{"id":11214,"date":"2019-04-10T10:58:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T14:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=11214"},"modified":"2019-04-10T11:11:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T15:11:10","slug":"peterloo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/04\/10\/peterloo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Leigh\u2019s \u2018Peterloo\u2019 Recalls A Bloody British Cavalry Charge Into A Peaceful Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"

British director Mike Leigh\u2019s superbly crafted new film \u201cPeterloo,\u201d<\/a> opening in Boston April 12, recounts the lead up to Britain\u2019s Peterloo Massacre of August 1819, a murderous police riot at a peaceful rally calling for democratic reform. So the film\u2019s whole two and a half hours are suffused with foreboding of what\u2019s coming like an inevitable classical Greek tragedy.<\/p>\n

The film begins with a bugler shattered by the Battle of Waterloo limping home to Manchester, England. There machine looms thunder in the mills, it\u2019s getting more and more expensive to eat, and judges think nothing of sentencing a man to hang for stealing a coat.<\/p>\n

Reformers aim to do something about it\u2014holding meetings, carefully marshaling support, agitating for the right to vote and elect local representatives to Parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeterloo\u201d is a patient study of movement building and the forces rabidly against change. Leigh notes the quiet nods and waves as leaders signal each other in the midst of speeches at organizing meetings. He records the firebrands leading chants of \u201cLiberty or Death\u201d as well as the skeptics and the calm-headed believers. The film is about shifting coalitions, prim donnas jockeying for position on stage, infiltrating spies, disagreements choked down to muddle forward, colleagues ignored or sidestepped or even betrayed in pursuit of (they hope) bigger prizes. It\u2019s about people making principled stands\u2014that are also complicated by their ambitions.<\/p>\n

Leigh portrays the opponents as foaming at the mouth with their righteousness. I don\u2019t know the history well enough to judge the accuracy, but these performances can feel like caricatures.<\/p>\n