WITH ITS thin but shiny layer of nostalgia, Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham makes strike-prone late-1960s England appear more colorful than the dreary Northern California weather outside. (Even the projects look freshly painted.) The film is full of robust, even hammy theatrical performances, and a David Arnold soundtrack of less-obvious ’60s needle drops adds some spice: here, the Lemon Piper’s silly “Green Tambourine” sounds surprisingly muscular, like a lost track from The Who Sell Out.
In 1968, at the huge Ford plant in Dagenham, London, a group of female seamstresses work on auto upholstery. It’s a job classified as unskilled labor, performed in a leaky garage without air-conditioning. A committee of women brings their grievances to two different union representatives: selfless and soulful Bob Hoskins, and featherbedding Kenneth Cranham.
The upshot is a walkout, and the resulting bottleneck paralyzes the Ford plant. The matter arrives on the desk of Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government: Labor Minister Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson) sympathizes with the workers’ claims, despite the threats phoned in from Detroit (Danny Huston does the voice of the highest executive). Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky) soulfully underplays Rita, the worker and mom drafted to speak for the strikers. Her particularly unaffected humbleness sells a show-stopping speech about one of the characters that doesn’t make it to the finish line.
If you like passing on the received idea that Daniel Mays is the next Michael Caine, observe how uncommonly well he handles scenes you will really groan to see: the neglected husband of the female crusader, having to make dinner for the kids and burning it. They also serve who go without ironed shirts.
Pleasing to the occasional point of bonelessness, this bit of strayed history ends with interviews with the real Dagenham strikers. Director Cole (Calendar Girls) handles the cast and the subject matter with amiable humor but stints the darkness of the story. But who can argue the film’s point? What was made in Dagenham by these seamstresses is still useful for the rest of the world. When so much of our cinema is so cargo-crazed, one wants to defend a movie that quotes Karl Marx: “Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex.”
R; 113 min.
