My Commonplace Book

Last night the foreign film club showed Vera Drake, and momomom went with me to see it. It's a haunting movie, and I want to write down my all impressions of it so I can set my thoughts aside without fear that I'll lose them.

It was an amazingly powerful movie. If you're concerned about what's going on in South Dakota and way too many other places around the country, I urge you to get the DVD and see it -- especially if you don't remember before abortion was legalized in the US. I clearly remember when New York State legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade. I was proud to be living in the only place in the US enlightened enough to eliminate the back-street abortions that were killing so many women -- except the rich, of course, who could afford to fly to Europe for a safe, legal abortion. Although the physical danger of illegal abortions is downplayed in Vera Drake, the desperation that makes women seek them out despite the risk is vivid.

The story is simple: In 1950, in London, Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) is a simple woman of a low-class but happy family. She works cleaning the upper-class houses; her beloved husband is a mechanic and works with his brother in a repair shop; her son is a tailor; and her daughter works in a factory.  Vera is a truly selfless woman who gets joy from making others happy. She helps her sick mother, a handicapped neighbor, and anyone needs her -- including young girls who can't afford to jump through the necessary hoops to terminate their pregnancies legally. These Vera helps at no charge because they have nowhere else to turn. But when one girl ends up in the hospital, the police investigate and the world of Vera and her family fall apart.

The one and only thing I didn't like about the movie is that it didn't have subtitles, as most of the foreign movies do. It was made in England, so of course it wasn't thought to need subtitles, but the characters' flawless cockney accent was so strong that everyone in the audience had difficulty understanding the dialogue, so we all lost many of the subtleties of the interplay among the characters. It also made a few of the more talky scenes drag, since it was difficult to follow the conversation. As we made our way out of the theater many people commented to each other on how hard it was to understand, but most agreed that as the movie progressed and we got used to the dialect it got a little easier to follow.

(Now that I've found an amateur transcript I'm going to read it and try to pick up some of the conversations that I missed. Don't try to read it if you haven't seen the movie, though -- it's unfinished. Much of the dialogue is there but not all of it yet, and there's nothing at all but dialogue -- no names, no action, no indication of change of scene ... nothing. It's hard to follow even if you've seen the film, and it makes no sense at all if you haven't seen the film. But I'm including the link so I can find it again.)

But it was definitely worth seeing despite the language difficulty. I usually lose my suspension of disbelief here and there in a movie, usually when something isn't true to life; I'll think about why the script was written that way, or muse on what the set really looks like, or something like that for a few minutes until I slip back into the movie. But Vera Drake is so authentic that that only happened once, and very briefly. Except for that I never felt that I was watching actors performing roles -- I was simply observing a close-knit, happy family who loved each other deeply, foibles and all.

And that was because there was no script, and all through the rehearsals the actors thought they were just making a movie about a close-knit, happy family -- the actors didn't find out what Vera did, and even Imelda Staunton (Vera) didn't know how it would turn out, until the characters found out. And they did done a huge amount of research on their characters and the setting, and simply became those characters during rehearsals.

( Spoilers )

Early in the film Susan, the daughter of one of the rich families Vera cleans for, is raped by her drunken boyfriend. When we see her again, she's in a doctor's office, pregnant and very desperate that her parents don't find out. The doctor says he can help her, but "it will be very expensive." They settle on what is an obviously high price, and then he explains that she has to see a psychiatrist. As she leaves the office, he reminds her, "You know what to say?" Still frozen with fear, she nods mutely.

The shrink was the only thing in the entire movie that momentarily broke my suspension of disbelief. He was such a stereotypical-looking Freudian psychiatrist that it seemed like a caricature, although it's possible they really did look like that -- the stereotype had to come from somewhere. When Susan sees him he asks her a number of questions, and then says, "If you had this baby, would you keep it or have it adopted?"

"Oh, no," she says. "I can't have this baby. I would kill myself first." The psychiatrist breaks into a wink-wink-nudge-nudge smile and says, "Oh, we can't have that, can we," and immediately starts scribbling. With proof that the abortion is necessary to save her life, she checks into a clinic and is shown to a small but elegant bedroom. At home again, her mother (who has been away for the weekend) says, "How was your weekend?"

"Oh -- fine," Susan answers vaguely. "That's nice," says the mother, and rambles on about her own trip. The contrast between Susan's legal abortion -- all nice and neat and sterile and safe -- and the equally desperate but poor working-class girls that Vera helps at no charge is crystal clear. Since she has neither medical training nor any facilities other than the patient's own bed with whatever inadequate lighting is available, the method Vera uses is dangerous, though apparently not as dangerous as knitting needles or coat hangers.

I didn't notice the lack of authenticity of the depiction of the actual procedure, though, until momomom, who is a nurse, pointed it out on the way home. [For Carla:  according to one website, a Higginson syringe was used to inject fluid into the uterus to separate the chorionic membrane and deciduae.]  It elicited nothing but a slightly startled "Oh!" from some of the women, and nothing at all from others; but as this blog comment points out, "the Higginson syringe needed to penetrate the cirvix [sic] in order to work, that would be very painful and cause the woman to scream and suffer severe shock, infection and other risks. Also the fluid injected would need to be saline." But I think Leigh wanted to de-emphasize the physical effect of the abortions because he was highlighting the desperate and terrified emotions of the young women having them, and also because Vera was portrayed as so kind and caring that we would not have believed she'd be capable of inflicting such pain, even in the cause of helping them.

I'm still feeling haunted by the movie and its stark ending.

( Spoilers )

( Abortion debate news and comment )