Release Date: October 10, 2004
Starring: Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Eddie Marsan, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight
Directed by: Mike Leigh
Written by: Mike Leigh
Distributed by: Fine Line Features
MPAA Rating: R (depiction of strong thematic material)
Vera Drake, a fiercely emotional drama written and directed by Mike Leigh, accomplishes something that probably would not have been possible until recently: It manages to shed a sympathetic light on the title character, an abortionist living in London in 1950, by subtly and vaguely recasting her as a proto-feminist. It does not care for the moral questions of abortion (and, admirably, it does not pull any punches on account of present-day politics) so much as it is concerned with the plight of women in the patriarchal society of 50’s England. This is not easily done, given that the majority of human beings will already be predisposed against abortion. But Vera Drake has an ace up its sleeve: The terrifically honest, emotional, and heartfelt lead performance given by Imelda Staunton, which should win over viewers regardless of their opinions on the subject matter.
Staunton plays Vera as a greatest-hits compilation of everyone’s favorite grandmother: She flits restlessly about her small London flat (usually humming a tune) where she lives with her mechanic husband, Stan (Phil Davis), and her two adult children, a jovial tailor named Sid (Daniel Mays), and a shy recluse named Ethel (Alex Kelly). Kindhearted as she is, she also has a tendency to invite neighborhood bachelors, like the humble Reg (Eddie Marsan), over for a home-cooked meal, a slightly bizarre tradition that the rest of her family is only too happy to accommodate (especially Ethel, who develops an affectionate crush on Reg as the movie goes along).
This is only half of Vera, though. She is also, of course, an abortionist. Where or how she picked up the trade and for how long she has been at it are questions that the story only briefly touches on near the end (or circumvents altogether); she simply is, and the movie forces the viewer to take it for granted. Her routine in this respect is also simple: Vera’s friend, the curmudgeonly Lily (Ruth Sheen), who also traffics in black-market goods, first puts Vera in touch with young women in need of her services. Then Vera visits the women at their homes, administering a usually harmless solution that takes only a few minutes; within a few days, she tells these women, everything will be alright. Then she leaves.
Somewhat perversely, she delivers this remedy in the same cheerful, grandmotherly demeanor with which she prepares tea or sets her dinner table; you can see that Vera herself has no moral objections to abortion, or if she does, she hides them very well. More important to her is the sense that she is helping these unfortunate young women, who, for a variety of circumstances, cannot see their pregnancies to term. They come to Vera because she is cheap and hassle-free; the movie contrasts the blue-collar Vera’s experiences with a young, upper-class woman, Susan (Sally Hawkins), who pursues a much more expensive abortion through the national health care bureaucracy (this involves a number of lies or exaggerations, including asserting to a psychiatrist that she is suicidal).
The purpose of the movie’s two disparate halves is not to shock the viewer, although if you don’t know what the movie is about beforehand I guess there will be some mild surprise when Vera performs her first abortion. Rather, it is to humanize Vera. The same guiding principles of care and concern that are present everywhere else in her life, from her generous, home-cooked meals for the neighborhood’s bachelors to her more legitimate job as a cleaning maid in several upscale London homes -- including Susan’s -- are also present in her motives for performing abortions. As it turns out, she does not even charge the women she visits a price at all -- unbeknownst to her, her friend Lily demands the money, and keeps it for herself.
Stringent antiabortionists may find it difficult to reconcile with this point of view -- the same viewers who saw 1999’s The Cider House Rules as a thinly disguised apologia for abortion will probably take the same tack here -- but it is also difficult not to sympathize with Vera after she is arrested for performing abortions at the start of the third act. From the moment the police come to her door, this previously vivid and spirited woman is frozen into silence, genuinely unable to comprehend that what she has done is considered a crime: When the police refer to it as abortion, she insists that they say she was helping the women. This is not the old pro-life/pro-choice seesaw, but an altogether different dilemma. Young women at that time who were cornered into motherhood were suddenly stripped of the boundless possibilities of youth; Vera, as she sees it, was giving these women a second chance at life.
It is not a surprise that Vera is arrested and punished for her actions; a woman with her kind of verve and empowerment in 50’s English society had a figurative “Kick Me” sign permanently pinned to her back (notice how the rest of the women in the film are either depicted as cowering weaklings or empty socialites). Indeed, the scenes after her arrest are where the movie’s contrasting is done. Vera, who is the life of her family -- her diminutive husband regards her with a warm affection that suggests he’s content to let her have the run of things -- is abruptly silenced in the cold, male-dominated world of the English penal system. The best that can be said for this imposing circle of officials is that Detective Inspector Webster (Peter Wight), the officer who arrests her, is professional but not forgiving, but the female officer who accompanies Webster seems to be present for political reasons rather than judicial ones.
The movie, however, has no political reasons for being. Vera Drake is an optimistic, humanist story, fascinated with Vera’s capacity for love, compassion, and tolerance and the lengths to which she goes to render such sentiments upon the men and women around her. It does not directly confront any of the moral or political objections to abortion, and its realization that well reasoned arguments against abortion do exist (embodied in Vera’s son, Sid) is almost as abrupt as the movie’s ending. But this does not undermine the strength of Staunton’s performance, nor the film’s fervent and successful defense of a character that, until recently, would have been wholly unthinkable.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)