Preview
VERA DRAKE
Starring Imelda Staunten, Richard Graham and Eddie Marsan
Written and directed by Mike Leigh
Opens Friday, November 19
Globe Cinema
British filmmaker Mike Leigh is known for his unique directorial style and the unparalleled performances he elicits from his actors. However, with his latest, Vera Drake, the controversial subject matter is garnering as much attention as his technique.
That’s not to say that Leigh has gone back to a traditional filmmaking style. He is in his 60s now and as he says, he has spent 14 years developing a certain style of working. His early films High Hopes and Life is Sweet painted heartfelt family portraits, but it was the loose style and powerhouse acting in Naked and Secrets and Lies that really brought Leigh his notoriety. To abandon that now would undoubtedly sacrifice the high quality of performance audiences have come to expect from his films.
In the case of Vera Drake, he spent six months intensively rehearsing the film with the performers for the comparatively short three-month shoot. This resulted in a critically-lauded performance by Imelda Staunton as the title character and a series of awards from the Venice Film Festival. Staunton’s pitch-perfect turn as a woman in post-Second World War Britain who "helps girls in trouble" is generating as much conversation as what her character does. By inserting the subject of abortion into the format of a blue-collar period piece, Leigh is subtly introducing a discussion that usually polarizes audiences.
"Ultimately, I am pro-choice," says Leigh. "But it is not a black-and-white issue, in a sense that there is no doubt that you do in some ways destroy life when you terminate a pregnancy, but on the other hand, society looks to how we live on the planet…. I think that I have tried, in the film, to look at it in an open way and in a way that allows the audience to confront the moral dilemma."
As Vera, the diminutive Staunton shuffles through the streets of London where she tends to her reclusive neighbours, keeps house for a variety of posh clients and, in the interim, meets with young girls who have no one else to turn to. Each visit is received with varying degrees of distress by her clients, but Vera’s maternal instincts and proclivity for putting on a pot of tea invariably turn any situation into an almost matter-of-fact affair. Indeed, Leigh’s camera chronicles the mundane nature of Vera’s life in such a way that her daily routine isolates her from the other characters. She approaches abortion with the same practicality as she would buying the groceries or scrubbing the floor.
"Here is a woman who does what, in all societies, people – mostly women – have done," says Leigh, "often just as she does it – for free – because they think it’s something that girls or women need. It quietly happens in what you call a matter-of-fact way. Obviously there is crisis and trauma for each of the people involved in it… but in terms of (Vera’s) life, it’s tucked away and a separate and incidental thing."
Aside from masterful filmmaking and mind-blowing performances, the other thing you can expect from Leigh’s films is a reasonably bleak outcome for the protagonist. Vera Drake is no exception. By the midway mark of the film, Vera’s working-class existence is turned upside down when one of her clients suffers a medical complication. The authorities are called in, Vera’s secret is revealed and the film’s complexities become more apparent. Leigh’s objective camera lets audience reaction dictate response. If you are pro-choice, Vera’s heroic acts in the first half make her a martyr by the film’s conclusion. If you’re pro-life, she is receiving just punishment for her horrific deeds. With Vera Drake, Leigh has created a film that could be his most intimate and political work to date.
"I don’t know that I am more politicized," says Leigh. "It may be that – and this may be as much to do with the fact that I am now in my 60s – I just feel the need to deal with issues. I’ve been dealing with issues for one way or another for a long time."
Indeed the subject of abortion has cropped up in his other idiosyncratic works, but never this much in the foreground. Although abortion laws have changed in Leigh’s native Britain since the era in which Vera Drake is set, he says that, in light of the recent legal challenges to abortion rights in the U.S. – under the Bush administration – this issue is as relevant as ever.
"It is something that concerns us all and we know there are certain places like for example (the U.S.) it’s being dragged into the centre of discussion and there is a chance that the laws could change," says Leigh. |
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