Most Americans have probably never heard of the Peterloo Massacre. I confess, I didn’t when I sat down to watch writer-Director Mike Leigh’s new film, Peterloo. Set in the early 1800s, it details the events leading up to the titular massacre on August 16, 1819. Though the day began as a peaceful gathering of 60 to 80 thousand nearby citizens in Manchester’s St. Peter’s Field to hear famous speaker, Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear), talk about reforming parliamentary representation, it ended in violence after the cavalry rode in to break up the crowd. Though that violent end is the event to which Leigh’s script eventually leads, most of the film is spent watching various characters argue about whether or not regular laborers deserve the right to vote.
It sounds dry–and the two-and-a-half-hour film frequently is–but some scenes fair better than others depending on which person is doing the arguing. Kinnear is probably the film’s most compelling orator. Hunt speaks with authority and the unorganized local leaders automatically defer to him. When one tries to argue that his people should be allowed to bring weapons to the speech, Hunt shuts it down. It’s a brilliant performance, but Kinnear is barely in the movie And the other performers can’t quite deliver.
Take David Morse as Joseph, a soldier who actually fought at Waterloo and is clearly still suffering from that trauma years later. The role is integral to Leigh’s point, but Morse is overly-affected, as if he saw Eddie Redmayne in Fantastic Beasts and went, “yes, that.” Much worse is Vincent Franklin as a conniving magistrate. Every speech of his is so jowly and theatrical that they almost border on camp. The only thing that works about his performance is that it emphasizes how villainous the local magistrates–who literally condemn a man to death for stealing a horse or send a man to Australia for 14 years for stealing a pocket watch–are supposed to be.
Those moments aside, the overwrought tone wouldn’t be quite so obnoxious if nearly every performance weren’t equally affected. That said, it does take a bit to notice how similar the performances are because of the way Leigh structures the story. Though all the scenes are connected by the eventual massacre, they rarely correspond in any direct way. Instead, each new scene throws us into a new milieu and the film ends up feeling episodic rather than propelled in any direction. Worse, while the ever-shifting perspective does keep things moving, stretched over such a long runtime, the technique eventually squanders the tension it’s working so hard to set up. Instead, the film becomes a series of dueling monologues that quickly become punishing.
However, despite how taxing that build-up can be, when Leigh’s film inevitably breaks into violence, it delivers on all that monologuing. As it has been through the whole film, cinematographer Dick Pope’s camera is mobile, covering the massacre from every perspective. In some shots, we watch the magistrates looking down on the violence they facilitated.
In others, we see the soldiers as they charge through the crowd, hesitant to injure at first and then swinging their sabres indiscriminately at men, women and children alike. Worst of all, though, are the views from the assembled citizens themselves. They run around increasingly panicked as the soldiers attack them for no reason. Leigh covers the action so well and Jon Gregory’s editing is so sharp compared to the rest that the choreographed fights seem like documentary footage. It’s a stunning achievement, but it’s simply too little too late.
If Peterloo had been released 30 years ago, it easily would have been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar—might have even won like The Last Emperor did in 1987. But through a 2019 lens, Leigh’s film is simply too stodgy and too mannered. It’s filled with monologues that feel campy in their theatricality. It’s a great looking film and the actors perform for the cheap seats, but all that production just distracts from the vital, violent event that gives it all meaning.
