A good film showing a partial account of the Dagenham Machinists' strike in 1968, which led - this film purports - onto the Equal Pay Act. Not the fun-filled, feel good movie the publicity has been promising, more at times a dramatised documentary (as made in the sixties for TV), but with comic touches and very nice performances. Writing is interesting without being particularly insightful - although it breaks out of the ordinary with the speech to the (sic) TUC, Roger Lloyd Pack, Rosamund Pike, and Daniel May's rather 21st Century outburst about not knocking his wife about. Direction nicely paced and mostly good performances from some of the younger actresses about - phew, no Norris, Parish, Hawes, Baxendale, or Fitzgerald from the TV or Knightley or Mirren from the screen! What a relief! But the film rather cheats and fails by showing the male characters in such a pathetic light. The incredibly weak UK Ford management are like no Ford managers I ever met (and I met a lot!), and the trade unionists (while the motivation shown may have been close) collapse like a pack of cards in front of Sally Hawkins. Some of us remember what Marlon Brando had to go through to get his longshoremen to revolt! While the TUC representation would have been better staged off camera, if the budget could not reach to even a modicum of verisimilitude! Poor Rupert Graves - no wonder he telephoned that performance through! The only real representation of male macho and chauvinism comes from the US Ford manager and UK workers on newsreel - a real cop out.But there are nudges and winks which work well - no more than Rosamund Pike's clothes and home. She plays a first class honours graduate from Cambridge, locked into a traditional married woman's role, who takes a lot of interest in brands and designer home luxury - again more 2010 than 1968!!!! But it is a nice film which can be mostly enjoyed. And, yes, Harold Wilson was as slippery as Tony Blair as a Labour PM!
Review of Made in Dagenham
