Customer Reviews

Vera Drake (Widescreen)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thank the filmmaker, Mike Leigh, for providing an opportunity to share an evening contemplating the life of Vera Drake (http://www.veradrake.com/). To the best of my understanding, his portrait of Vera is a fictional composite of the women of her era who did what she did.

Mr. Leigh could have picked no more controversial a topic than the story of a woman who devoted the limited free time at the margins of her life to provide young women in difficult circumstances with access to abortion at no cost. Mr. Leigh, the son of a physician and a midwife, would be in a position to understand what motivated Vera.

Others have analyzed this film better than I could do here. My intention is to address a single topic, and that is the role of empathy in Vera's motivation. In its essence, Vera made the difficult choice to engage in a proscribed criminal act in order to provide young women of modest means with a service that was easily available at much higher cost to young women originating from well-to-do families.

Mr. Leigh makes it quite clear from early on that Vera is a woman whose life is driven by empathy. Aware of and available to others, Vera offers the only responses that empathy allows in a series of relationships - caring for a shut-in gentleman with a disability, for her aging mother, for her employers and for her immediate family members. It goes unstated that her provision of the service of abortion to women in unfortunate circumstances is no less a product of her capacity for empathy than all of the other actions that characterize her very busy life.

Another quality demonstrated by Vera is availability. Because she can connect directly and viscerally with the most ignorable of people even in passing, she brings home a young man whom her daughter soon chooses to marry. Vera is not able to ignore people or their circumstances, and she does the only things she can conceive of to respond to that which she is unable to ignore.

The issue of abortion, to my mind, is an unresolvable paradox. That is, it has no correct answer, but it forces us to make choices and to take action nonetheless. In my own view, the best social response to the issue of unwanted or unchosen pregnancy would be a type of free market system. That is, we cannot presume either to prescribe or prohibit the various options towards which a woman with an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy might be directed. Therefore, a wide range of supportive options should be available to her, not excluding economical and safe abortion, but also including parent and family support services, foster care, and a continuum of adoption models, including shared parenting. That is, "choice" neither equates with nor excludes abortion. And all of the choices would ideally be individualized as much as possible to the woman's particular needs and offered in a supportive context.

But the movie Vera Drake is not really about abortion. It is about empathy, availability and dignity.

Is the fundamental thesis valid that empathy forces choice, and therefore response?

I think that Mr. Leigh has captured a profound truth in recognizing that this is so.

Jane Jacobs (http://www.preservenet.com/studies/Jacobsbiox.html), just prior to her death, on CBC Radio's Ideas Program, commented that it is the availability of citizens to each other that has most been lost in our emerging (post World War II) suburban infrastructure. Whereas individuals were always to be seen out and about in our traditional urban and rural neighbourhoods, it is quite possible to encounter no one at all in our expanding suburban housing developments. Ms. Jacobs also makes a point quite similar to Mr. Leigh's, that without availability, empathy is blocked. And when empathy is blocked, we simply do not respond to the human circumstances of our neighbours.

The character Vera Drake is not a world improver, a social or political activist, nor an idealist. As a representative of the women who did what she did during this era, she stands as a model of the requirement to respond that empathy forces upon us.

Let us imagine for a moment that Vera had been an adoption advocate rather than an abortionist. The truth remains that when we permit empathy to take hold of our lives, we cannot walk on by the difficult moral issues. We must engage them as we engage the experiences and emotional responses of others. It is the engagement with the human circumstances of our neighbours that lends dignity to those who permit themselves to open their lives to empathy.

There is no turning back from this most difficult and tortuous but also rewarding of all engagements. Without the forced responses provoked by empathy, itself a consequence of availability, it is difficult to conceive how we can go about remaining human.

It may come as a bit of a surprise for those of us in middle or later life to think that period films are already being made of the 1950s, yet, in some ways, Vera Drake is just that. Most such films are driven by meticulous attention to detail in costume and fashion and most of them fail precisely because they cannot capture in dialogue and thematic content the atmosphere and meaning of the times they are trying to depict. This is where Vera Drake differs from run-of-the-mill A & E type costume dramas.

Mike Leigh's objective appears to be to try and break down the stereotype of the post-war Britain as a time of "happy families" in favour of showing that gender-based oppression was part of the moral fabric of the time. It centres around the actions of a woman extraordinary only in her ordinariness: Vera Drake. We are shown how she typifies decency and compassion in everyday situations. She cares for an aged mother, supports her children and neighbours, and loves her husband. She seems beyond reproach until we learn about a dirty little secret: Vera Drake performs abortions. But please do not get the wrong impression: Vera Drake is not a revisionist film per se. 2005 cannot redeem 1950 here, and director Mike Leigh understands this implicitly.

It is not my purpose here to give away the film's outcome, and this is not, in any case, a film where "outcome" is the only matter of concern. This film captures in a subtle, skilled manner what it must have been like for people such as Vera Drake and her family once the dirty little secret has come out. It uses dialogue that is flawlessly accurate for the period in which it is being spoken. It is cinematically no less than a work of art: For evidence of this, one merely needs to consider a scene in which Leigh uses a multiple mirror in the background as a means of reflecting the fractured personality of a character in the foreground. Leigh's actors demonstrate role-playing skill you will not see in any recent Hollywood film.

The story is moving, but not sentimental. Leigh doesn't rely on a violin-heavy soundtrack to cue the audience into feeling a reaction, because the dialogues and performances achieve a degree of authenticity that one comes across only rarely.

Regardless of how few or many people catch on, Vera Drake is a masterpiece which deserves the highest recommendation.

Well yes, powerful subject, powerful performances, solid acting. About a very typical inner-city English family, everybody talks simple, has simple values, where things change very slowly, everyone still a little shell-shocked from the war...rationing, morality...everything is a struggle but little Vera solves all problems by putting the kettle on. Everything is business as usual until the film takes a big turn when a marriage is announced, and almost at the same time, a pregnancy. Oh what wonderful news! A family party is in progress when the police finally close in on a mystery which centres around our little Vera...well that's it. Vera's face completely changes and the rest of the film is gloom and doom. Vera is not only judged by the juduciary, but also by her community, peers, and family. There is no right or wrong imposed on the audience, who has to decide for itself.

I found this movie was pleasant until the second part (post-arrest) when Vera's character breaks down and we are forced to watch her tortured face (in severe close-up) attempt to explain to police and then husband something she's kept secret for so many years. The long close ups of her laboured grimace and silent crying and extreme close-ups of her watery eyes slow things down a bit much. I suppose this was where the award-winning performances can be found. I did enjoy the chemistry between Vera and the very empathetic police detective with a job to do.

Overall the story is simple, it's simple people who then try to deal with something that is beyond their ability to grasp. Perhaps this part of the story should have been explored more, but the film wraps up very quickly after the revelations, and I felt a little disappointed, or maybe dis-satisfied at the end, as the film doesn't really have an ending and the ending per se is overall downbeat. Perhaps the film is a little over-rated. The technical quality is excellent and everything is treated with the utmost good taste and all viewpoints are represented. Still, what is the message? Kubrick was famous for ambiguous meaning, or perhaps many-layered meaning, but I thought this film presents the subject then kind of drops it half-way.