While Guy Ritchie’s film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has finally dropped on Prime Video,
The treatment of its main female characters.
Sorry, that’s main female character. Singular. Because there is only one.
Now, it’s true that a heavily fictionalised version of the real-life Operation Postmaster – a daring World War Two mission undertaken by Special Operations Executive (SOE), a top-secret combat unit formed with the support of Winston Churchill – isn’t necessarily the ideal backdrop for the most fully fleshed-out female characters.
However, the fact that Ritchie very much put his own spin on the tale for The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, amping up the bombast and not concerning himself too much with historical accuracy, means that there was more than enough opportunity to slot women into key roles.
So, Ritchie and his team of co-writers duly did – with all the subtlety, awareness and gender stereotyping of screenwriters operating as if it was still the 1940s.
With Henry Cavill as Gus March-Phillipps, Alan Ritchson as Anders Lassen, Alex Pettyfer as Geoffrey Appleyard and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Henry Hayes all offering credulity-stretching takes on real-life characters – another fictionalised portrayal allows Ritchie to diversify the male-dominated cast.
Enter: Eiza González as Marjorie Stewart, a female agent thrust into the action to help the boys win one over on pesky ol’ Adolf and the Nazis for King and country.
Aside from González’s struggle with the demands of a cut-glass period RP accent, Marjorie represented an easy opportunity for Ritchie to present a woman who could more than hold her own against the guys.
But he fumbled it, for Marjorie’s primary role in the movie – over its entire two-hour run-time – is as a glamorous, red-lipstick-wearing seducer, whose slinky dresses are meant to distract big(gest) baddie from the men stealing a U-boat.
And that’s it.
Oh wait, she had one scene where she proved to be a really good shot while drinking whisky.
Marjorie really does feel shoe-horned into the narrative, without much basis in fact.
The real Marjorie Stewart wasn’t part of this operation – so when taking artistic liberty why not give her something meaningful to do?
It’s galling that González’s character still needs rescuing at the end of the film during that grand seduction when her cover is blown in a situation that we could generously say takes ‘inspiration’ from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
And in terms of the Bechdel test, which asks if a work features at least two female characters having a conversation about something other than a man, obviously The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a spectacular failure.
In fact, only one other female actress is credited on IMDB – Bikiya Graham Douglas, playing a brothel madam with two lines, who appears on screen for less than a minute.
But even if we accept that there are historical justifications for Marjorie being the only woman character, there were certainly more interesting and empowering ways for her to be portrayed, even within the confines of the period.
It felt very much like the film’s creators were paying lip service only to the idea of a strong female character – and this isn’t a new phenomenon.
Others have also noted that women are often a weakness in Ritchie’s movies.
A piece written for The Independent in 2005 commented that a psychologist observed the director’s films ‘seemed to be made by a man who hates women’ and that ‘it’s all about a violent, squalid world in which men grab each other’s balls’, referencing scenes in both Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.
On social media, there are often comments about how poorly fleshed out female characters in the British director’s movies are.
I actually do like Ritchie films, I don’t think he hates women and neither do I think they hate his work – this is by no means a hit piece on the man or his movies.
His takes on Sherlock were entertaining and gave Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler some agency.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was a good caper which gave Elizabeth Debicki’s villainous Victoria plenty to do, and his recent foray into TV with a Netflix spin-off of his movie The Gentlemen proved he can make star-studded gangster fantasy with strong female characters.
Kaya Scodelario’s Susie Glass also holds her own in the male-dominated environment of its drug empire, albeit with a touch of fragility, while the director also helped expand and empower the role of Jasmine for Disney’s live-action remake of Aladdin in 2019.
But that’s why Majorie from The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a painfully obvious regression in this regard for a filmmaker who has proven he can do better with – and for – his female characters.
A woman having her own agency in a film isn’t something to be applauded; it’s the bare minimum. No matter who the director is.