When Why It Happened Is More Important Than What Happened

Mike Leigh films are hit or miss for me. He is a masterful observer of behavior and his humanism is always apparent in the care he extends for his characters. However, if he has a weakness it is that he is not skilled with plot. The first hour of Vera Drake ranks alongside Leigh's very best work. All of the actors create a realistic portrayal of a family living in Britain during the fifties. Vera, a pitch-perfect Imelda Staunton, seems like a good-hearted middle-class bore picking up a few pounds a week as a cleaning woman. Soon it is revealed, just as matter-of-factly as everything in a Mike Leigh film is revealed, that Vera is performing abortions for local girls who are in need of such a procedure. The film approaches the topic in an even-handed way - the film is not about abortion but about a woman who performs abortions. This is not a political film, but a character study. When Vera becomes enmeshed in the legal system, the film loses some of the power it built up as Leigh has no natural feel for suspense or plot. We understand why Vera does what she does, and that really is all the film is concerned with. Her trial makes up the film's final act and it is a real let down as there is nothing new to learn about Vera. We already know why she does it, and now the film is forced to deal with what happens to her. Leigh has no feel for building suspense, and that leads to this section of the film watering-down the audience's involvement with the character. For giving us a rich three-dimensional set of characters as well as handling a controversial topic in a measured intelligent way the film can not be faulted, and sadly that makes the anticlimactic third act all the more disappointing.