Pride

This was our first screening after the New Year: a delayed posting after some unexpected functionality in Windows 10 managed to disable my keyboard for several days. Fortunately I was able to resurrect my old lap top to produce the notes in time.

Pride

 UK 2014                      120 minutes

Director:                      Matthew Warchus

Starring:                        Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine and Andrew Scott

 Awards and Nominations

• Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy
• BAFTA Award for Best Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer plus Nominations for Best British Film and for Imelda Staunton as Best Supporting Actress
•  BIFA awards for Best British Independent Film, Best Supporting Actress (Imelda Staunton) and Best Supporting Actress (Andrew Scott) plus four further nominations
• Winner of Queer Palm at Cannes Film Festival
• A further three wins and nine nominations

“OK, so it may not have the toughness of Brassed Off or the fleet-footedness of Billy Elliot, but what it does have is spine-tingling charm by the bucket-load. I laughed, I cried, and frankly I would have raised a clenched fist were both hands not already occupied wiping away the bittersweet tears of joy.”

Mark Kermode

During the miners’ strike in the 1980s a group of gay and lesbian activists decide to raise money to support miners’ families. The National Union of Miners is unwilling to accept the group’s support as it does not want to be openly associated with a gay group, so the activists decide to take their donation directly to a mining village in Wales. There is surprise in the village when the activists arrive, but ultimately the two communities build a strong alliance.

Like Brassed Off, The Full Monty and Billy Elliot the film is set against the context of consequences of Britain’s industrial troubles in the 1980s, but unlike the former three films the story of Pride is based on real events.   Many of the individuals in the large cast of characters were real people, with Imelda Staunton in particular receiving excellent reviews for her portrayal of Hefina Headon, being described by one critic as “part Mother Courage and part Hilda Ogden”.

Matthew Warchus is best known as a stage director: he has worked extensively in both the UK in the UK where he has directed both classic and contemporary plays as well as the musical Matilda.  He has directed several plays at the Old Vic in London, including Speed-the-Plow (a superb satire on Hollywood that starred Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum) as well as Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests trilogy. In 2014 it was announced that he would succeed Kevin Spacey as Artistic Director of the Old Vic and that he would be working with the team that produced Matilda to direct a musical version of Groundhog Day as part of his first season.