Dir. Mike Leigh, 2004, UK, 125 mins
Cast: Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis
Review by Simon Gray
Once dubbed “maestro of the mundane”, Mike Leigh is well-known for harnessing the dramatic potential of everyday life. This is certainly the case with his latest film. In Vera Drake, Leigh has carved out of the tiniest, most well-meaning of lives, a heroine of tragic proportions. Imelda Staunton offers an unforgettable performance as a woman who is criminalised for her own selflessness and goodwill.
Vera Drake (Staunton) is a kind and gentle woman living frugally in a cramped post-war north London tenement flat with her husband and grown-up children. Her family is close, loving and hard-working – they are not rich but together they manage to make ends meet. Vera wishes only the happiness of her family and of those less fortunate – be it her elderly mother, her bed-ridden neighbour, or the young man next door for whom Vera’s delicious stews are a sheer luxury compared to his staple diet of bread and dripping.
Vera’s unassuming optimism, however, conceals an extraordinary secret – a secret which, although motivated purely by her own altruism, will have terrible consequences. For 20 years, Vera has been visiting the homes of pregnant women and carrying out a crude abortion procedure using hot soapy water, disinfectant and a syringe. She accepts no money for her services; Vera genuinely (if naively) believes that, as the only recourse for these mostly working-class women, the service she provides is a necessity.
Vera knows all too well that, in the eyes of the law, she is a criminal (abortion was illegal in the UK until 1967). When one of her operations goes wrong she finds herself at the centre of a police investigation which devastates the Drake family and destroys Vera’s spirit. From this point onwards, she can scarcely utter a word, let alone a heroic defence. Gone is the perennially cheerful Vera: in her place a broken woman. Imelda Staunton’s performance is hugely affecting, all the more so for its understatement and restrain: she takes us from one extreme to the other with just her eyes and face. Indeed Leigh uses close-ups more extensively in this film than he has before.
Vera Drake is the most unlikely of heroines. She is not making a political stand; she does not set out to confront injustice; ultimately she breaks the law and is crushed by its weight. But in her own quiet way, there is a sense that her actions and her beliefs are heroic. She is not some grubby backstreet abortionist in it for the money. In spite of the insignificance of her own life, she is possessed with a rare quality – the utter belief in the righteousness of her actions. Ahead of her time, Vera has faith in the ideal that women should have the right to choose abortion, an ideal which is still controversial today. It is her absolute conviction that makes Vera Drake a hero; and it is this which brings about her tragic downfall.
Although Vera Drake is a controversial film, Leigh does not rejoice in that controversy. He does not encumber this intimate drama with a political agenda (unlike Ken Loach, with whom he is often compared): instead of passing judgement on Vera, he celebrates her spirit and observes her world fall apart with his usual candid meticulousness. His 1950s is an innocent era – an age when the young are old before their time, an age before rock n’ roll, sexual liberation and the Pill. The naivety of Vera herself is perhaps reflected in that of the era and in Leigh’s simple, artless camerawork. It is also a colourless age – composed here in dark monochrome greens which envelop everything from the cheaply painted rooms to Vera’s coat. Against this dreary backdrop, the lively cast of characters shine with great warmth, not least the humble Phil Davis as Vera’s ever-supportive husband.
Although painstakingly rooted in time and place, Vera Drake nevertheless feels almost contemporary and universal, as if the 1950s setting is a metaphor for a wider human story. As the altogether convincing tale of a defenceless woman criminalised for her beliefs, this is perhaps one of Mike Leigh’s most timeless films, and definitely one of his most poignant.
