Starring: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep, Brendan Gleeson, Anne-Marie Duff, Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, Samuel West
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story: Drama directed by Sarah Gavron. Inspired by the early-20th-century campaign by the suffragettes for the right of women to vote, Suffragette (2015) centeris on Maud (Carey Mulligan), a working wife and mother who comes to realize that she must fight for her dignity both at home and in her workplace. Realizing that she is not alone, she becomes an activist alongside other brave women from all walks of life, galvanized by the outlaw fugitive Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), risking their very lives to ensure that women’s rights would be recognized and respected.
Where to Watch:
Top 15 Suffragette Quotes
Maud Watts: All my life I’ve been respectful, done what men told me. Well I can’t have that anymore.
Emmeline Pankhurst: For fifty years we have labored peacefully to secure the vote for women. We’ve been ridiculed, battered, under ignored.
Emmeline Pankhurst: Never underestimate the power we women have to define our own destiny. We have been left with no alternative. Defy this government.
Emmeline Pankhurst: We do not want to be lawbreakers, we want to be lawmakers.
Emmeline Pankhurst: [to Maude] Never surrender, never give up the fight.
Inspector Arthur Steed: [after catching Maude and the rest of a group of Suffragettes] Don’t bother arresting them, let their husbands deal with them.
Violet Miller: You want me to respect the law, then make the law respectable.
Maud Watts: [after the police drop her off at her home] Sonny, I’m sorry.
Sonny Watts: I took you on, Maude. I thought I could straighten you out.
Maud Watts: What if you don’t need to?
Sonny Watts: You’re a mother, Maude. You’re a wife, my wife. That’s what you’re meant to be.
Maud Watts: I’m not just that anymore.
David Lloyd George: The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.
Maud Watts: Are you a suffragette, Mrs. Ellyn?
Edith Ellyn: Yes, but I consider myself more of a soldier, Mrs. Watts.
Maud Watts: These women’s testimonies make a difference?
Edith Ellyn: Maybe, but as Mrs. Pankhurst says, “It’s deeds not words that will get us to vote.”
Maud Watts: My job is to enforce the law.
Inspector Arthur Steed: It all means nothing to me, I’ve had no say in making it the law.
Maud Watts: We break windows, we burn things because war’s the only language men listen to. Cause you’ve beaten us and betrayed us and there’s nothing else left.
Inspector Arthur Steed: There’s nothing left but to stop you.
Maud Watts: What are you gonna do? Lock us all up? We’re in every home, we’re half the human race, you can’t stop us all.
Inspector Arthur Steed: You might lose your life before this is over.
Maud Watts: We will win.
Maud Watts: I’m worth no more, no less than you. We will win.
Emmeline Pankhurst: I would rather be a rebel than a slave.
Maud Watts: And reason, said to her, “Silence. What do you hear?” And she said, “I hear the sound of feet. A thousand times, ten thousands of thousands of thousands and they beat this way.” They are the feet of those that shall follow you. Lead on.