In spite of being sold as, and often coming at you as, a cheery; colourful and uplifting period comedy, Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham is an often sombre and wholly pensive piece with a jumpy, sprightly aesthetic on the surface that does well to mask the rigid and furrowed subject matter at hand. The film can be funny, but there isn't necessarily anything funny with what it's about. Tonally, it almost most certainly has a lot in common with the likes of British films of recent times about employment and grizzled living in Brassed Off and The Full Monty, although thematically, is a lot closer to the works of Ken Loach – specifically, 2001's The Navigators and 1995's Land and Freedom as a film about a protagonist who isn't particularly bright; enjoys a laugh at the more menial things in life but whose chapter in life we follow sees them incepted into the world of politics and graft when they find something along a social strand that comes along and deeply affects them.
The film follows young Londoner Rita O'Grady, in a tone-perfect performance by Sally Hawkins, who is a fictional character acting as a true-to-life optimisation of eventually rather angry female car plant workers as she veers from that of manual labourer and mother to activist; from carefree, drinking and dancing gal on nights out, to free speaking and male dominated conglomerate thwarting grandstander. O'Grady, along with 186 other women which the film informs us at the beginning with a title card, works at a Ford motor company plant in Dagenham, in England, in the year 1968. They are situated on an expansive work floor and spend their days sewing and stitching together seats that will eventually find their way to brand new Ford motor cars, the likes of which the girls will never be able to afford. Also at the plant, but cut off from where O'Grady and the other women work and thus in another building entirely, are fifty-five thousand other employees – all of them men, and all of them paid just that little bit more for what is essentially the same nature of work. Factoid in mind, and unrest simmering with head office telegrams detailing what it is the girl's don't want to hear, something along these wage orientated lines has to change - the film becoming the brash documentation of exactly that, with O'Grady at the forefront of certain chapters in the history of British industrial action which came to lead to certain new orders.
The girls are not the most advanced of company, they laugh at jokes we don't necessarily find funny and comes across as somewhat course in their shouting at one another across the floor, four letter words if need be, if it means a particular message needs to be put across. Indeed their floor manager, played by an old face in Bob Hoskins of whom it is always pleasant to see, states that he "fought Rommel in The War" and that "his boys weren't half as scary as this lot are". The joy is in the watching of one of them, Hawkins, shift into the beacon of independence she becomes; a change which begins on the off chance but extends into something mighty powerful. Ordinarily, she would never have even been at the initial meetings her plant managers have with British based Ford Motor Company higher-ups – she goes there on a whim since it gets her the day off work and she goes in, she is told by Kenneth Cranham's gruffly spoken suited Dagenham plant boss to just sit there; keep quiet and "nod" as the men take care of what needs to happen.
O'Grady sees things differently, and her coming into these circles of being able to make a difference, of which eventually lead to a charge against gender discriminancy, begins with speaking up and continues with the American owners of the whole corporation having to go toe to toe with members of Harold Wilson's government. A lot of it is punctuated, rather amusingly, by heist movie-esque sequences featuring Hoskins and Hawkins sitting in a diner speaking in hushed tones about the reality of some of the situations certain characters are getting themselves deep-into, the likes of which have not previously been seen and carry with them certain degrees of danger.
What is most pleasing about the film is all of its its attitude towards the material, specifically the bouncy, audience friendly manner in which it comes at us, in spite of dealing with what might usually be considered by the mainstream as a cinematic 'turn off' in that it is a film about female empowerment. The film deserves credit in that it does really well to avoid demonising the male gender, in what could so easily have been a meek victimisation project while its systematic tapping into the 1998 writings of Monk, writings rather neatly inspired by the aforementioned British films of the late 1990s in Brassed Off and The Full Monty, in its depiction of people forced into taking note of women in the workplace as well as its covering of O'Grady's husband, Eddie (the oft-good value Daniel Mays), confronting domestic chores and playing out the mothering role to their two children. The film is a good crack, a vibrant political drama which isn't heavy handed nor preachy and ends up telling a really involving tale which is essentially about the forming of a human's right act – how many films can lay claim to having done that?
The film follows young Londoner Rita O'Grady, in a tone-perfect performance by Sally Hawkins, who is a fictional character acting as a true-to-life optimisation of eventually rather angry female car plant workers as she veers from that of manual labourer and mother to activist; from carefree, drinking and dancing gal on nights out, to free speaking and male dominated conglomerate thwarting grandstander. O'Grady, along with 186 other women which the film informs us at the beginning with a title card, works at a Ford motor company plant in Dagenham, in England, in the year 1968. They are situated on an expansive work floor and spend their days sewing and stitching together seats that will eventually find their way to brand new Ford motor cars, the likes of which the girls will never be able to afford. Also at the plant, but cut off from where O'Grady and the other women work and thus in another building entirely, are fifty-five thousand other employees – all of them men, and all of them paid just that little bit more for what is essentially the same nature of work. Factoid in mind, and unrest simmering with head office telegrams detailing what it is the girl's don't want to hear, something along these wage orientated lines has to change - the film becoming the brash documentation of exactly that, with O'Grady at the forefront of certain chapters in the history of British industrial action which came to lead to certain new orders.
The girls are not the most advanced of company, they laugh at jokes we don't necessarily find funny and comes across as somewhat course in their shouting at one another across the floor, four letter words if need be, if it means a particular message needs to be put across. Indeed their floor manager, played by an old face in Bob Hoskins of whom it is always pleasant to see, states that he "fought Rommel in The War" and that "his boys weren't half as scary as this lot are". The joy is in the watching of one of them, Hawkins, shift into the beacon of independence she becomes; a change which begins on the off chance but extends into something mighty powerful. Ordinarily, she would never have even been at the initial meetings her plant managers have with British based Ford Motor Company higher-ups – she goes there on a whim since it gets her the day off work and she goes in, she is told by Kenneth Cranham's gruffly spoken suited Dagenham plant boss to just sit there; keep quiet and "nod" as the men take care of what needs to happen.
O'Grady sees things differently, and her coming into these circles of being able to make a difference, of which eventually lead to a charge against gender discriminancy, begins with speaking up and continues with the American owners of the whole corporation having to go toe to toe with members of Harold Wilson's government. A lot of it is punctuated, rather amusingly, by heist movie-esque sequences featuring Hoskins and Hawkins sitting in a diner speaking in hushed tones about the reality of some of the situations certain characters are getting themselves deep-into, the likes of which have not previously been seen and carry with them certain degrees of danger.
What is most pleasing about the film is all of its its attitude towards the material, specifically the bouncy, audience friendly manner in which it comes at us, in spite of dealing with what might usually be considered by the mainstream as a cinematic 'turn off' in that it is a film about female empowerment. The film deserves credit in that it does really well to avoid demonising the male gender, in what could so easily have been a meek victimisation project while its systematic tapping into the 1998 writings of Monk, writings rather neatly inspired by the aforementioned British films of the late 1990s in Brassed Off and The Full Monty, in its depiction of people forced into taking note of women in the workplace as well as its covering of O'Grady's husband, Eddie (the oft-good value Daniel Mays), confronting domestic chores and playing out the mothering role to their two children. The film is a good crack, a vibrant political drama which isn't heavy handed nor preachy and ends up telling a really involving tale which is essentially about the forming of a human's right act – how many films can lay claim to having done that?