Peterloo

If I have a criticism of this film, it would be that it's half an hour too long. Mike can be a bit self indulgent, there where a few scenes that were just there for colour. Technically accomplished, well acted, and faithfully accurate to the history. If you like social history you will not be disappointed.

16 August 2019 is the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre in Manchester.

Peterloo begins after Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo in 1815. Joseph is a young shell shocked soldier who returns home to Manchester to no job and no prospects. The spoils of victory is only shared by the wealthy. The poor suffer increased prices due to the corn laws.

Voting rights also belong to the rich and the powerful. The ordinary man wants the extension of the franchise and parliamentary reform, the wealthy resist. They also fear that a visit to Manchester from orator and reformer Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear) will lead the rabble to riot. The local gentry and magistrates are intent on putting down any protest and have the army on standby. On the fateful day the army panics leading to the deaths of 18 people and many hundreds injured even though the protest was peaceful.

Mike Leigh intended to make a working class epic that is still relevant today. There is humour, Hunt is a rich pompous dandy who himself is unable to connect to the ordinary man he likes to champion. However much of the film feels like a sermon with long lengthy speeches and ideals which repeat themselves. The landed, the military and the judges are painted as two dimensional baddies with only one possible exception. It also has a very strong Lancashire dialect, which some might find difficult to follow.

Leigh does add intrigue. Radical agitators are watched by government spies. Letters are intercepted by the Home Office.

Peterloo is an angry film to commemorate a terrible event. It is wonderfully shot but its running time needed to be drastically reduced and some of the speeches needed to be cut down. As for young Joseph, his fate was signposted.

Peterloo is the Best Mike Leigh picture I've seen. Yes it is too long & speech filled but the Manchester massacre of 1819 is horribly dramatic. You see how the forces of the status quo combine to send in the cavalry & yeomanry to charge at peaceful protestors, maiming hundreds and killing 15. The protestors wanted the right to vote, reform in Parliament (Manchester didn't have an MP) & lower food prices. The film is very well shot with an excellent performance as always from Maxime Peake. Oddly after a long build up to the massacre there is no focus on what happened afterwards.

This is the first review I've ever done, but was moved to do so by some reviews that I have read on here since watching the film. So apologies to you experts, but here's my tuppenceworth. On the down side, a bit overlong, could have been a bit less wordy and faster paced. But, I left the cinema with the same feeling that I did in the early 70s after seeing Soldier Blue: stunned by the brutality of "the authorities" over the disenfranchised. Forensic in its drama/documentry approach and absolutely true to events (I have since checked various historical sources). This is what happens when people feel they lack a voice and does resonate with today's UK. I thought the lighting was superb and the epic, grand scale setting rare in a UK film. A must watch for teenagers who will not have heard of this event in history at school.

A slow work up to the massacre. Incredible massacre scene. Would have like more on the aftermath as the film ended abruptly. Overlong I thought.