Belle

 

It would be easy to dismiss Belle as just another repressed British period drama, but Amma Asante’s new film is an interesting exploration of personal and societal liberties that sets it aside from comparable films in the usually stuffy genre.

The film is inspired by the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode) in eighteenth century England. Being raised by her aristocratic Great-Uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emma Watson), the status of her father provides her certain advantages, but her race and illegitimacy prevent her from ever reaching true social standing. Dido remains a spectator as her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) chases suitors for marriage, before meeting an idealistic young vicar’s son determined to change society. Together, they help shape Lord Mansfield’s role as Lord Chief Justice to end slavery in England.

The opening titles ensure the audience is well aware of the social and political context within which the story takes place, reminding us that 1769 Britain was a “colonial empire and slave trading centre.” The opening scene, again, helps illuminated both the physical and emotional repression of the era, as a young Belle is laced into an unfeasibly tight corset. For all the outward repression of women common at the time, Belle is reminiscent of Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons in showing alternate ways in which women achieved influence and maintained an element of control in their own destiny.

The film is ostensibly an exploration of the relationships between women, particularly in an environment where they are far from being masters of their own fate. Interactions between Dido and her two great-Aunts, her cousin and the family’s maid, Mabel, helps reveal the mindset of characters who are fully aware that they are all but considered property.

Race plays an enormous part in Belle, with the film being inspired by Johann Zoffany’s 1779 portrait of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth, which is considered the first to show a black subject with an equal eyeline to a white subject. Dido learns details of The Zong Massacre, in which 142 enslaved Africans were killed by the crew of the Liverpool-bound slave ship, and is immediately awakened into the responsibility that comes with her privileged position.

Although often slowing a little too much in pace, Belle is beautifully structured as the various factions and trials of Dido’s life intertwine - from the personal tribulations of life as a mixed-race, illegitimate daughter in eighteenth century England, to her socio-political participation in the trying to bring an end to slavery.

There has never been a time more important to the quest for individualism and personal freedom than the eighteenth century. In France, Voltaire wrote extensively about the freedom of expression, foreshadowing the French Revolution. In America, following their own Revolution, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence called for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Fifty years earlier in England, Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees dissected the role of the individual in society.  Although widely attacked at the time, it helped formulate the ideas of utilitarianism and individualism that are so central to the film.

Belle is a film about the quest for freedom both of the individual and as a society; freedom from racial struggles; freedom from societal expectations; freedom from prejudice and freedom from gender constraints. As Dido asserts, “I have been blessed with freedom twice over, once as a Negro and once as a woman.”

Belle will be shown at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 26 June 2014.

Belle Official Site