The film appears to be largely historically accurate, at least to the accounts of the day and tackles the important and fairly forgotten topic of male suffrage. Which makes this a significant film, even if it falls short in certain areas. Limited artistic license has been taken, for instance the apparent 4 year walk home from Waterloo of a soldier, however I wish they had used a bit more. After two and a half hours I felt character development was criminally under done and lessened the effect of what is still a fairly harrowing final scene. Both working class and upper class characters feel stilted in places and flirt dangerously close to a caricature. With exception of Maxine Peake who's performance is excellent and went a long way to my particular engagement with the working class characters. There are a lot of characters who don't appear to fulfil their arcs and a slightly anti climatic end to some of the main protagonists, I guess that is the unfortunate reality when making a film on a historic event. The cinematography and costumes are high class and a faithful retelling of events means I expect this film to stand the test of time and really should be a must watch. Even if it isn't particularly entertaining, but then maybe it wasn't suppose to be.
Review of Peterloo
