Pride (15.)
Directed by Matthew Warchus.
Starring Ben Schnetzer, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Monica Dolan and Paddy Considine. 120 mins. Out on Blu-ray and DVD.
Marx said that history repeated itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. In British cinema it repeats itself as feelgood, uplifting comedy drama. I missed out on this film when it came out in cinemas last year, at least partly because a cheery, based-on-a-true-story piece about a London group of gay activists who raised money to support a Welsh community during the miners' strike sounded like a parody, or the winner of a pub game to come up with the most cringeworthy idea for a British movie ever.
Twenty, maybe even ten years ago, Pride would've been a contentious proposition, lefty propaganda from BBC. Now it is safely mainstream, dealing with notions that the British are always comfortable with: nostalgia, the plucky loser and venerable acting institutions.
Pride harks back to an age of clear political commitment, where everybody knew who was downtrodden and who was doing the treadingdown. Now everybody feels vaguely oppressed and vaguely oppressing. The London half of the cast look like they have come from a Red Wedge fancy dress night.
Pride is a mix of the naff and the genuinely touching. There's a children's TV simplicity to it in places. On at least three occasions Mark (Schnetzer), the driving force behind the activists, has the light bulb, stop!-I've-just-had-an-idea moment. A single dance routine is used to bridge the distrust between the two groups. But beyond the bland contrivances, there's a softly spoken decency it. The actors, the names both big and the lesser known, really come through; make it more than it might've been. For example, Considine, so often the firebrand, is genuinely inspiring as a quietly idealistic union man.
The film depicts a moment when these two groups had reached a level of parity on the graph of public acceptance. They were either a worthwhile cause to be supported, or perverts and the enemy within. After this though the standings of two groups went off in markedly different directions. Though it was surely not her intention, the Thatcher years were really a breakthrough for the, then, gay community. The nastiness of Section 28 helped gained them wider sympathy, while the demands of the market led society meant the social acceptance of a group that usually had plenty of disposable income became a market imperative. Meanwhile, working class communities, trade unionism, single breadwinner households all become frightfully dated notions.
Last year I spent a few weeks ploughing through David Peace's GB84, his fictionalised account of the strike, on my daily commute. It's an enraging, infuriating, stirring book, one I kind of regret reading: turning up for work every morning wanting to brick a policeman and dig up Thatcher to play football with her skull is no way to start the day. It really puts a crick in your outlook. So, the way the film turns the miners’ strike into a kind of victory sticks in my craw. The film's evil villainess – not that one, a petty little Welsh housewife who refuses to be won over by the dancing and the money they raise – says that the gays are only there to hijack the dispute to forward their own agenda. Which is unfair on the real life figures but is absolutely true of the film itself. At the end of the film the miners turn up for a Gay Pride march and a title tells us that a year later the Labour Party conference enshrined Gay and Lesbian rights in their manifesto. Which is all for the good and I'm glad that some nice friendships were forged between the homosexual community and Welsh mining community, but given the catastrophic nature of the defeat, and the wider and long lasting ramifications of it, you'll forgive me if my heart doesn't soar.
Extras
A 15 minute true story feature in which you can meet some of the real people behind the story and a little of what was changed for the script.
A 3 minute Making of featurette.
10 minutes of deleted scenes.
The Trailer
A commentary by the director Warchus and writer Stephen Beresford.
Directed by Matthew Warchus.
Starring Ben Schnetzer, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Monica Dolan and Paddy Considine. 120 mins. Out on Blu-ray and DVD.
Marx said that history repeated itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. In British cinema it repeats itself as feelgood, uplifting comedy drama. I missed out on this film when it came out in cinemas last year, at least partly because a cheery, based-on-a-true-story piece about a London group of gay activists who raised money to support a Welsh community during the miners' strike sounded like a parody, or the winner of a pub game to come up with the most cringeworthy idea for a British movie ever.
Twenty, maybe even ten years ago, Pride would've been a contentious proposition, lefty propaganda from BBC. Now it is safely mainstream, dealing with notions that the British are always comfortable with: nostalgia, the plucky loser and venerable acting institutions.
Pride harks back to an age of clear political commitment, where everybody knew who was downtrodden and who was doing the treadingdown. Now everybody feels vaguely oppressed and vaguely oppressing. The London half of the cast look like they have come from a Red Wedge fancy dress night.
Pride is a mix of the naff and the genuinely touching. There's a children's TV simplicity to it in places. On at least three occasions Mark (Schnetzer), the driving force behind the activists, has the light bulb, stop!-I've-just-had-an-idea moment. A single dance routine is used to bridge the distrust between the two groups. But beyond the bland contrivances, there's a softly spoken decency it. The actors, the names both big and the lesser known, really come through; make it more than it might've been. For example, Considine, so often the firebrand, is genuinely inspiring as a quietly idealistic union man.
The film depicts a moment when these two groups had reached a level of parity on the graph of public acceptance. They were either a worthwhile cause to be supported, or perverts and the enemy within. After this though the standings of two groups went off in markedly different directions. Though it was surely not her intention, the Thatcher years were really a breakthrough for the, then, gay community. The nastiness of Section 28 helped gained them wider sympathy, while the demands of the market led society meant the social acceptance of a group that usually had plenty of disposable income became a market imperative. Meanwhile, working class communities, trade unionism, single breadwinner households all become frightfully dated notions.
Last year I spent a few weeks ploughing through David Peace's GB84, his fictionalised account of the strike, on my daily commute. It's an enraging, infuriating, stirring book, one I kind of regret reading: turning up for work every morning wanting to brick a policeman and dig up Thatcher to play football with her skull is no way to start the day. It really puts a crick in your outlook. So, the way the film turns the miners’ strike into a kind of victory sticks in my craw. The film's evil villainess – not that one, a petty little Welsh housewife who refuses to be won over by the dancing and the money they raise – says that the gays are only there to hijack the dispute to forward their own agenda. Which is unfair on the real life figures but is absolutely true of the film itself. At the end of the film the miners turn up for a Gay Pride march and a title tells us that a year later the Labour Party conference enshrined Gay and Lesbian rights in their manifesto. Which is all for the good and I'm glad that some nice friendships were forged between the homosexual community and Welsh mining community, but given the catastrophic nature of the defeat, and the wider and long lasting ramifications of it, you'll forgive me if my heart doesn't soar.
Extras
A 15 minute true story feature in which you can meet some of the real people behind the story and a little of what was changed for the script.
A 3 minute Making of featurette.
10 minutes of deleted scenes.
The Trailer
A commentary by the director Warchus and writer Stephen Beresford.
