Prepare to be roused. The new British film Made in Dagenham tells the true story of 187 seamstresses at an outer-London Ford factory who in 1968 went on strike to raise their pay grade from "unskilled" to "skilled," and ended up landing a major blow against sexual discrimination: England's Equal Pay Act of 1970.
It's the latest in a line of inspirational, triumph-of-the-little-gal pictures that include Norma Rae, Silkwood and Erin Brockovich. Every generation needs one (still, sadly), even if the current crop flees from the word "feminist." And this one's a hoot.
Directed by Nigel Cole ( Calendar Girls) and made for a mere $8-million, it focuses on three women whose disparate lives come together for the cause. There's Rita, played by Sally Hawkins ( Happy Go Lucky), the shy but determined seamstress who finds her voice as the leader of the strikers. There's Lisa, played by Rosamund Pike ( An Education), the trophy wife of one of the Ford execs, whose Oxbridge degree moulders while she pours cocktails for her husband's condescending cronies.
And there's Barbara Castle, played by Miranda Richardson ( Blackadder), the real-life cabinet minister under Harold Wilson who was then the highest-ranking woman in British politics. She gets the Line Most Likely to be Quoted: When warned against meeting with the striking women lest she give their cause credence, Richardson rises to her feet, her voice rising equally magnificently, as she repeats, "Credence? Credence?! They're women! Their cause already has credence!"
I interviewed the three actresses and their director during the Toronto International Film Festival. Here are excerpts from those conversations:
Hawkins: I was so inspired by these women. [Her character is a composite of three, the main one of whom is now dead.]It's a huge, sobering privilege to represent them. What's lovely is that they weren't political animals, they didn't have political language.
Cole: They didn't know what feminism was, and didn't care.
Hawkins: Their cause was just about what is right. When you speak with that voice, people have to listen. It's important that we see that on film right now - the average, everyday person having an effect politically, globally.
Cole: We spent many hours talking to the real women, who are in their 70s now. Many of the details come from them. Their sense of humour and irreverence. How in the summer they would work in their underwear, because the factory, which had a tin roof and was lined with asbestos, was incredibly hot. How the roof leaked, and they were worried about shocks from their electric sewing machines, so they hung umbrellas on lines over their heads. The fact that they made cars for a living, but no one could afford a car, so they all cycled to work. And most importantly, the thrill of the strike - the excitement in their eyes and voices when they talked about it. Going to Westminster for them was like a school trip, like a party. Suddenly they were connected to the world, having an influence. I thought, "If we can capture that excitement, we can attract a broad audience." Putting aside all thoughts of how useful it would be to my career to have a hit film, I felt that it would be wonderful if, almost by stealth, we could bring a difficult and important story to a wide audience.
Hawkins: It's an ongoing fight today, in all industries. You come across it as a woman every day, to a greater or lesser extent.
Pike: There's an article in this [London]Sunday Times about how women have smaller brains than men. [She holds the paper up, reads.]"Brain Expert Takes Scalpel to Delusions of Gender." It suggests that since women's brains are five ounces lighter than men's, we're intellectually inferior. Still! It's extraordinary.
Cole: I've always had women as bosses. Where it's particularly interesting, I think, is the middle ground. On film sets, including ours, there are very few women, and mostly in traditional roles: costume, makeup, secretaries. You realize, we're not squeaky clean ourselves.
Hawkins: The "grading" we get as actresses - "Who's hot right now?" - is such crap. Or it should be. I'm lucky, I've had intelligent directors, and have been looked after. But I've had my share of frustrations and obstacles. As a woman, you can be very easily undermined in the subtlest of ways. The subtler it is, the more powerful it is, and the harder it is to react against. That's how people get away with it.
Richardson: If you've been going a few years like me, then you don't mind too much what other people think. If you want to do something, do it. Keep them guessing. I don't think people have ever known what to do with me anyway. I think I'm like mercury. "Oh, she's this - no, she's there. What's she doing now?" If they bother to think at all. But I don't - and can't, financially - sit around waiting for the right thing to turn up, so I keep moving.
Cole: I've had a reputation for making "women's films" ever since Saving Grace, my first film [2000] It's a silly comedy about pot, but it's really the story of a middle-aged woman [played by Brenda Blethyn]learning to stand up for herself. And though it's true that I am far more interested in women than I am in men, it's more that I'm not interested in making films about violence, and that's what so-called men's films are about. They're about characters who have difficulty expressing their emotions - and are lauded for that. That seems dull to me. Whereas so-called women's films are about people feeling things and being passionate about things. When you're working 15-hour days in the rain, you can lose sight of why you're doing it. But no one ever felt that on this film. Everybody wanted to tell this story.
Pike: Early in my career, I did a rather bad video-game adaptation [ Doom] because any job then felt like gold dust. During the filming I realized, "I really hate the message this is going to put out, that killing people is fun to watch." I thought, "Can I get the crew to donate a day's pay to some anti-gun charity?" Then I realized that's arrogant in its own way: It's none of my business what other people do; deal with your own stuff. But I tell you, if you only do films you're proud of, it's a lot better a way to live.
Johanna Schneller