Mike Leigh's Peterloo: Worthy Ensemble Can't Spark A Rebellion [Review]

Anyone who has experienced Mike Leigh‘s body of work can appreciate the fact that he clearly loves his country and its people. The prolific filmmaker has chronicled numerous eras of England’s history from modern-day dramas such as“Secrets and Lies” and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” to the Victorian era of “Topsy-Turvy,” to the stifling conservative morals of the 1950’s in “Vera Drake.” After segueing to the life of a celebrated 19th-century British artist in 2014’s “Mr. Turner,” Leigh has now, arguably, attempted to paint his largest canvas yet with the political epic “Peterloo” which premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival today. And yet, despite some contemporary political parallels, it won’t go down as one of his most accomplished efforts.

The Peterloo protest took place on August 16, 1819, in Manchester; a seminal moment in English history even if it didn’t have the immediate effect its organizers hoped for (the name was inspired by the Battle of Waterloo which occurred a few years earlier and an event that Leigh opens the film with). At this time in England’s history, the British Parliament did not represent the population equally. The burgeoning city of Manchester was without its own representative, and only 2% of the population had the right to vote. Power was concentrated in London with a power-hungry ruling class and Prince Regent (portrayed as flamboyantly out of touch by Tim McInnerny) showing disdain for the common people. Meanwhile, everyday textile workers in Manchester and the surrounding communities were finding their wages cut from greedy factory owners and starving under a corn tax that limited imports from overseas. It was, therefore, no surprise that reformers were able to convince anywhere from 30,000-60,000 people to attend what was intended as a peaceful protest and that the prospect of this massive assembly sparked fears in the government of another French Revolution on their own soil.

Spoiler alert, Peterloo is referred to as a “massacre” for a reason. There, of course, was much more involved in what led up to Peterloo and Leigh to his credit (and also his detriment) wants to explore as much of it as possible. There are at least 35 speaking parts in the film, and Leigh has once again recruited an impressive ensemble to convey the hardships, political intrigue and personality conflicts that surrounded the rally. Of course, much of the later appears to be conjecture, but that’s ultimately where Leigh’s creative strengths shine through.

Thanks to his intricate rehearsal and improvisational screenwriting process, which involves working with his actors from the script storyline process forward, there is hardly a character that appears on screen without notable depth or three-dimensionality (quite impressive for roles that often have less than 10 minutes of screen time). Leigh is aided notably by contributions from Rory Kinnear as the protest’s celebrity speaker and stick in the mud Henry Hunt, Maxine Peake as Nellie, a working grandmother trying to keep her large family intact, David Moorst as Nellie’s Waterloo-shaken son Joseph and Neil Bell as Samuel Bamford, a local reformer more sophisticated than his colleagues give him credit for, among others. The magistrates and constables lining up to squash the reformers, however, are the exception with actors such as Vincent Franklin chewing up so much scenery as Rev. Charles Ethelston, a genuinely despicable Mancunian judge, that its surprising the ends of his mustache aren’t curled up like as sideshow villain.

While Leigh transports you back to 1819 through these rich characters, he simply tests the audience’s patience in getting to the heart of the story. There is an abundance of formal speeches and long monologues in the film, and they are often arduous and repetitive. These are long-winded moments where characters exalt the reform movement in one context or another, and it’s simply making the same historical or thematic point you’ve heard more than once 10 or 20 minutes earlier. The film gets something of a mild kick start closer to the protest itself where Leigh ends up impressively choreographing the most extensive action scene of his career, but getting there is often exasperating.

It’s also unclear what Leigh wants to particularly say about this event in relation to modern-day reform movements. On the one hand, the inability of the everyday citizen to elicit change against the powers that be is a constant theme in the course of human history. That being said, the Peterloo event did not spur lead to reforms of the British political system at all. Those changes didn’t fully come about until almost one hundred years later. Leigh actually opens with a title card putting the events in historical context but strangely leaves the audience hanging at the end. Unless you are a scholar of British history (at least on this side of the Atlantic), you may find yourself googling what happened next as you leave the theater. Themes of inequality and injustice are inherently familiar, but if Leigh is using Peterloo to remind us that this is a long struggle that also feels slightly obvious. If his goal is to bring more historical recognition to this tragedy then why does the film end with such a thud?

What “Peterloo” does leave you with is an unflinching respect for Leigh’s ability to bring the best out of those contributing even the smallest parts to his larger tapestry. There’s one moment while the assembled crowd waits for Hunt to speak where Nellie takes notice of a large man and woman behind her. She asks where they are from and they reply they’ve walked eight miles to get there. She discovers they are brother and sister and, assuming they are famished, offers them some bread to tide them over. They smile at her generosity and in that short timeframe we somehow know these siblings and their story. It’s an example of Leigh’s remarkable cinematic skills, even if it feels like it took forever to get there. [C+]

Check out all our coverage from the 2018 Telluride Film Festival here.