'Pride' review: When gay activists united with U.K. miners
Liz White as Margaret, Imelda Staunton as Hefina and Nia Gwynee as Gail in "Pride." Credit: MCT / Handout
The ostensible message of "Pride" -- about the real-life alliance of gay activists and striking Welsh coal miners during the 1984-85 U.K. miners' strike -- is tolerance. Which is a bit much to ask for a film like "Pride." Cultivating its own stereotype, the film is cookie-cut out of the "Billy Elliot/"Full Monty"/"Brassed Off"/"Made in Dagenham" aren't-underprivileged-Brits-adorable mold of sentimental payoffs and easy remedies. It's also a period piece intended to make us feel good not just about the characters, but also ourselves. Because, after all, homophobia and all other ills related to intolerance and bigotry have been eradicated from life in 2014. Haven't they? Oh.
Like any similar slab of cinema that hooks itself to an allegedly bygone social issue, "Pride" clucks its humorous way through a catalog of passe attitudes and manifestations of same, while telling a story rooted loosely in fact. According to director Matthew Warchus and screenwriter Stephen Beresford, an activist in '84 London has a brilliant idea: Since gays and lesbians are disenfranchised, and so are miners, why not unite? The activist, Mark (Ben Schnetzer), forms a group dubbed Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, whose support is promptly rebuffed by the miners -- the union leadership, at any rate. But they and their money find a vaguely receptive mining village in Wales, mostly because the inhabitants seem too cloistered to know what gays and lesbians are. Their education provides opportunity for many -- many -- predictably embarrassing, marginally funny moments, most of which could easily be envisioned accurately without attaining any vague proximity to a theater.
The cast is a collection of pros, notably the angular Bill Nighy, as the village union's shy treasurer, and the redoubtable Imelda Staunton, who makes comic acquaintance with a sex toy. Paddy Considine is always a joy, here as the village union leader, and Dominic West steps out unexpectedly in the movie's more-than-predictable sexy disco sequence, which wins the sooty hearts of the hardened miners, who can hardly dream that while gay people will be marrying 30 years later, unions will be on life-support.
PLOT During the U.K. strike of 1984, a gay-activist group brings aid and comfort to a stressed Welsh mining village.
RATING R (strong violence, pervasive language and brief drug content)
CAST Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine
LENGTH 2:00
BOTTOM LINE Feel-good. Also, manipulative. And pandering.
