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Phil Davis and Imelda Staunton are superb in Mike Leigh's masterpiece Vera Drake |
In London in 1950, Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) spends her
life helping those around her and is a devoted wife and mother. But what her
husband Stan (Phil Davis) and children Sid (Daniel Mays) and Ethel (Alex Kelly)
don’t know is that for decades she has been “helping young girls out” who find
themselves unwillingly in the family way. All Vera wants to do is help – but with
abortion illegal, her actions are a ticking timebomb, which explodes when Vera
is arrested.
Vera Drake is a film about “the family way” – in
every sense. Leigh’s unique film-making technique is familiar now: long weeks
of research and intensive, improvisational rehearsals help the actors to create
fully-fleshed characters who they know so well, they can predict their
reactions in any circumstances. During rehearsals, none of the actors in the
family knew Staunton was playing an abortionist until the actors playing the
police knocked on the door mid-rehearsal – and even Staunton was completely
unaware she was to be arrested. The genuine shock the actors felt feeds this
intensely powerful scene – and every moment that follows.
In perhaps no other film has Leigh’s technique been more successful:
every single character feels completely and utterly real. You could look in any
direction and find a character with such a rich hinterland you want to know
their stories. Just as intriguing films could be formed around the lives of the
young women Vera helps out – Sinead Matthews ‘very young woman’ (and the
boyfriend who waits outside), Tilly Vosburgh as a mother of seven with a sick
husband, Rosie Cavaliero as a nervous married woman or Vinette Robinson’s scared
Jamaican girl – as has been about Vera.
These women have fallen through the cracks – unable to
support a family, but deprived any chance of making choices about themselves
and bodies. There is a clear social gap – Sally Hawkins gives a sensitive,
gentle performance as an upper-class woman, raped by her boyfriend, who obtains
an abortion through psychiatric loopholes available only to the rich. No fault
of hers – you can imagine she’d be horrified at how others suffer – but for the
poor, their only option is Vera. It’s a huge flaw in the system – and removing
Vera won’t solve the ‘problem’. It only means women will turn with more
desperation to the sort of uncaring sleazy abortionists Denholm Elliott played
in Alfie.
The film works because of its tenderness and the raw emotion
of the performances. Leigh’s camera is a largely stationary and observatory, but
that immerses us in the domestic charm of the first half as much as it does the
horrifying coldness of the legal system in the second half. The Drake family
home is small and cramped, reflecting their poverty, but also because it feels
stuffed with love. Their children – the extremely shy Ethel and her outgoing
son Sid – both reflect their intensely loving home, and her husband Stan is
full of kindness, generosity and decency.
Leigh carefully demonstrates the warmth of this family. There’s
a tear-inducingly sweet romance between Eddie Marsan’s Reg (a beacon of human
decency) and the shy Ethel. Stan’s brother Frank (Adrian Scarborough,
marvellous) and middle-class wife Joyce (Heather Craney, wonderfully torn in
her feelings) struggle to conceive a child. The family laugh and joke together,
every day ending in smiles and expressions of love. It’s beautifully immersing
and deeply moving – and makes the wait for this world to shatter even more dreadful.
As Vera, Imelda Staunton gives an astonishing performance. A
quiet, polite, open-hearted lady whose greatest pleasure is other people’s happiness.
Leigh’s film follows her acts of caring around the community – cleaning
neighbours houses, looking after her ill mother, inviting lonely newcomer Reg
to dinner – showing she applies the same heart-felt but unshowy care to those,
as she does to her abortions. It’s twenty minutes before we see one of these,
and what’s striking is the well-practised calmness Vera goes about this work,
carefully repeating the same reassuring instructions. She never asks for
anything (the posh doctor treating Sally Hawkins’ character takes £100). Lily, who
puts her in touch with those in need, has no qualms charging £2 without Vera’s
knowledge.
Then the arrest comes. This sequence – and the rest that
follows – is frankly extraordinary. Staunton’s face when she sees police is a heart-breaking
thing of wonder – a horrified realisation that what she has dreaded for decades
has finally happened and the realisation that the world as she knew it is over.
Throughout she is astoundingly fragile. Barely able to speak, mute with shock –
and horrified to hear one of her girls nearly died (it’s never revealed what
went wrong). Her first thought is the girls health and how this will ruin her
family’s celebration of Ethel’s engagement. So warm and joyful has the first
half of the film been, we feel the shocking coldness as the law goes about –
albeit with a regret, beautifully underplayed by Peter Wight’s sympathetic
detective and Helen Coker’s gentle WPC – the black-and-white business of
cataloguing wrongs.
Staunton is extraordinary: she shrinks and diminish, terrified and mortified. The reactions of her family – confused then stunned and in some cases appalled – feel immensely true: some jump forward in support, others in anger. Phil Davis’ deeply moving performance sees Stan suppress his anger under love. Mays’ Sid rages, Heather Craney’s Joyce is resentful, Scarborough’s Frank is a pillar of support, Alex Kelly’s Ethel quietly holds her mother and will not her go. The emotion of this is so affecting as it feels so real: when Reg quietly shows his support and later gently says the disastrous post-arrest Christmas is the finest he has ever had, you’ll feel tears spring to your eyes.
The relentless march of the law is chronicled perfectly by
Leigh. This is a director at the top of his game, creating a low-key film that
switches on a sixpence from warmth and familial love to shattering emotional
impact. Staunton’s performance is breathtakingly brilliant, avoiding all
histrionics and will break your heart. The entire cast is astounding. The
research and filming is exquisite. The film will quietly devastate you, but
also remind you that nothing is more reassuring than the fundamental goodness
of people. A beautiful, moving, masterpiece of a film.
Vera Drake movie has released on the year 2004 that has declared the superb mode of the master piece of that movie. The director of that movie is Mike Leigh and the cast is also law essay help described in the below mentioned section to follow the moments.
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