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Learn about our streaming media |
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Nov 20, 2008 3:26 PM CST |
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Mike Leigh is an almost great director. His newest film is Vera Drake. It tells the story of a wonderful woman named Vera Drake who helps out young women with abortions. Vera Drake is a film about the triumph of the ordinary. Leigh is a master at making come alive in a visceral way the ordinary lives of ordinary people—people who just try to make do. They don’t have huge ambitions. They don’t aim to be movie stars. They just want to live in peace and harmony, in a close family relationship, decently and with dignity. They are good people. Vera Drake, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is set in working-class London in the 1950s. We don’t know Vera’s age, but we would guess her to be about fifty. She cleans the houses of rich people. She has two kids: A brash, party-loving son and the timid wallflower of a dutiful daughter. What we soon learn is that Vera has a secret. She is an abortionist. She helps girls in distress, out of the goodness of her heart. She takes no money. Although Vera has been performing abortions for longer than she can remember—maybe twenty years, one day she gets caught by the police and stands trial. It’s not a very happy story, and of course we all know that these things went on not only in England, but everywhere where abortion was illegal. But it is a story that Mike Leigh tells with incredible precision, with a depth of feeling, and one which is redeemed and comes alive because of the strength of the actors’ performances. Eliciting great, sometimes courageous performances, like that of David Thewlis in Leigh’s film Naked, is one of Leigh’s great contributions to the cinema. The acting in Vera Drake is immaculate. The acting ensemble is kind of a family. They are natural and comfortable with each other—there is the kind of laziness and easy acceptance that is true of real families who really know each other because they live together. Vera Drake is a film that is much smarter than is apparent on the surface. It never asks for our empathy or sympathy. There is not a single emotional moment which panders to the audience. In Vera Drake, Leigh has achieved a kind of distance. This is no kitchen sink drama, but a film of rigor. This allows Leigh to reach beyond character and address the moral issue: what if an individual, selflessly looking out for the welfare of others, falls afoul of society’s laws? This is a question of great characters of literature like Michael Kolhaas or Antigone, and of those who sought to help others or to right a wrong imposed by society, convention, or law. To add a dimension to this, in Vera Drake, Leigh adds the issue of class. The young daughter of a family Vera cleans house for gets pregnant after being forced to have sex with her date. But the path is different for her. A visit to the family doctor leads to a psychiatrist who legally prescribes the abortion at a well-maintained residential clinic. Leigh’s point is simple: there is a way out for those with money. Rules and punishment when they are broken are reserved for those who can’t afford to break them. Yet when Vera is on trial, none of the elegant households she works for will come and testify in court as to her character. In Leigh’s work, the social classes pass each other like ships in the night, and the only relationship is one of exploitation. In contrast, the working-class family of Vera Drake unites around her. In a poignant moment, the daughter’s new fiancé Sid talks about his own mother who didn’t have enough to support all of her children, growing up in poverty. Even Vera’s son, who is at first upset at finding out his mother’s secret, eventually comes over to her side. A simple dramatic element keeps Vera Drake from being a truly great film like Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, for instance. In Fellini’s film, the prostitute played by Giulietta Masina undergoes an emotional transformation. Cynical and jaded, she falls in love and places her trust in a man, only to be deceived and taken advantage of one more time. Vera Drake, in comparison, remains steadfast—a woman who knows only the good she does for others and who does only what her heart tells her. But as a study of character and class, at the end we are convinced that the world needs more women like Vera Drake. This is Milos Stehlik for Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview. Worldview film contributor Milos Stehlik is the director of Facets Multimedia. |
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