Simon Mein
The historical epic examines the events leading up to the harrowing climax.
Briskly paced history books are said to “read like a novel.” Writer/director Mike Leigh’s historical epic, Peterloo, plays like a history book. As a fan of history books, I do not have a problem with this. The movie — which had its Wisconsin premiere at the Wisconsin Film Festival and opens April 19 at AMC Dine-In — is wonderfully detailed, recreating the textures of Regency Period England. It meticulously captures the desperate needs of factory workers, the intricacies of politics, and how it all leads to the harrowing climax: the St. Peter’s Field Massacre of 1819, when the British Army was unleashed upon 60,000 peaceful demonstrators, leaving 18 dead and more than 600 wounded.
The problem is that Peterloo plays like a history book but does not read like a novel. The eventual massacre is gasp-inducing, but it is a long time coming.
Leigh’s scholarly approach to storytelling has served him well in the past, for example, in Topsy-Turvy, his bouncy account of Gilbert and Sullivan’s creation of their operetta The Mikado. But in this case, it makes for rather dry cinema. Leigh sets out the facts, and lets history take care of the drama, but most of the movie is debates, speeches and negotiations. Fifteen minutes of politics could have been cut, and the film would still have the same devastating punch.
The first two hours leading up to the march are not so much arranging the chess pieces as setting up a game of Risk. Dozens of people are introduced: workers, activists, police, soldiers, politicians, reporters, children, royalty. Leigh knows that there is no keeping track of everyone, so he cast distinct faces. We follow the characters by beard, wrinkles and bonnets — not by name.
The workers are flesh-and-blood humans, but the higher the class the more cartoonish the characters become. That’s odd for Leigh, who traditionally is an artist with a large amount of empathy. This isn’t to say that the abuses of the powerful were right, but the French Revolution and its guillotines were fresh in their minds. Leigh’s upper-class characters look like plump weasels in frock coats. Still, they serve as much-needed comic relief.
All this being said, the movie works because its story remains relevant. The night before the march, a man contemplates what the future will hold for his daughter when she’s an old woman in 1900. “Some things will be better. Some will never change.” And yes, you can tell yourself that what the workers are fighting for came to pass, but governments — oftentimes at the behest of the rich — will still kill their own. St. Petersburg in 1905, Colombia in 1928, Mexico City in 1968, Kent State in 1969, Beijing in 1989, Egypt in 2013. They are all sequels and retellings of Peterloo.
