Film
Cinema Rediscovered: Comrades
- Director
- Bill Douglas
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 183 mins
Bill Douglas‘s epic 1987 drama about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a handful of Dorset farm labourers who went on strike against a wage reduction in the 1830s and wound up being transported to Australia on trumped-up charges. Not a heroic or inflammatory movie, it opts to show the everyday lot of the workers without wallowing in period misery. As a film about collective action, it has problems in that the martyrs don’t really emerge as individuals until late on, and it’s sometimes difficult to follow what’s going on. Nevertheless, it’s a stirring and still-relevant film, brilliantly acted by a large cast. All the people in clean clothes are played by well-known names while the peasantry are talented then-unknowns.
It’s screend in the Workers Unite! strand of Cinema Rediscovered, with an introduction by Dr. Phil Wickham, Curator of The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. If you want to make a day of it from Bristol, you can take a revolutionary day trip to Clevedon from the Watershed. Go here for further info and ticket details.
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