Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Maxine Peake, Rory Kinnear, Pearce Quigley, Sam Troughton, Alistair Mackenzie, David Moorst, John Paul Hurley, Philip Jackson, Ian Mercer, Lizzie McInnerny, Victor McGuire, Tim McInnerny, Jeff Rawle, David Bamber, Dorothy Duff, Julie Hesmondhaigh, Lee Boardman, Steve Huison, Rachel Finnigan, Robert Wilfort, Karl Johnson, Neil Bell, Fine Time Fontayne, Paul Brown.
It is with a burning resentment in which we perhaps find ourselves embroiled in when we realise, no matter the age, that we were not just lied to about our heritage in this once green land, but in which we perhaps openly embraced the great heroics in which we saluted when taught history as school children. It is almost as if we are still thought of as too juvenile, no better than animals, spared the details of the wrongs visited upon the citizens of this country, of the ordinary men, women and children of the world, no matter the crime visited, there will always be those who seek to justify it, who revel in maintaining the so-called natural order of their time.
It is a story as old as time, the ordinary vilified, the Governments and their agents, filled with resentment, willing to punish the meek, the everyday, either by law, by design, or by force. Whether it is in the modern-day memory of the cover up of corruption and senseless death at Hillsborough, the attack on miners at Orgreave, the Brixton, Toxteth and Handsworth riots of the early 1980s, the great famine in Ireland and the horrors visited upon Bengal by Britain, peaceful demonstrations that carried notice on Government in London, all have come at a price, all follow on from the injustice and disgraceful events that took place in August 1819, events that became known as Peterloo.
To feel anger and shame one must have a conscious, to understand no matter how late in life, or even as a young person just how much you were lied to, supressed of the knowledge because you just didn’t know where to begin to look for answers, denied the basic comprehension because of cutbacks, withdrawal of funds, that is the biggest price of infamy bestowed after the fact, and one that will keep happening because we live in just that enough space of comfort in which we dare suggest, to lie further to ourselves, there but for the grace of God.
Epic is perhaps a word too bandied around to really mean anything symbolic anymore, like awesome, it has become overused, overrun with simplicity, it suffers with its roll of the eyes wonder at the potential embarrassment of being considered 21st Century term of endearment like legend. Yet words of praise such as extravaganza, classic, unforgettable do not do justice to Mike Leigh, the cast and Peterloo as a piece of history. The showing of the immoral actions, the despicable use of force, of systematic cruelty, employed on those gathered peaceably in Manchester’s St. Peter’s Field on that August day, perhaps deserves with fullness, the passion of epic and all the engagements that surround it.
To try and find ways in which to laud the film, for its purpose, the excellent acting and portrayal of British history untold, the drama, the sheer brutality, of the path shown in which progress was eventually made, perhaps seems hollow, a film of such stature and anger doesn’t need the empty platitudes that comes with such expressed value. Instead, all that should be said is that if you cherish where you are now, if you are concerned for the way as a country we are headed, if you have a shred of compassion and dignity in your bones, then Peterloo is a film in which epic does absolute justice.
We are lied to because they believe we are children, easily led, painlessly conned, like telling stories of Christmas elves and the many facets of religion, we are comforted by the lack of truth. In Peterloo, Mike Leigh, shows once again that truth is what you seek out when you understand finally that slurs, false propaganda and dishonest rhetoric are not the best way to run a civilisation.
A film of absolute importance, of memory, one that should serve as a cautionary tale in which to never allow your hard-won freedoms to be taken for granted.Â
Ian D. Hall