Art and Morality in Vera Drake
Monica Klem
Mike Leigh's 2004 Vera Drake received three academy award nominations, and received countless positive reviews. His portrayal of a 1950's English abortionist received high approval for Leigh's refusal to take one side or another on the film's somewhat inflammatory subject matter. However, the film's refusal to deal with the language of morality is a clear demonstration of the symptoms which Alasdair MacIntyre diagnoses in his book After Virtue. San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick La Salle takes his analysis a step farther, calling the movie "an almost- brilliant character study with an essential piece left out: the movement Vera is revealed to herself." Leigh's careful avoidance of judgment throughout the movie actually makes the movie less powerful that it could have been. La Salle's criticism isn't based on personal taste-- in fact, it stems directly from the understanding of drama which Aristotle puts forward in the Poetics. An examination of the dynamics of the film makes it clear that a correlation exists between Leigh's abstinence from moral judgment and the film's failure to achieve its potential as drama.
