Film/Television Review: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)

The right to vote for women, a cornerstone of modern democracy, remains one of history’s most overlooked triumphs. This neglect may stem from the paradox that, once enfranchised, women often voted in ways indistinguishable from men—a reality that defies the radical feminist narrative of a politically transformative “sisterhood.” Consequently, Hollywood, despite its progressive leanings, has largely ignored the suffrage movement. Among the rare exceptions is Iron Jawed Angels, a 2004 HBO film directed by Katja von Garnier. This period drama attempts to resurrect the fiery activism of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, but its uneven execution and anachronistic choices reveal the challenges of translating historical struggle into compelling cinema.

The film opens in 1912, a time when women’s suffrage was a radical cause even in self-styled progressive democracies like the United States. While western states such as Wyoming and Colorado granted voting rights earlier, the national movement stagnated. Enter Alice Paul (Hillary Swank), a Quaker-turned-activist returning from England, where she witnessed the militant tactics of Emmeline Pankhurst’s suffragettes. Paul’s partnership with Lucy Burns (Frances O’Connor) sparks a radical shift in strategy: instead of NAWSA’s cautious state-by-state approach led by Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston), they demand a federal amendment. Their confrontational protests—including picketing Woodrow Wilson’s White House—escalate tensions, particularly after the U.S. enters World War I. Labelled unpatriotic, the activists are arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to brutal force-feeding via speculums during hunger strikes. Their suffering galvanises public sympathy, culminating in the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, sealed by Tennessee legislator Harry T. Burn’s pivotal vote.

The film’s 2004 release coincided with a politically charged moment: the re-election campaign of George W. Bush, which saw Hollywood mobilise against his policies. Iron Jawed Angels’ parallels to the era were stark: Wilson’s reluctance to endorse suffrage mirrored Bush’s resistance to progressive agendas, while the wartime backdrop echoed post-9/11 patriotism. The film’s themes of minority rights and civil disobedience resonated with liberal voters, though its direct comparisons to Bush were more implicit than overt. Yet, this context also raised questions about whether the film prioritised political messaging over historical fidelity.

Katja von Garnier, known for her feminist German film Bandits (1997), seemed an ideal choice to helm this project. However, her stylistic decisions undermined the film’s gravitas. The rapid, MTV-style editing—jarring close-ups, frenetic cuts, and handheld camerawork—created a disorienting, almost avant-garde aesthetic at odds with the period setting. Compounding this was the inclusion of a modern soundtrack featuring Sarah McLachlan and Lauryn Hill, whose contemporary tracks clashed with the film’s early-20th-century backdrop. These choices lent the film a self-conscious, pretentious air, as if von Garnier feared audiences would find historical struggle too “dull” without gimmicks.

The script, written by Emily Wolf and Kirk Ellis, further diluted the film’s authenticity. To pad its runtime, the narrative introduced fictional subplots, most notably Alice Paul’s romance with Washington Post cartoonist Ben Weissman (Patrick Dempsey). This contrived love interest, absent from historical records, diluted Paul’s unwavering dedication to the cause. Equally problematic was the film’s neglect of racial tensions within the movement. While it briefly acknowledges the exclusion of Black suffragists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett (portrayed by Adilah Barnes), the film sidesteps the fraught compromises Paul made to appease Southern white women—a decision that alienated Black activists and delayed the amendment’s passage in states hostile to racial equality. By sanitising this complexity, Iron Jawed Angels became less a docudrama and more a hagiography.

Critics were underwhelmed. While Anjelica Huston’s performance as Catt earned a Golden Globe, the rest of the cast’s efforts—Swank’s earnest portrayal of Paul included—could not salvage the film’s structural and tonal flaws. The script’s reliance on melodrama—over-the-top speeches, exaggerated suffering—felt manipulative, diminishing the suffragists’ intellectual and strategic brilliance. Meanwhile, the anachronisms and fictional additions rendered the film a patchwork of historical nods and modern-day tropes.

Iron Jawed Angels’ greatest failure lies in its inability to balance reverence with critical insight. Von Garnier’s direction and the script’s concessions to Hollywood conventions turned a pivotal chapter in women’s history into a predictable, occasionally jarring spectacle. The film’s political parallels to 2004—its anti-war protests and calls for justice—were timely but clumsily woven into the narrative, leaving the suffrage movement itself as an afterthought.

In the end, Iron Jawed Angels is a well-intentioned but flawed tribute. Its heart lies in its depiction of the suffragists’ courage and the visceral horrors of their imprisonment, yet its stylistic missteps and historical omissions prevent it from achieving the resonance of true historical cinema. For all its ambitions, the film remains a footnote in both the suffrage movement’s legacy and von Garnier’s career—a reminder that even the most noble causes struggle to translate into compelling stories when authenticity is sacrificed at the altar of modernity.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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