Vera Drake
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| Vera Drake | |
 |
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| Directed by | Mike Leigh |
| Written by | Mike Leigh |
| Cinematography by | Dick Pope |
| Starring | Imelda Staunton Richard Graham Eddie Marsan Anna Keaveney Alex Kelly Daniel Mays Phil Davis |
| Produced by | Simon Channing-Williams |
| Funded by | UK Film Council |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema (USA) |
| Release date |  6 September 2004 (premiere at VFF) October 22, 2004 7 January 2005 10 January 2005 |
| Runtime | 125 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb page | |
Vera Drake (2004) is a British film directed by Mike Leigh. It tells the story of a working class woman in London in 1950, whose values conflict with the social mores of the period.
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[edit] Plot
Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) is tirelessly devoted to her family, looking after her husband and children, her elderly mother, and a sick neighbour. Vera's daughter Ethel (Alex Kelly) works in a factory, and her son Sid (Daniel Mays) tailors men's suits. Her husband Stanley (Phil Davis) is an auto-mechanic. Although Vera and her family do not live lavishly, their strong family bonds hold them together.
Vera works as a house cleaner. However, unbeknownst to her family, she also serves as a backroom abortionist. She receives no money for this, believing her help to be an act of generosity, though her partner Lily (Ruth Sheen), a hard-bitten wheeler-dealer who also carries on a black-market trade in scarce postwar foodstuffs, does charge for arranging the abortions without Vera's knowledge. We are also introduced to a character named Susan (Sally Hawkins), who is the daughter of one of Vera's employers and whose story is one of the film's subplots. Susan is raped and impregnated and asks a friend to put her in contact with a doctor who performs abortions. The practice was illegal in 1950's England, but affluent young women could undergo legal, "therapeutic" abortions by finding doctors willing to testify that the procedure was necessary to their mental health.
The sums of money seem rather small to modern viewers, but two guineas in 1950 would be £48 in 2005 money. A hundred guineas the price of a psychiatrist-approved abortion - would be £2400. [1]
[edit] Background
In Vera Drake, Leigh incorporated elements of his own childhood. He grew up in North Salford, Lancashire, and experienced a very ordinary, but socioeconomically mixed, life as the son of a doctor and a midwife. In his book entitled, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real, Leigh wrote, “I lived in this particular kind of working-class district with some relations living in slightly leafier districts up the road. So there was always a tension, or at least a duality: those two worlds were forever colliding. So you constantly get the one world and its relationship with the other going on in my films.” (Fuller 1995: xi, xxi: 51)
[edit] Production
Mike Leigh is known to use unusual methods to create realism in his films. “Leigh’s actors literally have to find their characters through improvisation and research the ways people in specific communities speak and behave. Leigh and his cast immerse themselves in the local life before creating the story” (1994: 7: Watson 29). Critic Roger Ebert explains,
- "His method is to gather a cast for weeks or months of improvisation in which they create and explore their characters. I don’t think the technique has ever worked better than here; the family life in those cramped little rooms is so palpably real that as the others wait around the dining table while Vera speaks to policeman behind the kitchen door, I felt as if I were waiting there with them. It’s not that we 'identify' so much as that the film quietly and firmly includes us" (2 of 4).
Leigh uses improvisation in order to capture his actors' unscripted emotions. When filming Vera Drake, only Imelda Staunton knew ahead of time that the subject of the film was abortion. None of the cast members playing the family members, including Staunton, knew that Vera was to be arrested until the moment the actors playing the police knocked on the door of the house they were using for rehearsals. Their genuine reactions of shock and confusion provided the raw material for their dialogue and actions.
[edit] Themes
In this film, as in other Leigh works, such as High Hopes, the audience can observe the different social classes interacting. The Drakes are a working class family, while Stanley’s brother Frank and his wife Joyce have moved into the middle class. Susan and her mother are upper class. Owing to Susan's social status, she is able to arrange and pay for a safe abortion, while the women assisted by Vera are not.
The importance of family is an ongoing theme in the film. Jim Leach argues that “While Leigh seems to offer a fairly conservative view of gender politics through his recurring female characters who want to become mothers, his films highlight the discrepancy between the ideological emphasis on the importance of family and the actual social conditions that place external and internal pressures on family relationships” (61). In Vera Drake the character of Joyce, who claims that she wants to become a mother, is also depicted as the most selfish character in the film. Barely middle-class and insecure, she is preoccupied with material wealth and improving her social status. Her response to Vera's arrest is to distance herself from this shame and embarrassment, though her long-awaited pregnancy plays a role in her reaction. The Drake household is filled with warmth, laughter, and uncomplicated happiness. Vera and Stanley Drake have a strong marriage, and after Vera’s secret emerges, although the family has mixed feelings about what she has done, they remain loyal to her. Stanley’s brother, Frank, is married to a self-centered woman, and their relationship counterbalances the Drakes'. Another significant theme involves morality versus legality. Morally, Vera believes that she is doing the right thing by “helping out” women who do not wish to give birth. She is an honest woman who feels driven to perform these procedures out of sheer charity and her understanding of the consequences of unwanted pregnancies in her socio-economic environment. Vera’s good intentions, however, are irrelevant in a court of law. It is noteworthy that Vera's son Sid strongly represents the anti-abortion position and that the representatives of law and authority -- doctors and nurses, the police, and the judge - are not presented as villains but rather as decent people who are simply doing their jobs properly in the context of 1950's legal and social mores.
[edit] Responses
As of 9 April 2006, Vera Drake had grossed $12,941,817 at the box office worldwide, including over $3.7 million in the U.S. [2].
The film has attracted some criticism from those who worked in the medical profession during the 1950s. The chief concern is the method of abortion used by Vera Drake in the film. This involves using a Higginson bulb syringe filled with a solution of warm soapy water and disinfectant, which was then expelled into the woman's uterus. This method is extremely dangerous and is usually fatal. The film itself has been called 'dangerous' as it would be shown in countries where abortion is illegal.[1]
[edit] Awards & nominations
- 2004 European Film Awards - won Best Actress and nominated for Best Film
- 2004 Venice Film Festival - won Golden Lion for Best Film & Volpi Cup for Best Actress
- 2005 Golden Globes - nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
- 2005 Academy Awards - nominated for Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay
- 2005 BAFTAs - won Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role and Costume Design (for Jacqueline Durran). Nominated for Best Film, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best British Film.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Official site
- Vera Drake at the Internet Movie Database
- Box Office Mojo: Vera Drake
- Review of Vera Drake
- AbsoluteNow.com: Vera Drake's long synopsis
| Preceded by The Return |
Golden Lion winner 2004 |
Succeeded by Brokeback Mountain |
