Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) is a perfect housewife, mother and all round do gooder in 1940's London. However, she has a secret that not even her family knows about that is sure to get her into a lot of trouble.
First off, I'm a great fan of Mike Leigh he is a British Institution with an incredible ability to make compelling, touching and stylistically competent films. However, this is a far cry from his masterpieces 'High Hopes', 'Life Is Sweet' and my favourite 'Naked'.
In Vera Drake he seems to be becoming more and more mainstream and less exceptional in his story and characters. I was unable to emphasizes with Vera Drake at all or her family. The family he created was so so romanticized a view of Working Class life of this period in Britain and was all too perfect and highly nostalgic to the point of being cringe worthy.
In addition, it seemed highly un-realistic that a woman or any person would have done this abortion procedure for free for so long. It all seemed very sentimental that she would do it out of the goodness of her heart for women whom she did not know and who were often drunk, rude and unappreciative of her help. Moreover, surely she could not have been so easily duped by her supposed friend into doing the abortions while her friend makes money off her back for almost 20 years!
The whole story and character did'nt work at all for me, it just seemed to be one dreary and uninteresting scene after the other, with the last 30 minutes being so drawn out and gloomy.
Leigh was trying to portray her as some kind of Saint, but how many women had her abortion procedure killed, in the film we saw her perform around 6 or 7 abortions and out of them one of the woman nearly died. Which means if she had been doing 7 a week for twenty years that amounts to 6720. A seventh of that makes 960 women meaning that the chances would be that a lot of the women would have died because of her procedure.
When the judge said she was sentenced to 2 years and six months, I frankly did not think that was enough for a serial killer!
Besides all of my problems with the story and characters, the acting by Imelda Staunton was good and the many domestic scenes were directed and shot extremely well.
However, I found this film to be a real let down as it was so unrealistic, romanticized and a highly unengaging film.
First off, I'm a great fan of Mike Leigh he is a British Institution with an incredible ability to make compelling, touching and stylistically competent films. However, this is a far cry from his masterpieces 'High Hopes', 'Life Is Sweet' and my favourite 'Naked'.
In Vera Drake he seems to be becoming more and more mainstream and less exceptional in his story and characters. I was unable to emphasizes with Vera Drake at all or her family. The family he created was so so romanticized a view of Working Class life of this period in Britain and was all too perfect and highly nostalgic to the point of being cringe worthy.
In addition, it seemed highly un-realistic that a woman or any person would have done this abortion procedure for free for so long. It all seemed very sentimental that she would do it out of the goodness of her heart for women whom she did not know and who were often drunk, rude and unappreciative of her help. Moreover, surely she could not have been so easily duped by her supposed friend into doing the abortions while her friend makes money off her back for almost 20 years!
The whole story and character did'nt work at all for me, it just seemed to be one dreary and uninteresting scene after the other, with the last 30 minutes being so drawn out and gloomy.
Leigh was trying to portray her as some kind of Saint, but how many women had her abortion procedure killed, in the film we saw her perform around 6 or 7 abortions and out of them one of the woman nearly died. Which means if she had been doing 7 a week for twenty years that amounts to 6720. A seventh of that makes 960 women meaning that the chances would be that a lot of the women would have died because of her procedure.
When the judge said she was sentenced to 2 years and six months, I frankly did not think that was enough for a serial killer!
Besides all of my problems with the story and characters, the acting by Imelda Staunton was good and the many domestic scenes were directed and shot extremely well.
However, I found this film to be a real let down as it was so unrealistic, romanticized and a highly unengaging film.