Peterloo (2018)

After 2014’s exquisite Mr Turner, Mike Leigh returns with another historical film, this time attending to the lives of those involved in the build-up to, and the events of, Monday 16th August, 1819, on St Peter’s Field, also known as the Peterloo massacre.

The ensemble cast of characters comprises every level of British society (and plays, for a while, as a game of ‘spot The Thick of It alumni’): factory working families, just beginning to digest the arguments for the suffrage; local groups of radicals, largely autodidactic, speechifying and proselytising at every opportunity; the top-crust of those pushing for reform; and the magistrates and politicians, opposing the calls for the extension of the vote in the offices and halls of power.

Of chief importance here are Nellie (Maxine Peake), whose skepticism about politics — which sounds all too familiar — is expressed in a series of beautifully performed conversations with her family, and Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear), the radical speaker and intellectual, envisioned here as both an elite egotist and a person of principle, Kinnear’s terse manners embodying Hunt’s contradictions superbly.

Also of note is the measure of self-reflexivity in the film. One scene centres on a meeting of the Manchester Female Reform Society, chaired by the activist Mary Fildes (Dorothy Dunn). The speeches are interrupted with regularity by women in the room, exclaiming that they’ve no idea what Fildes, with her rhetoric, is getting at.

This is mirrored throughout the film in many conversations, which have an expositional quality to them; Leigh makes his characters explain to each other, and to the viewer, crucial contextual details, such as the specific effects of the Corn Laws introduced in 1815. This is Leigh reflecting on the act of making a movie about the past; and since historical pictures are always about the time they’re made, he’s also inviting you to look at the world in which you live, and ponder the connection.

Peterloo is a handsome production in so many respects. Working in tandem with the utterly convincing production design by Suzie Davies, Dick Pope’s cinematography creates frames of such immaculate drama and varying emotional notes: in Nellie’s household, the light entering the window catches the family in moments of Vermeer-like repose; whereas the magistrates are filmed in ominous shadows and malicious angles. Affection, curiosity, regard, disgust, and loathing are made visible in the film’s compositions.

All roads lead to St.Peter’s Field, and Leigh’s decision to film the events of the massacre up close, as though the viewer is one of the multitude, is indicative of the furious compassion he feels for these characters. Jon Gregory’s editing, unrelentingly swift and sabre sharp, exacerbates the already considerable cruelty of the sequence, as the cavalry begin their charge on the trapped demonstrators. Although Peterloo is polyvocal, and lends an ear to many perspectives, be in no doubt about its intention; this is not, and doesn’t pretend to be, a balanced critique of power: it’s an outright, tenacious, immutable condemnation.