Starring: Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James, Rosamund Pike, Andrea Riseborough, Jaime Winstone, Daniel Mays, Rupert Graves and Richard Schiff
Directed By: Nigel Cole
Written By: William Ivory
Produced By: Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Rating: R, for language and brief sexuality.
Running Time: Approximately 113 minutes
Website: sonyclassics.com/madeindagenham
Budget: $7.2 million
Genre: Docudrama
Release Date: January 21, 2011
Politically-charged revolutions were the order of the day back in the 1960s, the ramifications of which are still widely felt today. The same can be said of the much-needed reform that some of those revolutions managed to bring about.
Set in late-1960s suburban London, Made in Dagenham tells the story of how a group of 187 British seamstresses who worked for the Ford Dagenham assembly plant under sweatshop conditions and slave wages banded together in protest against the rampant sexual discrimination, poor working conditions and lack of equal pay, and won. The film chronicles how their revolution proved instrumental in helping to establish the Equal Pay Act of 1970, which prohibits preferential treatment between men and women in terms of pay and conditions of employment.
Happy-Go-Lucky leading lady Sally Hawkins really sinks her teeth into the role of Rita O’Grady (a composite of several women involved in the protest), a working-class wife and mother whose husband (Daniel Mays), also a Ford worker, is resentful of her growing celebrity after she is chosen by her peers to represent them in negotiations with Ford management. It’s explained that the company wants to reclassify the ladies’ hard work stitching leather seats and upholstery for their line of vehicles as “unskilled labor,” thereby denying them the rights and privileges of union workers. Meanwhile, their male counterparts –all 55,000 of them – are paid union-mandated wages and work at a top-of-the-line assembly plant.
With their efforts made light of by the Ford brass, the women step up their protest and force the company’s reluctant union to back a company-wide strike, which leads to a plant shutdown. Suffice it to say, all those higher-ups at Ford who initially laugh off their efforts, stop laughing. And when the now-striking women demand equal pay for equal work as well, the gloves come off.
Economically directed by Nigel Cole and judiciously written by William Ivory, Made in Dagenham is a character-driven piece blessed with a string of dynamic performances from four exceptional actors. Hawkins is perfect as Rita, an ordinary working-class woman who finds herself in an extraordinary situation and rises to the challenge with aplomb. Oscar nominee Bob Hoskins (Mona Lisa) is great as always playing a fair-minded union rep who supports the women’s cause. Rosamund Pike mightily impresses as the college-educated trophy wife of an old-school chauvinist executive at Ford who also supports the strike, albeit secretly. And Oscar nominee Miranda Richardson (Damage and Tom and Viv) nearly steals the show as a no-nonsense British government official who takes a great deal of delight in seeing these ordinary women bring a major corporation to its knees, and for good reason.
Despite the film’s outcome being common knowledge, the pioneering women whose story it tells are owed a great deal of gratitude and respect for ensuring future generations of female workers will have the same rights and privileges as their male counterparts. And thankfully, Made in Dagenham does right by them.
3.5 stars
