Right as rain

Vera Drake

(2004)

"What shall I watch tonight," I wondered, "with the early dinner I'm going to have so that I can get up at 5 and get my workout and shower in before the DirecTV guy comes, possibly as early as 8, to make it possible for me to see my beloved Fighting Illini men's basketball team 11 times more this season that I would have with Comcast?" Yes, it was a complicated question, but Jennie Tonic wisely suggested that I choose something that would challenge me without putting me off my dinner.

I thought about those parameters on the way home and realized in a flash that I had the perfect fit: something I'd owned for years and contemplated watching several times without ever being able to bring myself to remove the shrinkwrap. Something, moreover, from a much-admired writer-director whose latest film I am eager to see later this weekend (the star of which film, incidentally, has a small but critical role here).

Imelda Staunton is so astonishing as the title character--a simple good woman (happy-go-lucky, if you will) upon whom the weight of the world and the world's unnuanced, uncompromising laws fall, aging her two decades in a second and leaving her beaten and broken and as sad as any person you've ever seen in or out of the movies--that you may forget how perfect the entire acting ensemble is, everyone delivering one of those non-actorly acting performances that characterize Leigh's best films.

A couple of characters here you wouldn't want to spend much time with, but no villains--certainly not the police, who are, after all, pursuing a good they believe in every bit as sincerely as Vera believes in hers--and as a heroine only a good human being whose motive is simply to "help out young girls."

11/9 postscript: it occurred to me today while watching Happy-Go-Lucky that Vera Drake, which I saw at the York Square Cinema, may have been one of the last program of films to show there--one of the titles that remained on the marquee for months thereafter, along with the management's farewell. Or I may be misremembering.