Vera Drake Mike Leigh UK 2004
Abortion: There you go I’ve said it. Vera Drake is all about that simple little act. Call it murder, call it choice, call it what you will. Vera Drake calls it helping. Helping girls who’ve made a silly mistake, helping those who may not have, whatever - helping
Cheerfully, at first, played by Imelda Staunton, Drake is filled to the brim with war time community spirit. She helps her family, she helps her neighbours. She helps everybody. In a similar vein to Far From Heaven, director Mike Leigh injects modern day subject matter into a historical setting and mindset. Such is the topic that it devours an audiences’ attention raptly curtailing any further ventures into period style or form. Drake’s family who are introduced in cheesy, cheery cockney fashion, are happy and well cared for. Bordering on the verge of hysteric parody they bicker and jape like a film from the period, which may well be a result of Leigh’s fondness for improvisation and the actors millennial perceptions of the era (i.e. from say a film of the time). A minor jibe (you do actually meet people like this) a happy family unit is certainly better loaded for the heartache to come.
The Kitchen Sink dramas and their sixties successors soon opened up this subject area, so it’s no surprise that Leigh pushes the setting close to the war, in 1950. The war fills the minds of the protagonists and our eyes, in the early ‘50s austerity, the chillingly banal conversational ice-breaker used ‘Did you have a good war?’ and the recollections of the Blitz. Drake inhabits this grimy recovering world, the very model of working class compassion and respectability. No gin sozzled back street fixer is she in comparison to Denholm Elliott’s turn in Alfie (though one should note that the abortion card is threatened but not delivered in Jude Law’s wary remake). She smiles and doesn’t charge for her service. She helps.
Unlawful termination or abortion is how the law would describe Drake’s actions and how it eventually penalises her when the authorities catch up after a patient undergoes emergency surgery as a result of her handiwork. Yet these definitions of choice are not what Drake can name in her police interrogation. In the films strongest scenes Staunton dissolves in a conflict of beneficial urges; to help others versus societal respectability. She doesn’t resist arrest, she complies with every demand the police make in their investigation and eventually pleads guilty at court. Staunton portrays this crushing vice of influences in terms of numbed subjugation, a strained speechlessness that extends to her barely comprehending husband played by Phil Davis: A perfect misery showcase to underscore the merit of the leads and Leigh’s talent. The brief family Christmas that separates her arrest and the court case is reminiscent of similar scenes in Capturing the Friedmans, a real life family caught self destructing on film.
Leigh’s argument is to sanctify Drake and then sentence her lightly. Pedro Almodovar uses the same light footsteps approach towards a ‘dirty’ subject in Talk to Her, broaching rape (a navigator to abortion) in the least unacceptable way possible. In a counter plot line half shown, a rich girl is seen having an abortion in a blithe example of the moneyed classes getting away with it through legal loopholes and the quick flick of the psychiatrists nib. This contrast is slight and buckled down, deferring to the film’s fondness for performance. Once Drake is apprehended the rich girl has checked out of the private nursing home and is not seen again. Reasons why an abortion might be required are brushed over, mainly as Drake whisks into yet another flat, cheerily carries out her task and promptly leaves. By reserving Rape, a potential trump emotive card in favour of abortion, for the rich girl, Leigh lays his stance down firmly away from such mitigating arguments. The houses and apartments Drake visits are grimy and overcrowded, even Reg the monosyllabic son-in-law to be, posits population control as a reason for abortion: ‘you can’t love what you can’t feed’.
Ending defiantly Leigh introduces Vera to other ‘helpers’ such as herself in the film’s bleak conclusion. The image of the do-gooder middle aged women merges with the one of convicted felons to bitter humour. To wipe that smirk off less scrupulous viewers Leigh reserves his end shot, his final swing, for the Drake family. You can probably guess what it is but that doesn’t matter. ‘Helping’ has been rewarded by the hypocrisy of the times in a British period film with genuine issues and value.
