  Last night Sex and the City wrapped into Iron Jawed Angels (slithy HBO! ), so I ended up TiVo-ing and watching this movie accidentally. Was it accident, though, or providence? I ask because the movie was amazing. I hadn't even seen a trailer, so I didn't know a thing about it. I just started enjoying the filming, music, and then plot, and then suddenly recognized everything from old history and lit classes in college and realized I was watching a true story, of Alice Paul and the NWP's efforts over eight years to attain for women the right to vote. The movie focused heavily on the legacy of mothers and their daughters. When current events or obstacles made their sacrifices appear too deep, the characters seemed to repeatedly refocus on the beneficiaries of their work: their young girls, and women yet to live.
I felt such an emotional connection with their trials, as one of the women who benefits from the progress made by the suffrage movement every day as well as the mother of a baby girl whose benefits will be even more pronounced. I think the message of the movie that also spoke to me, particularly urlLink in this time of political disillusion , was to not become mired in the dichotomy of politics in the US, as presented by Republicans and Democrats. Both are part of the same system, both resist the forces that might change them, either by introducing other parties and therefore lessening their stronghold on power, or by putting social change firmly in the hands of the people rather than the rulers, as in the internet and online commerce.
I want to work for change with my life, and I truly believe for maybe the first time that the best way to do that is anyway but American politics. Standing outside of the inner circle of biparty rulership, a circle that never acknowledged my presence anyway, due to my age and gender, I feel free and empowered to really fight for progress. In Alice Paul's time, she was fighting simply for women to join the discussion, to be given a voice in the fight for progress.
I can't waste her efforts. She--and the women who stood next to her--burst the paradigm that women were fit simply to mind the home, and couldn't be trusted with important political matters. At the time, such a notion was considered extreme and ridiculous, much as desegregation and civil rights seemed when people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and on other continents, Nelson Mandela and Steven Biko burst the paradigm that skin color somehow mandated a hierarchy in the human race.
What paradigms seem extreme and ridiculous now? I think the notion that a border should somehow mandate whether a child starves or thrives is a good one, as well as the idea that water must be an inalienable human right. Equality not dependent on sexual orientation or religious affiliation seems a no-brainer, but we still haven't gotten it. After watching this movie and feeling so moved by its history and message, I went poking around the web for reviews. Sure enough, somebody didn't like it. The urlLink Orlando Sentinel said : "HBO's latest film strives to make viewers feel fury at the treatment of early 20th-century suffragettes. They faced the public's taunting, endured hunger strikes in prison and challenged President Woodrow Wilson's indifference. But Iron Jawed Angels might make the audience angrier at the filmmakers, who have fumbled a tremendous story through heavy-handed, unfocused storytelling. Director Katja von Garnier has a touch that could be described as throttling. " I had to laugh out loud at the drastic culture shift this Hal Boedeker reviewer represented. He must be so far over the hill that he's lost his way! The "unfocused storytelling" was the creative filming that drew me to the film in the first place! The drama was punctuated by a soundtrack rich in modern femmes like Lauren Hill and Sarah McLaughlin, that I guess this guy hasn't heard of. The resulting effect was the first time I'd seen a twenties-era film that made it feel like just a few years ago, with some connection to my present culture.
The music and filming were just enough to fill in the gaps I'd always felt separated that distant era from my own. Most other reviews urlLink were more flattering to the movie, but the reviewers still had a nasty tendency to caveat their praise with admonishings against such a modern twist. God forbid we make a movie about women bursting paradigms that actually speaks to women the same age as those who initially burst the paradigms! 
