Made In Dagenham

The tag line from Sony Pictures Classics for the film is "An ordinary woman achieves something extraordinary." What it really should read is "extraordinary actors in an ordinary movie". Perhaps my expectations were too high, but when I hear about a film set against the working women's labor struggle of 1960's England, that screams highly developed plot and high caliber performances—one would think. The story is based upon the true to life struggle of 187 female machinist workers at the Ford Motor Factory in Dagenham, England who went on a labor strike to gain equal salaries to that of their male counterparts. It loosely focuses upon one woman in particular, Mrs. Rita O'Grady (Sally Hawkins) who unassumingly becomes the spokeswoman for her co-workers at the instance of their sympathetic union representative Albert Hopkins (Bob Hoskins). While the film itself does address the issues of woman's labor suffrage during that period, it fails to convey a dire sense of personal turmoil or the struggle of the working class, female or otherwise. I almost entirely fault the screenwriter, William Ivory, for this. After all, it is his original script here. However, one cannot disclude the major role that Director Nigel Cole had in translating Ivory's words onto the screen. Overall, the film is anticlimactic and very predictable.

When considering Cole's prior works like "Saving Grace", this surprise-free feature is a disappointing surprise in itself. His approach mimics the same manufactured uplift he presented in "Calendar Girls". Audiences have become accustomed to the way he surrounds his characters and conveys their individual quirkiness on camera. This just wasn't the case with "Made In Dagenham". There is much potential for Rita and several of the other supporting characters to come alive on screen, but for the most part, this just doesn't happen. And it is not because of the lack of quality acting ability, but rather due to the weak situations put forth in general. The film only lightly touches upon the struggles of these women. While I do understand Cole's intent to keep the overall tone light and comedic, this mild approach to the circumstances only lessons the audience's regard for the characters. Even the main protagonist Rita's situation is pretty mundane and easy to foretell. How can Cole expect us to empathize with these women, if we aren't ever extensively exposed to their personal grief or individual disquietude. Films like Stephen Daldry's "Billy Eliot" or Peter Cattaneo's "The Full Monty" were such great movies because they encompassed the characters as they cooped with their circumstances set against a worker's strike. "Made In Dagenham" however does just the opposite as the strike itself leads the plot, making the characters seem secondary in the overall storyline.

Sally Hawkins as strike leader Rita O'Grady

We really only scratch the surface with the central protagonist of Rita O'Grady. The character herself is a composite of personas of several different real life woman of the time. We witness Rita as she interacts with various high level officials, motivates her coworkers to believe in themselves, and unknowingly overpowers her husband, but we never really gain true insight into her psyche. Everything just kind of happens to her, and because she accepts it, so do we. One would think that the very circumstances of a strike would entice some genuine melodrama and contention, but it doesn't. At least, it's not expressed here. Like I mentioned before, this is not because of talentless actors or poor screen performances that the movie falls short. Sally Hawkins does seemingly carry the movie single-handedly, despite such a monotoned storyline. She fosters a quietly confident and sympathetic Rita, establishing her as the backbone of everyone in her life, not just among her fellow co-workers but within her own family as well. It is her mildly spoken leadership that becomes the driving force behind the entire strike. And Hawkins makes the most of what Mrs. O'Grady's character has to offer. Not since her performance as the optimistic school teacher Poppy in Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky" have we seen Hawkins take such command of a role. She maintains a lighthearted assertion that ultimately dictates the pliable mood of the entire film, as bland as that mood may be.

Daniel Mays as Eddie O'Grady & 
Thomas Arnold as Martin at work in the factory.

The closest thing to real strife occurs when Rita's husband Eddie (Daniel Mays) confronts her about what the strike is doing to their family and to their marriage. "This is being on strike! You run out of cash and you end up screaming at each other," proclaims Eddie. This is a peak point in the film because it is one of the only times we see how both Rita and Eddie are emotionally effected by all that is going on. Though it hardly has the same kind family turmoil of "Norma Rae" and only has a minor impact on the overall application for the film. Mays himself stretches his acting legs here and creates a realistic sense of who Eddie O'Grady is. While we have seen his talents before in such films as "All or Nothing" and "Vera Drake", this might be Mays' most visible role to date. His portrayal of Eddie as a conscientious objector who initially is just trying his best to humor his wife and maintain their home life, shows his versatility as an actor. He comes off as a generally supportive husband to Rita, as we witness him assuming household responsibilities while Rita is out making the rounds. That is until it starts to effect his own livelihood. Then we finally get to see some interpersonal conflict on screen, even if only for a brief scene.

There are two secondary characters that parallel Rita in the film: Secretary of State Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson) and the wife of Ford's head of industrial relations Lisa Hopkins (Rosamund Pike). Each widen the perspective of the role of women during that time by conveying two vastly contrasting characters. This wittingly allows the audience to interpret the social predicaments of the era, but in the same sense acts as an overall distraction to the struggling female machinists. There just isn't enough of a connection between either Mrs. Hopkins or Secretary Castle and Rita. But they do contribute to the film's overall humor, despite having little significance to the plot itself.

Rosamund Pike as Lisa Hopkins

Nonetheless, probably the most noteworthy portrayal of strong emotional conviction comes from Rosamund Pike. Her turn as Lisa Hopkins, the largely overlooked wife of Ford's high-powered executive Peter Hopkins, is nothing short of magnanimous. Pike steals just about every seen she is in, and damn near steals the entire movie from Hawkins. But her character's overall significance in the story itself is too minute to allow that to happen. Still, Pike captures the tone of the era to the tee with a quietly unaccepting bitterness of how women were regarded by society. In a captivatingly endearing scene where Lisa tries to encourage Rita to push forward with her strike efforts, the discounted Cambridge-educated housewife exclaims "I'm 31 years old, I have a first-class honors degree from one of the greatest universities in the world, and my husband treats me like a fool." Her character provides an external perspective of just how poorly women were regarded. It is unfortunate however that the same kind of interrelation doesn't occur with Rita or any of the other characters.

Miranda Richardson as Secretary of State Barbara Castle

Secretary of State Barbara Castle represents the government perspective of the entire situation at hand. Miranda Richardson consistently delivers witty dialog with heartfelt humor. This is a surprising change of pace for the actress whose previous acclamations, such as her role as Richard Gere's aggrieved wife in "Damage" or as the wife of renowned poet T.S. Eliot in "Tom & Viv", were highly dramatic and emotional intense. The character in itself represents a small contradiction to both the film and the period, because women rarely held any kind of significant office or had much authority to speak of. It simply wasn't commonplace in those days. And while Secretary Castle was certainly no Hillary Clinton, she did bare a very significant role in the overall movement towards sexual equality in the workplace. And she was a significant instigator in Parliament of the Equal Pay Act of 1970 which prohibited any less favorable treatment between men and women in terms of pay and conditions of employment.

It is because of this feminist depiction on screen that "Made In Dagenham" will most likely appeal to audiences of middle-class women. Women who are proactive about their individuality and financial independence. And this very aspect alone opens a very significant window about feminist portrayal in the cinema. Why is it that such a film will probably be seen by mainly women? It's certainly not because Hollywood cinema still stereotypes women by portraying them as "suffering under male domination", as suggested by Professor Shohini Chaudhuri of the Department of Literature at the University of Essex. With all due respect to Prof. Chaudhuri, this is not 1970 anymore and women have certainly earned their place both in society and on the big screen. I am not claiming ignorance here; the power struggles of the female sex did, and probably does still in lesser circles, exist. However, there is much to be said about the approach that the director does himself take in regards to this feminist portrayal on screen.

Albert (Bob Hoskins) motivating the female machinist workers.

In an early scene, Bob Hoskins' character Albert enters the warehouse where the women have stripped down to their undergarments to endure the immense heat of the intense summer weather and poor factory conditions. Albert shrieks "Oh my God!" in disbelief when he sees them and quickly covers his eyes. The camera continuously follows him as he makes his way through a room without censorship and in fact turns the situation of these half-naked women into a humorous jest. This is a prime example of Cole's attempt to lesson the impact of a predominant "male gaze" and introduces an atmosphere where men are the ones who are embarrassed, and the women act out as assertive and confident. Hoskins delivers his usual adoration here as a sentimental union rep who reminisces of his own childhood where his mother single-handedly raised and supported him under very similar circumstances. Hoskins is so jolly and charming here in such a selfless manner that one cannot help but like him. And he makes it more and more difficult to criticize him on any level; it reminds me greatly of Hilary Swank and her mass appeal among Academy members.

According to Philosophy Professor Cynthia Freeland of the University of Huston, feminist film theory is founded upon "the feminist claim that men and women are differentially positioned by cinema: men as subjects identifying with agents who drive the film's narrative forward, women as objects for masculine desire and fetishistic gazing." There is another scene involving Jaime Winstone's character Sandra where she seemingly abandons the cause by agreeing to pose for a professional photo shoot for the Ford Motor Company. Despite her quirky response of painting "Equal Pay for Women" across her midsection, the very scene merely objectifies her as being inferior and as a lesser commodity. It's these kind of improbably anecdotes that ultimately weaken the significance of these female characters. The very notion that they could convert one of the striking workers with an unfounded promise of a fashion career is preposterous. Not so much because Sandra could be swayed, but that the Ford Motor Company would go to such lengths at all. Because Ivory fails to create characters with intrinsic depth, all the audience has to rely on are the meagerly addressed events of the story like that one.

There is another scene where the women set out to publicly protest on Parliament's front lawn. They fumble about as they attempt to organize their picket line and go public with their message that women deserve sexual equality in the workplace. Haphazardly, their banner displays only half of that statement and appears to say "we want sex". While this was an actual mishap that occurred at the time, this scene does little to convince the audience to take them or their cause seriously, and actually just objectifies them more.

When discussing the film with several other patrons and openly conveying the fact that I did not like the film, a female colleague of mine interjected that "it's probably just not your kind of film". I greatly resented that statement because, contrary to the movie itself, it was entirely "my kind of film". Another female viewer proclaimed that my disappointment was the result of my extreme "Hollywood story" expectations. That too was a gross generalization on her part. I didn't dislike the movie because it was about women; I didn't like the movie because it failed to execute a rousing character-driven story about a subject that most certainly had the vision to exhilarate precisely that. Maybe it isn't fair to expect the emotional zeal of "Norma Rae" or the serious sexual predicaments put forth in "North Country"; but when dealing with a narrative of such a dramatic nature, how can one discard the drama?

One of the most compelling scenes of the entire movie comes at the very end, when footage of the real life woman machinists are displayed as the closing credits roll; so perhaps this story is better suited to be a documentary. The film seemingly aims to escape the real life theatrics of this fervid story. Cole is just overly cloying in his approach to the circumstances of a poverty stricken working class society. And as a result, "Made In Dagenham" fails to impose its political issues upon the audience or excite any kind of emotions for them. In a word, it's just plain dull. Although Sally Hawkins and Rosamond Pike give praiseworthy performances and the very subject of sexual inequality in the workplace is intrinsically stimulating, it is still not enough to turn a mediocre script into a great movie.

Rating: ★ ★
Bottom Line: An anticlimactic piece that sadly doesn't entice much thought or emotion. Extremely disappointing considering the historic premise of the story and the best efforts of the cast.