Don't listen to the negative reviews

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

she does one of the most beautiful roles of her career in this film. with rare grace, with admirable force, giving strange explanation to her character's job. a film about a delicate theme in a manner who not accuse or excuse. portrait of a woman and her expression of compassion. not soft, not moralistic, not brutal. only precise and honest. the story of Vera Drake has the gift not only present the attitude of British society about an occupation who is tolerated in silence but about social status of middle working class. a film about a strange form of Christian love. useful for reflect about verdicts and options. and interesting to define each of them. because it is more than a biographic movie. and that is one of its high virtues.

I am a big fan of Mike Leigh's work, he has directed some very good movies covering a wide range of subjects. Whilst the concept of this movie is very good, I have a few problems with the central character. The portrayal of Vera Drake doesn't come across as believable to me. I'm well aware that there were back-street abortionists during these times, but this woman's character as a very meek and mild home-maker who is known in her community for helping out elderly and infirm family members, doesn't come across as someone who would know how to perform this act, and also do it in a way that was as normal as preparing a meal for her family. Despite that, the film does have a lot of merit. There is the distinction of how somebody who comes from a good social background can get the abortion performed in a proper clinical way - so long as you can afford the money. Vera performs hers on people who have next to no money and during a time when there wasn't much in the way of Social Security. It portrays an era very well. She keeps her 'work' hidden from her family and when it is discovered it has a devastating effect on all of them. Despite my misgivings, this movie is definitely worth a watch. A gritty drama set in the 50's/60's.

Abortion became legal in the UK 1968. As David Steel, sponsor of the private member's bill that became the legalising act of Parliament, wisely pointed out 'abortion did not begin in 1968'. Women have always limited the number of babies they choose to have. It was just that before 1968 these methods were illegal and often horrific. The method practised by Vera Drake in this film, pouring soapy water into the womb to terminate the pregnancy, was a popular one. It was effective and generally safe. Generally not always. Other methods used by women included drinking a bottle of whisky and rolling down the stairs. Women would push knitting needles into their wombs and similar horrors. Their desperation to abort was such. Surely no-one wants a return to this? Heterosexual women have every right to an active sex life and to limit the number of children they have. As the film points out for the rich and well-connected there were always doctors willing to perform safe if illegal abortions for money. It was always the poor but no less sexually active and fertile women who had to resort to women like Vera Drake. The struggle for women's reproductive rights continues and the hysterical anti-abortionists have not given up in the least. (They are not 'Pro-life', they are pro-death penalty, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-war in almost any form.) Women are not mere breeding machines for men despite some reactionary men wishing they were. A slogan once went "If men became pregnant abortion would be a sacrament." Every child should be a wanted child. There is no shortage of unwanted babies needing parents to adopt them. Indeed there is an oversupply. The natural sex drive of the young is such that there will always be some unwanted pregnancies although hopefully less and less as sex education becomes more widespread and contraceptives more readily available, but always some. Hence there will always be a need for safe free and legal abortions, hopefully as early as possible in the pregnancy. We should all be grateful to Mike Leigh for this thoughtful film reminding us of the bad old days which surely no sensible people would wish us to return to.

"Vera Drake" is a painful movie to watch.Imelda Staunton plays the title character, a warm, friendly English wife and mother, who just happens to also be an abortionist in her spare time. The law eventually catches up to her, and watching this simple, kind woman be put through the harrowing trials of the legal process is simply devastating, no matter what your thoughts are on the crimes she's accused of.Staunton is superb as Vera, a woman who at some level knows what she's doing is illegal but whose mind never gets past the main point, which is that she's helping out girls in trouble who are better off with her than with some shady crook. She's so simple and so kind that you almost want to shake her to make her stand up for herself when accusations start to fly.Mike Leigh wrote and directed.Grade: A-