Afternoon at the movies

The matinee was “Made in Dagenham” about striking female machinists at a Ford plant in England in 1968. They wanted equal pay as men for their work. At a time when women did not strike, these women who sewed the pieces for car interiors, effectively stopped work for everyone at the Dagenham plant. Without seat covers, headrests, armrests, etc. the rest of the car assembly could not move forward.

I have to admit that the accent for this particular area of Great Britain was very hard for me to understand. So, right at the beginning a lot of dialog was lost to me. Mom didn’t bother trying to understand it,  she just took a nice little nap! Before I knew it, I had slept through some of the movie too. We both woke up at the intermission and discussed whether we wanted to stay for the second half 0f the movie. Why not? The 60’s fashions were fun to see, all that eyeliner and false eyelashes, short skirts, even hot pants.  The soundtrack was great. How can you not love a movie that opens with dozens of people riding to work on bicycles while Desmond Dekker is singing, “The Israelites.”  I was a sophomore in high school when it was the first reggae music I had ever heard. The closing shot was of the same group, more bicycles, (almost equal pay) and more reggae, “You can get it if you really want” , written by Jimmy Cliff.

Half of the movie was still better than none, though Mom was actually up for watching “127 Hours.”  She said, “We could have looked away when he had to cut his arm off.”