along the way. The actors grow comfortable in their roles, director Mike Newell and screenwriter David Nicholls trim away some of the book’s extraneous subplots and characters, and the movie actually grows deeper and richer the further we travel along with it.
By the end, I was fully caught up in the emotional journey of Pip (Jeremy Irvine) and his long-estranged lady love, Estella (Holliday Grainger). Their on-again, off-again affair is somehow both restrained and ravishing.
The cast is just spectacular, with the characters really popping off the screen despite many of them having limited screen time. Jason Felmyng has sort of shy, proud grace as Joe, Pip’s brother-in-law and passive protector. Robbie Coltrone is a fearsome, fulsome presence as Jaggers, the mercenary lawyer put in charge of introducing Pip into society. Ewen Bremner, Sally Hawkins and Olly Alexander are spot-on as, respectively, Jaggers’ assistant Wemmick, Pip’s abusive older sister and best chum Herbert Pocket.
The real standouts are Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, both of whom deserve consideration when the award season rolls in.
As Miss Havisham, the wealthy spinster who takes young Pip under her wing, Carter is an eerie presence, a victim and victimizer who has shut herself away from life. Abandoned at the altar by a conniving embezzler, she still wears her wedding dress, now reduced to ragged strips, while the mice make a feast on her never-served banquet dinner. She’s both vile and pitiable.
It’s no secret Fiennes can be utterly unnerving onscreen, so his early scenes as escaped convict Abel Magwitch are fraught with terror. Later, while never losing his hard edges -- he’s a willing murderer who sleeps with a blade in his hand -- Magwitch is also exposed as more human than we might have supposed.
Irvine is fine in the lead role, though it’s more of a reactive part where the actor is required to play off of the other, more interesting people around him. Grainger has a nice feel for the coldness inside the heart of Estella, Miss Havisham’s adoptive daughter.
She delivers perhaps the most memorable line of the book and movie: “I have been bent and broken, but -- I hope -- into a better shape.” This surprisingly touching version of “Great Expectations” certainly breaks the mold for this sort of literary adaptation, breathing life into those dusty pages.
Sort of a British "Norma Rae," "Made in Dagenham" is a well-acted tale about female auto workers demanding equal pay in the late 1960s. It's a classic underdog story whose outcome is never in doubt, where the lines between the good guys and the bad are practically marked onscreen in highlighter pen.
Sally Hawkins plays the Sally Field role of the low-key worker who rises up to become a respected leader of the union. As Rita O'Grady, Hawkins has a slightly awkward sort of beauty, the sort of woman who has to be told what a gem she is before she believes it herself. Hawkins used this quality to full effect in "Happy-Go-Lucky" a couple of years ago.
Director Nigel Cole brings the same sort of energy he did to 2003's "Calendar Girls" about another group of plucky women who discover they're a lot more capable than anyone gave them credit for. William Ivory's script, though, follows the diagram of a screenwriting class to a T, so we know the progression of the gals' struggle before it happens.
For example, Rita's husband Eddie (Daniel Mays) will be fully supportive at first, getting a kick out of seeing his wife photographed in newspapers and on the telly. But then there will be growing discord as he's forced to take up more of the cooking and cleaning at home, followed by a big spat when his own job is imperiled, culminating in rapprochement where he tells her how proud he is.
The story also tends to treat the other women as scenery rather than distinct individuals. There's the slutty one (Andrea Riseborough), the cute one who wants to be a model (Jaime Winstone), and so forth. Only Connie (Geraldine James), the steadfast older shop steward, is given anything like another dimension, including some trouble on the home front.
I didn't care for the wife of one of the company managers (Rosamund Pike), who befriends Rita without even realizing they live in separate camps. An educated, smart woman who resents having to bury her talents beneath her husband's, she secretly eggs the working girls on. The whole thing is a little too pat.
The history lesson aspect of the film is certainly engaging, though. In the 1960s Ford was the largest auto manufacturer in Europe, employing some 40,000 workers in England alone. The gals of the machinists union in Dagenham, some 187 of them, were classified as unskilled laborers and paid considerably less than their male counterparts -- quite often, their own husbands and brothers.
Bob Hoskins plays Albert, a union organizer impressed by the gumption of the women during a relatively minor disagreement with management. He encourages Rita to strike for equal pay -- much to the consternation of the union bosses.
Miranda Richardson plays Barbara Castle, the first (and still only) female British secretary of state, who was tasked with tamping down the machinist strike and keeping Ford happy.
Richard Schiff shows up as a Ford exec sent over from the States to twist some arms. He bellows and rants: We can't pay these women the same as men, because then women all over the world will want the same thing!
Of course, Ford eventually acquiesced and become something of a pioneer on gender equality, and even cooperated with the making of this film. So even the bad guys turn out to be decent blokes.
Sally Hawkins is eminently watchable, but it's too bad "Made in Dagenham" feels like it rolled off another kind of assembly line.
