VERA DRAKE d: Mike Leigh
Vera Drake (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Mike Leigh
Cast: Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis, Peter Wight, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Eddie Marsan, Ruth Sheen, Sally Hawkins, Chris O’Dowd, Heather Craney
Director Mike Leigh’s touches are found everywhere in Vera Drake, from the drab working-class social setting to the somewhat bizarre characters that inhabit that milieu (at least in Leigh’s oeuvre). Even so, Vera Drake cannot quite be considered a Mike Leigh Film. This bleak drama about a kind and gentle — if none too bright — part-time cleaning woman, part-time wife and mother, and part-time abortionist truly belongs to its leading lady, veteran stage and screen actress Imelda Staunton, whose superb tour de force carries the film to heights it would never have reached otherwise.
Set in post-war England circa 1950, Vera Drake is the story of a naïve, kind-hearted, middle-aged cleaning lady, Vera, the wife of mechanic Stan Drake (Philip Davis) and the mother of two grown children, Sid (Daniel Mays), a tailor, and Ethel (Alex Kelly), a mousy wallflower.
In her spare time, the ever-cheerful Vera takes care of her ailing mother and helps out neighbors in need. Whenever her friend Lily (Ruth Sheen) shows up with black-market foodstuff — rationing was still the norm back then — Vera, while buying some goods, learns of women who wish to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Always eager to assist people in need, Vera helps those usually frightened and distressed women induce a miscarriage. Once her job is done, Vera wishes her patients luck and quietly walks away. Her services come free of judgment and free of charge.
Vera then returns home to cook a nice meal for her family, or perhaps she goes to the movies to laugh out loud watching Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck. She has performed a good deed, and all is well.
Being intellectually challenged, Vera has no moral ambiguity or self-doubt. She exudes the supreme confidence to which only the very stupid are entitled. All she knows is that she has helped someone in need. The fact that such assistance involves the termination of a life — whether human or pre-human, depending on one’s beliefs — is never a part of the equation. Moreover, she remains oblivious to the fact that her miscarriage-inducing method of using hot water and disinfectant may ultimately endanger the lives of the women she is trying to help. Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what happens.
When finally caught by the police, Vera is horrified to learn that one of her patients has almost died following a womb infection. (A daily occurrence according to a doctor.) As far as Vera knew, that had never happened during her 20-year career as an undercover abortionist. But then again, how could she know? She left those women to their fate after filling their wombs with disinfectant and hot water, knowing in her heart, bless her, that all would end well. Despite such monumental stupidity, Mike Leigh is adamant: We must love his heroine. Thus, Leigh’s (however improvised) script absolves Vera by shifting the full blame to a system that does not provide safe abortions.
That is not to say that Leigh is necessarily wrong. There surely is a point to be made for a society that allows rich women to have an abortion with relative ease, while the poor must rely on back-alley hacks. In Vera Drake, a wealthy rape victim, the daughter of one of the families for whom Vera works, goes to a doctor who arranges an abortion for her. The fee: £100, a hefty amount in those days. As a comparison, the sugar-and-coffee trafficker Lily, who is portrayed as a ruthless mercenary, charges a miserly couple of guineas to put an unhappily pregnant woman in touch with Vera. (Needless to say, the saintly Vera is unaware of Lily’s dealings.) People like Vera, Mike Leigh is telling us, were therefore a necessity — even if a dangerous one.
As for the ethics — or lack thereof — of Vera’s underground practice, the most "profound" argument found in Vera Drake takes place when Vera’s son, Sid, accuses her of "killing little babies." Since Vera remains silent, we are kept in the dark about her thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, Mike Leigh finds such issues none too relevant. What really matters to him is the suffering poor little Vera must go through after she is caught. We feel her humiliation when she must tell her husband about her secret practice. We feel her pain when Sid (temporarily) turns against her. We feel her fear as she awaits the merciless sentence that will be imposed on her by the British judicial system. Luckily, the film has Imelda Staunton to keep in check Leigh’s bathos-prone hand.
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Tags: Film Reviews, Imelda Staunton, Mike Leigh, Oscar 2004, Oscar Movies, Philip Davis, Socially Conscious Movies, Three-Star Movies, Three-Star Oscar Nominees, Vera Drake
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