Vera Drake (2004)

I have been a casual admirer of Mike Leigh since watching his exuberant Topsy Turvy (1999) and reading about his improvisational directorial style. Therefore, I watched with wonder as the first half of Vera Drake unfolded with assuredness and unmistakable form. The camera follows Mrs. Drake, steadily like its poised narrative, as she effortlessly fulfills her role as servant and, generally, the maternal figure of her surroundings while the editing weaves together the rigid social classes of post-war England in a formal posture. This form carries a message. In Leigh’s harsh ideology, one’s socio-economic status, either poor or rich, determines a fixed set of possible outcomes or paths; if one were rich but socially inept, suffering ensues, whereas if one were poor but morally absolute, the letter of the law punishes. Those wealthy and who employ Mrs. Drake were unaffected by her secret occupation.

Mrs. Drake performs illegal abortions outside hospitals. Her methodology is unproven but her convictions are pure. She is a saint, but with such virtue amongst mortals there is no hope for tolerance. From this standpoint, her story reminds me of the narrative of Joan of Arc; she is established as a god-sent, exposed for her earthly deeds and penalized by the law of her day.

Vera Drake is like two different films put together due to the discrete tone of its two halves. Part one, occupying approximately one hour, is the embodiment of harmonious existence, both for Mrs. Drake’s family and those she touches on a daily basis. In part two, she is crucified and her network of lives touched turns dissonant. Its midpoint, a jarring transition that launches our protagonist (& the audience) into an emotionally harrowing second half comes so swiftly it risks asphyxiating a sympathetic viewer.

The turning point of Mrs. Drake’s life does not come as a surprise in the narrative. However abrupt and traumatic its tonal shift, there is no concealing the fact that she had it coming. In the plot of the film, her story is not instigated by external forces. The cause for Mrs. Drake’s fall from grace is completely internal. She performs her occupation in secret meetings behind closed curtains and, upon her apprehension, admits fully to her lawbreaking. Therefore, the sympathy for the protagonist is singularly pinned on her unique sense of morality.

Mrs. Drake thought herself moral, her judges did not. The final judgment against her, in a verdict scene commanded with absoluteness by actor Jim Broadbent’s magistrate (whose severe baritone could induce a full confession from any partially-realized guilt), illustrates the exclusivity of moral viewpoint from the letter of the law. But it appears that Mrs. Drake’s suffering was greatest when her sense of right & wrong came under her family’s scrutiny, especially that of her disenchanted son.

It is truly heartbreaking at the narrative’s midpoint when the dramatic irony in a working-class family’s celebratory gathering, the peak of cumulative life-affirming events for the unsinkable Drakes, hangs their harmonious bubble by a thread and eventually crumbles with unfathomable quietness. Leigh’s Vera Drake is a memorable accomplishment in dramatic tension. Imelda Staunton, who played the shrill secondary character in Ang Lee’s Sense & Sensibility, gives a performance that will make her synonymous to the title character.