"Wife. Mother. Criminal."

Vera Drake (2004): 6/10

Poster (c) Fine Line Features

If I may go on a small political rant here: whenever there's a movie with a political stance, the other side fights it. Yet when there's a movie that deals with the same topic neutrally, no one's fighting it. I think then the conclusion is that political pundits don't care about issues, just about spouting their side on it (like that's anything new?). What I'm trying to get at here is that abortion is one of the hot topics in the coming election, yet there hasn't been basically any debate over the topic when it's portrayed in Vera Drake, Best Film winner at the Venice Film Festival. I remember a lot of talk about The Life of David Gale's death-penalty themes. But nothing about poor ol' Vera Drake. Why is that? I have no clue. Maybe they just didn't want to see the movie. I can understand why.

Imelda Staunton plays the title character, a woman growing up in 1950s England. She always extends a helping hand to whoever needs it. She lives with her husband Stan (Phil Davis), grown children Sid (Daniel Mays) and Ethel (Alex Kelly, who has to win some sort of award), and Reg (Eddie Marsan), whom Vera forced to live with them because he was living alone. This seemingly happy family has one skeleton in the closet (don't they all?) that only Vera knows about-for the last 20 or so years, she's been illegally performing abortions to lower class women who can't afford, or don't want, a(nother) baby. The secret would tear the family apart, but it's well hidden until the police come.

So, Vera Drake is basically an Oscar movie. It's a drama, it's somewhat of a costume drama/period piece, it deals with a controversial topic in a deliberate nonpartisan way...what else could the Academy like more? Hopefully they'll honor Staunton's amazing performance, but that's it. The film is disjointed, scenes go on for too long, and the cinematography is pretty bad. The first half of the movie is great-we see these characters, we get to know about them, we get to like these characters. We understand that what Vera's doing (at least in her own mind) is the right thing to do. We feel sympathetic to what she's doing, and we follow Vera 100%. The subplots are fine, and the movie is generally interesting. But then the whole thing changes once Vera is discovered. Each and every scene is either unnecessary or overlong. Vera seems to have one facial expression throughout the last half, everything that was interesting about the first half just became boring and overlong. Some of the subplots that came up in the first half disappeared. Things like that.

The music was few and far between, and was pretty much the same throughout. Some more would have been great, especially during the plodding, overlong scenes in the second half. And oftentimes the cinematography was too simple. I don't remember the camera moving much at all. I suppose it's some sort of reference to the simple life that Vera and co. live, but it's obnoxious. It's almost like writer/director Mike Leigh is hitting that over our heads. I suppose the last half is to show the mental deterioration that the process has on Vera, but where is Leigh putting the blame? On the police force, which he fills with sympathetic characters? Requiem for a Dream did this deterioration much better, and Ellen Burstyn was nominated for an Oscar for her role in it. I sure hope that Staunton is nominated. She's easily the best part of the movie and makes us all believe that she's Vera Drake. Her job is amazing here. But amazing is not something I could say about the rest of the movie. I guess it's kind of like Maria Full of Grace. It's definitely not as depressing or as good as it thinks it is.

Rated R for depiction of strong thematic material.

Review Date: October 23, 2004