dvd of the week
In the somewhat tired genre of British movies that focus on plucky working class folks winning contests and defying mores (The Full Monty, Billy Elliot, Brassed Off, etc.) the politics of class conflict are usually sublimated by the up-from-our-bootstraps plotlines. But while Pride, about a group of gay activists in London who set out to help striking miners in Wales in 1984, is firmly in that genre and suffers a bit for it, the film is actually about and never shies away from politics. The eager gay activists in London who decided to help the miners do so by raising money to give the strikers for food, clothing and other sundries. The activists – young gay socialist Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), aging disco queen Jonathan Blake (Dominic West), college boy Joe (George McKay), lonely lesbian Steph (Faye Marsay), among others – raised a good sum of money for a group of striking miners in a randomly chosen town in Wales. When they tell the strike committee in that town about their work, they are warmly welcomed by town elders Cliff (Bill Nighy) and Hefina (Imelda Staunton) and plucky, young miner’s wife Siân James (Monica Dolan), but many of the other townspeople are threatened and threatening. Will they get along? Will they join forces in solidarity? Will everyone learn something about themselves? Will there be a dance sequence? If you’ve seen any of the movies in the genre, you can imagine what the answers to these questions are.
