An abortionist's bittersweet tale

British filmmaking master Mike Leigh is back with Golden Lion winner Vera Drake

One of Britain's true cinematic masters, Mike Leigh has been compared to a painter and novelist for his unique way of "working" with actors.
He typically starts with a theme, not knowing what the script will turn out to be. He recruits a set of character actors (there are always some favourites on hand, including wife Alison Steadman), tells each actor nothing about any of the other characters unless it relates to their character, and does an average of six months of preparation in which every conceivable detail is worked out. To maintain verisimilitude, the actors will do extensive research and sometimes journey out into the real world in character. Then at the rehearsal stage, various improvisations are conducted and the dialogue is worked out in rehearsal under Leigh's tight direction.
Leigh applied his method of "growing" a project with his first feature film, Bleak Moments which won the Grand Prix at Chicago and Locarno Film Festivals in 1971. After developing some successful television series, Leigh would return to making feature-length films in 1988 with the ingenious High Hopes (1988) followed by Life is Sweet and the controversial Naked which won him the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. His Secrets and Lies walked away with the Palme D'or in 1996 and a Best Actress prize for Brenda Blethyn, who also received an Oscar nomination.
Now Leigh is back with what is possibly his best film. Vera Drake centres on Vera (Imelda Staunton), a cleaning lady who devotes part of her busy day visiting the shut-ins in her poor London neighbourhood. She obviously has a big heart. But as she makes her daily rounds, it becomes clear she does more than make tea and have a quick chat with the sick and elderly. As Vera might put it, she also helps out women in trouble. She does it for nothing, and she does it on the sly, because until 1967, abortion was illegal in Britain. Inevitably, she runs afoul of the law, to the astonishment of her husband (Philip Davis) and grown children (Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly), who didn't know what she'd been up to. Emphasizing class disparities, the film also follows an upper-class girl (Sally Hawkins) who is date-raped but able to pay for an abortion by a well-to-do physician at an exclusive clinic.
The Venice film festival this year awarded Vera Drake the Golden Lion for best film, and Staunton as best actress.
Tandem talked to Mike Leigh, 61, when he was in Toronto recently.

Vera Drake is not based on an actual person, but it is based on true facts. Can you tell me why you felt the need to make this film?
"Obviously, it's an issue that confronts all of us. I felt, quite obviously that that really is the way to do it - that it's the way to look at it. I feel I can only discuss this by showing the audience the moral dilemma, or confront the audience, if you like, with the moral dilemma. This is about what is good, what is right and what is wrong. I certainly felt the time has come to deal with the issue."

Why did you feel this way?
"How many people have been born since this conversation began? And how many of them are desirable? Whatever moral position that you take, religious or other, it is an issue that won't go away."

But in North America abortion is pretty much available on demand. In Britain is it more restrictive?
"Not at all, no. It's been legal since 1967. It's not legal in Ireland and in other countries. That's one of the many reasons why I set it in the pre-1967 period. On that point, it's not a film about Britain or about England or about London."

In the film, you also show the wealthier side, how a young girl finds herself in the same position. Was that conscious when you decided to make the film or was it an after-thought for comparison?
"Once I started to research the whole I had to think about the implications, I focused my thoughts on the people who have the wherewithal and could get a couple of doctors. It seemed to me important to show that. Just on another level, it's important to see the two other abortionists in the jail as a reminder that this isn't an idiosyncratic story about one woman's idiosyncrasies."

My understanding is that your father was a doctor and your mother a midwife. Did they ever have to do abortions?
"I have no idea. I wish I could have talked to my father about the matter when I was making the film last year - I would dearly loved to have done that - he died in 1985. Although I talked to him about many things in his later years, including medical things, I, sadly, never got to talk to him of these matters. I would very much doubt - and he was a general practitioner in a working-class practice - I very much doubt that he did abortions. He would certainly have to deal with them who wanted to terminate, and with the aftermath of abortions gone wrong, no question about that. So, there's nothing direct in the film that comes up which relates to this except that whenever I deal with medical things I'm always aware of remembering my father. But it's not a direct autobiography."

You always talk about keeping the research very real. You've done mostly contemporary films. How difficult was the research for this?
"Not at all. It was copious and extensive. I have no idea what it would be like to make a film set in 1300. It would be terribly difficult. It would be difficult to know how to create an actual reality. But the period film that I've made, Topsy-Turvy, albeit 1885 and a little bit beyond most surviving people's actual memory, it sits very much in the received memory. I mean we know what 1885 is, if you look out the window, you can see a bit of 1885. And 1950, or the early part of the 20th century, is totally researchable in every way. And of course, plenty of people are around to share their experiences."

Considering your directing technique, how did your actors immerse themselves in the role?
"There's two kinds of research in this; there's general background research and there's specific research. So, an actor - and this would apply to anybody working on the film - can just read around the period and get a general flavour and background, not knowing what's going to be relevant or not, and, you know, not knowing what's going to be more important than something else. But then the actor is able to filter through the character. I mean, there's a couple of guys in the Imperial War Museum who were available throughout the whole operation for actors to go down and find out about the story."

Do you consider this your best film?
"Well, I think, it's a terribly difficult question. I can see why people might think it is. This is a film that has to follow a relentless linear course. But if it serves the current cause which is the rise of conservatism, then I'm very happy to endorse the notion that it's the best film but whether I actually think it's better than Naked or better than Secret and Lies, or indeed of any film, it's open to discussion."

Well let's say, was this a hard film to make?
"No, it wasn't easy. It was mostly tough because we had very, very little money. We were not helped, really, as far as that. There's a car in the film, a pre-war Ford which had no engine. We used it to drive throughout the film, we recycled it three times in the film. It plays three different cars, and it did with no engine. That's the level of financial difficulty we had."(laughs)

But you're Mike Leigh, my goodness...
"I know. I am Mike Leigh, that's true, that's very true. But I'm the guy with no script, there's no discussion about casting, there's no interference with foreign content or anything else, I get final cut, and you pay a price for all these privileges."

"But you've always done that, and you've always been successful...
"Yes, I have but I've only ever made one film that really was massively comparative, Secrets and Lies. So although I'm popular, successful, and you like them, we're talking about a reasonably big slice of bread that comes on the whole from the movie business which is a cut-throat business which is all about big profit and, that's not what I do."
Vera Drake is currently playing in local cinemas.

Publication Date: 2004-10-31
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4559