Who the Tolpuddle Martyrs are, what they did and what happened to them are a very important part of British history. A part that has been forgotten about by a lot of people who must think that the rights they enjoy in the modern workplace were handed down by god at some point in the past, rather than being fought for by ordinary people. The kind of person who would fight for a decent living standard in the workplace is George Loveless - played here by Robin Soans - a man of ordinary intelligence who simply asked for a decent standard of living at a time when some had a lot and many had little. For this simple request, he and 5 of his associates were deported to Australia where they worked for several years before a campaign in the UK successfully achieved their release and return.
This is an important story that should be told more widely. Sadly Comrades isn't a film that's going to spread this message beyond anyone who's already prepared to spend 3 hours watching a grim recreation of rural life in the 1830s. It's a life where little ever changes, a life where the monotony of daily routine is broken rarely by the occasional travelling minstrel or circus. It's a life that is recreated in often-numbing detail at some length, I could almost feel the boredom of life at the time permeating through the screen into my living room. That's either great film-making or a case of the bad editing making a film that's paced far too slowly. By all means decide for yourself, but I thought the latter.
What is true is that the story of George Loveless and the Tolpuddle Martyrs needs to be kept alive - Loveless doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page! And though I would love to say that this film will do exactly that, I know it never will.
My top films of 2012 will be coming up in a few posts time...
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