Iron Jawed Angels

Starring:Hilary Swank, Margo Martindale, Anjelica Huston, Frances O'Connor (II), Lois Smith, Vera Farmiga, Brooke Smith, Adilah Barnes, Laura Fraser (II), Semen Hirzhner, Jeremy Nichols, Donna York Dunn, Kristina Vensko, Molly Parker, Lois Sanders, Joseph Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Julia Ormond, Steve Moore (IV), Amelia Zontini
Director: Katja von Garnier
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

The fight for women's voting rights has rarely been given as dramatic a treatment as in Iron Jawed Angels. Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry) and Frances O'Connor (Mansfield Park) star as second-wave suffragettes Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who led the final fight for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Though the movie sometimes tries too hard to avoid the stigma of a period piece (the soundtrack features electric guitars, Swank has a steamy moment in a bathtub, and the editing is jagged and flashy), the mounting energy of the fight--and the increasingly nasty opposition--gains real momentum when a wartime picket line leads to Paul, Burns, and their sisters-in-arms being arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned. The actors--including Julia Ormond (Smilla's Sense of Snow), Angelica Huston (Prizzi's Honor, The Grifters), and Brooke Smith (Vanya on 42nd Street)--give fervent, determined performances. --Bret Fetzer

Description

Oscar-winner Hilary Swank stars in a fresh and contemporary look at a pivotal event in American history, telling the true story of how a pair of defiant and brilliant young activists took the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:With Director Katja von Garnier and writer Sally Robinson
Featurette
Other:HBO Films Spot

Customer Reviews:

The suffragettes were never better.......2007-06-12

Just when you thought nobody could make an interesting and funny and compelling film version of the women's movement, along comes this picture.
It blends funky camera movements with stellar performances (watch out for Frances O'Connor) and songs by Lauryn Hill and Sarah Mclachlan that are a shocking but fitting surprise.
The movie can be gritty at times (the scenes in prison) and frustrating (watching these women's struggles) but it is very rewarding in the end. If you care at all about this time in history (or about women's history in general), you'll be grinning by the end of this movie.
The friendships and the hardships and the difficult decisions these women shared are depicted and acted like it's rarely been seen before.
I highly recommend this movie. It is edifying, stylistically different, realistic, and it has the added virtue of being entertaining and of making people care. It makes you wanna get up and go vote.

Iron Jwaed Angels.......2007-06-08

This movie is excellent. I am a high school social studies teacher. Iron Jawed Angels' is great for teaching the 19th Amendment and during March (Women's History Month). This movie is required viewing for my students. I have designed questions and reflective discussion groups around the movie.

Iron Jawed Angels.......2007-06-06

A riveting portrayal of Alice Paul and the women's struggle while demanding the right to vote. When I first saw this movie, it completely blew me away and I loved every moment of it (excluding the unnecessary romance and masturbation scene - but hey, it is from HBO). However, upon watching it again I find more problems with it as a feminist as well as from a filming standpoint. A lot of poor shots that attempt to recreate the action impact ideology that is so attached to American film. Definitely worth a watch if you get the chance.

Strong film about a very Historic Era.......2007-05-27

Throughout time, history has proven itself to fill our imaginations with stories of perseverance and determination, only to find ourselves repeating the life lessons of our ancestors over and over again. Occasionally, an exceptional example to the contrary occurs, as we see in the woman's suffrage movement of the early 20th century. Iron Jawed Angels, HBO's dramatic and emotionally stirring fictional account of the trial and tribulations endured by the women activists involved in this fight, is a film that does just that. Released on DVD in the fall of 2004, the film reveals in the battle between traditonal culture and values, and a new class of bravado and progressivism that has endured for years benefiting both past and future activists of equal rights.

The film stars Hilary Swank as Alice Paul, a young defiant yet charismatic woman growing up in a time when most would rather see her role as a bright, contemporary leader regulated to cleaning the house and making the families dinner. Swank does neither, as we see her embark on a drama filled journey of conflict and betrayal to secure the voting rights for American woman and witness the pain and hardship all women involved in this movement are forced to endure. The film builds on this as it concludes with her quest finally ending with the passing of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 26th, 1920.

At times, I did feel like I was given an intermission of sorts, as we witness theme transformations and plot deviations in the form of a less than stellar romance involving Swanks lead character and a widowed but determined Washington Post editor brilliantly portrayed by Patrick Dempsey. Francis O'Connor plays the remarkably likable but slightly vulnerable Lucy Burns, a sidekick of sorts who revels in the day she herself can settle down for marriage and a family to call her own. Legendary film veteran Angelica Houston tops off the films honors with her excellent and riveting portrayal of the leader of the National Woman's Suffrage Organization.
An excellent example of how everyday woman can bring about change and optimism in modern day society, I felt enlightened and somewhat motivated after viewing Iron Jawed Angels. Questions I had about the treatment of the activists had been answered, for I had no idea why Swank and her cohorts had been labeled the `Iron Jawed Angels' before seeing the film. Witnessing a scene in which Swank is held down in a confinement chair while forcibly feed liquid nourishment as to combat her fasting crusade and avoid a martyrdom, I now had a new found understanding of what it meant to truly dig in and fight for your beliefs.

Interestingly enough, discussions in my college Modern American History class that I've had the opportunity to be involved in have really helped in my understanding of how events of the past, even some that may seem trivial in comparison to modern day conflict, can take hold and shape how a culture looks at itself for generations to come. Minority based civil rights of the 1960's would prove a keen example of this, as African Americans could look into the past for one of the first times in our nations history and find role models in the woman that suffered unspeakable defiance in the face of ever changing and turbulent times.

Had it not been for the courage and determination of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, along with hundreds if not thousands of other woman activists that held their ground and fought for suffrage rights, I believe that America would be less of a nation, one still involved in disagreement and inner turmoil over equal rights regardless of gender. Thank God for these women of the past that made history.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE!!.......2007-05-23

I ABSOLUTLY LOVE THIS MOVIE!!! EVERY WOMAN IN AMERICA SHOULD HAVE TO WATCH THIS MOVIE!!! I FEEL IN LOVE WITH IT IN COLLEGE, ENDED UP GETTING AN ORIGIONAL 1920S COPY OF THE BOOK, JAILED FOR FREEDOM, THAT THIS MOVIE WAS BASED ON. NOW I AM A HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY/GOVERNMENT TEACHER AND NOT ONLY DID MY STUDENTS ENJOY THIS MOVIE IT WAS A GREAT WAY TO SHOW THEM WAS REALLY HAPPENED TO GET WOMEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE. DON'T THINK, JUST BUY THIS MOVIE. EVERYONE I HAVE EVER SHOWN THIS MOVIE TO WANTS THEIR OWN COPY.

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