ONE TO MAKE YOU THINK : "VERA DRAKE"

Ok, so in this week’s updates I use nostalgia in the broadest terms possible. I wanted to put this film in here though because Mike Leigh’s work Vera Drake is such a successful and realistic portrayal of 1950’s London. The cast is wonderful and thus the acting is all absolutely first class; it is almost as if we are peering back in time through a magical window. And although nostalgia does often tend to tint whatever we see with a slightly rosy hue, this film is an apt reminder that roses have very real thrones…
Vera Drake (played superbly by Imelda Staunton) is a mother of two living in 1950’s London. She cleans houses, her husband works in his brother’s car-repair shop. They have two grown children who both have jobs themselves – but still live at home as yet, this is the ‘50s you remember! – All in all they have a modest life. But Vera, with a cheerfulness and kind-heartedness that is legendary to all around her is an expert at making the house a real home. No one who sees this happy home from the outside (or even the inside) could guess that the maker of this home harbors a secret. Vera has a sideline that she works in; for no extra remuneration, purely out of the kindness of her heart, she helps young girls have “abortions”, a thing that is illegal back in the day. This has gone on for many, many years without even her family knowing the truth of it, but like all secrets the truth will, eventually, out. And as it is with secrets that have been kept hidden for a long time, the consequences will be very, very painful indeed…
The great thing about this film is that since it is not a spectacle but a very down to earth story; we do not watch with the certain sense of awe that surrounds films like The Last Samurai (review coming soon to this blog!) but with a sense of engagement and reality, with genuine concern as opposed to “excitement”. ???s portrayal of the warm, loving mother Vera Drake is so brilliant that within the first five minutes of the film you have warmed to her, the family feels as if they are part of your extended family. There is nothing original in the structure of what is being portrayed; the modest, good hearted family contrasted in various ways (and in some cases rather ham-handedly I must say in this film) with richer, more unhappy families is not exactly the invention of the wheel. But the cast of the Drake family is simply so good that you enjoy it anyway. Think of it as a really well-cooked cottage pie. It’s no Michelin-star worthy fare, but if it is well cooked, in can be a lot better than a lot of more expensive food. Same story here. I’m not sure why I felt the comparisons didn’t work. I think it’s not so much the acting but the storyline; the way the two “items” have been compared; there are, for example, two very obviously parallel storylines that actually barely intercut – and the way they do intercut is stilted and rather too heavily based on coincidence for my liking – and it is very, very obvious that the only raison d’être of that line is comparative. This in itself I could let slide if Leigh hadn’t then pushed in a second, better integrated but still a little caricaturized “parallel” line. Still the film is very enjoyable for the Drake family’s performance alone. If only Leigh had cut out one of the parallels and left them to shine in their own right; I think it would have been greatly improved. Not that it needs much improving mind you. Credit where it’s due, it deserves every single award it got…