Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson could probably save a popsicle from melting on a hot day. While saving the film Belle from disaster may not be as big a challenge, the duo manage to camouflage the movie’s weaknesses and provide a buffer against this somewhat whitewashed story of race, class and gender.
Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a biracial daughter of an admiral and a former slave from Africa, comes to live with her father’s uncle, Lord Mansfield (Wilkinson), Great Britain’s Chief Justice, and his wife, Lady Mansfield (Watson). Dido can’t dine with her family nor with the servants because she is stuck in a limbo devised by Mansfield in accordance with the protocol of the day. At issue in his day job is a little matter of British slave traders tossing their sick slaves overboard in order to collect an insurance payout (the 1781 Zong massacre). It will take a whole movie for him to render a verdict. Most of the time the crusty, grumpy, yet authoritative barrister is defending the status quo. Yet Wilkinson’s eyes and body language increasingly suggest he may be having second thoughts. Seems his adopted daughter is getting increasingly rambunctious once she discovers the abolitionist viewpoint on the case. She’s given the eye opener by social lowball John Davinier (Sam Reid), a pastor’s son and aspiring legal apprentice who lives and breathes the slave issue.
Dido at first demonstrates no such boldness regarding her personal life once she agrees to a marriage with a clueless yet condescending suitable suitor. Her looming inheritance precludes her from marrying into a lower station (e. g, out of passion or affection). Shame the windfall couldn’t get her a seat at her family’s dining table…Adding further to the intrigue, Dido, bosom buddies with her blond bombshell cousin, Elizabeth (Sara Gadon), innocently provokes a change in their relationship once Elizabeth discovers nothing but dead ends in trying to find a husband herself. With no dowry of her own even her stop-you-in-its-tracks attractiveness comes up an empty lure.
Sure we’re dealing with Jane Austen/ Masterpiece Theater territory here. The question is, does the film delve into Dido’s psyche enough? Does it handle her thinking process and emotional evolving brought on by the racial slurs, subtle and otherwise, sprinkled throughout the film? Not so much. It’s more about the white people here, a legitimate angle considering the change necessary in their thinking before any social change is possible. Yet it still feels funny that Dido herself seems like a wooden character here. Must be that Wilkinson and Watson factor. When Watson’s Lady Mansfield, at first demure as a timid kitten, tells Wilkinson how she really feels, the scene reminds of her status as one of the premier film actresses of our time. And the film ratchets up its resonance, leaping from from cozy yet questionable historical lesson to instant crowd pleaser.