Pride Is One Of The Most Subtly Brilliant Political Movies of the Last Decade And It's A Damn Entertaining One Too

 

Ten years ago at the 2015 Golden Globe nominations two films about activism were nominated for Best Picture. The one that got all the attention was Ava Duvernay's Selma. Indeed it might very well be considered reverence. The movie was about how Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo ) helped organize the historic march in the title town in Alabama in 1965, that was the final impetus that was need to get the Voting Rights Act passed. For numerous reasons – including the fact that the Supreme Court had just recently gutted the act – Selma was considered a major contender for Best Picture even before it was released. It was nominated in the Best Drama category.

Less noted that year was Pride, a slightly more lighthearted film about an equally serious but far less known subject. Matthew Warchus chose to tell the story of how British gay and lesbian activists worked together to support the National Union of Mineworkers during their lengthy strike of 1984. The film made very little money in America but managed to gross 19 million dollars worldwide. Selma, by contrast, made $52 million at the box office but it cost nearly as much to make as Pride's total cost was. Pride had managed to win a special Award at Cannes

When Selma received only one other nomination for Best (Best Song) there was uproar and not just among film critics. This was the first time one heard the argument #OscarsSoWhite shouted at the Academy. No one seemed upset that Pride was basically ignored by the Oscars. Other groups were much kinder to it however and not just various gay and lesbian organizations. The movie received three BAFTA nominations and won for best debut by a British Writer, Stephen Beresford. It won Best Film at the British Independent Awards and took Best Supporting Actor for Andrew Scott and Supporting Actress for Imelda Staunton.

I've watched both films multiple times over the last decade and while I know ostensibly Selma is considered the better film by the masses Pride is a superior movie on every single level. I'm not just talking about the writing and acting or even on social justice but because it makes a broader political point far more subtly that Ava Duvernay has done in Selma or indeed much of her follow-up work.

First if you haven't seen it yet, you absolutely have too. It features some of the most brilliant British actors in history giving some brilliant and mostly understated performances. Here is Bill Nighy, that master of quiet paternalism as Cliff the head of the Wales mining lodge. Here is Paddy Considine, completely unrecognizable to those who might know him merely from his work in House of the Dragon as Dai Donovan, the head of a Wales Lodge who finds himself desperate for support and hangs his hope on an organization many of his members openly despise. Here is Imelda Staunton, playing that role of maternal warmth that those who know her as Dolores Umbridge and more recently as an elderly Queen Elizabeth would be stunned to witness. Here's Dominic West, in his role as Jonathan, a far more flamboyant queer that goes against so much of the work he did on American television and a decade later as Prince Charles. And here is Andrew Scott, not far removed from his work as Jim Moriarty as Gethin, playing someone far more subdued and compassionate then so many of the roles we've seen him play then and now. It's an incredible group of actors in one place – though for a British movie of any kind, it's basically Tuesday. (There also a couple of actors in the cast who until recently you wouldn't recognize at all and I'll reveal one or two of them down the road.)

Warchus and Beresford work together to tell a story that was almost certainly unknown to even American members of the LGBTQ+ community in 2014 and might very well have been forgotten by many British citizens at the time. The story takes place in 1984 when gay activist Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer in a brilliant performance) is marching in the 1984 UK Gay Pride parade and hits upon an idea. He sees footage of the miners striking in London and realizes that they are currently the target of hostility from the police, the press and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "Sound familiar?" he tells his dubious comrades when he says he wants to raise money for them. It's clear they've heard these kinds of dreams from Ashton before but as is clearly his want he pushes them to start doing son. Eventually a small town in Wales ends up asking for their resources and help. The man who does it (Donovan) is clearly desperate.

None of Ashton's colleagues particularly want to go to a mining town in Wales where they are certain just by showing up they will get their heads bashed in. "I'd just as soon do that in London," one remarks pointedly. But eventually Ashton wears them down and they show up in a small bus in Swansea. There they are greeted by the welcoming committee, which is most of the people I mentioned, including a portly woman named Sian James. By the way, those of you who wondered what Jessica Gunning was doing before America discovered her in Baby Reindeer, this was her film debut (she'd spent years on British television before that) and it's a big shock watching this bold twenty something become a force.

And to be clear that happens almost immediately. In one of the great early scenes in the movie members of the greeting committee and the London members of the gay committee witness a group of their demonstrators being locked up the police. This is clearly a common occurrence. Jonathan calmly says: "They can't do that." The townspeople assume that this is support of an immoral action. "No, legally they can't do that," Jonathan says.

Then Jonathan, who has clearly experienced some version of this from a lifetime of activism, recites chapter and verse the London legal code about the rights to assembly and how the police have very likely overreached it. Sian hears this and then heads directly to the station. She's by far the youngest member of the greeting committee but none of her elders get in her way. She then goes before the coppers, basically recites word for word what Jonathan just told her and demands the strikers release. By the time they get back to the lounge, everyone is out.

To be clear, there is none of the universal embrace on either side of the gays by the strikers and vice versa. One miner uses a derogatory terms about them and Hefina (Staunton) makes it very clear that they owe their freedom to them. Joe walks over and says he'll buy them a pint. That night, the miners are mostly  one side of the lounge and the gays are mostly with a small handful. Hefina refuses to let this stand and starts berating one of them for his homophobia. The miner very reluctantly agrees to go and after a long celebratory singing and dancing there is at least a tentative bond that mostly holds during the film.

No one pretends this is the end of it: the biggest adversary is Steph (Faye Marsay) who shows her bigotry throughout the film and never lets up. The biggest crossover between the two worlds is Joe Cooper (George McKay) a very closeted gay teenager who lives in a home where his father Tony is the center of the community and extraordinarily small minded. Joe sees this strike as an opportunity to spread his wings in a real sense but does everything in his power to keep his sexuality hidden until his parents find out.

Pride is a much better film than Selma because while the latter movies spends far more time making it clear this is a significant event and must be commemorating, the former makes it clear that is a comedy. It is, just so you aware a very bleak comedy. It's not just that there are assaults on gay men, vocal homophobia, the presence of AIDS becoming increasingly real, but that we see the very real consequences of a strike on a community that relies on coal mining for its income. On their second visit to the community when the strike has stretched into months LGSM comes to town and see storefronts close, the streets dirty and people trying to raise food.

But that's the thing about so many great British comedies: they can often follow incredibly dark subject matters. This was particularly clear during the late 1990s and early 2000s with such classic and award nominated movies as The Full Monty, Waking Ned Devine and Billy Elliot and indeed later films such as Kinky Boots. There's always a sense of poverty and unhappiness in so many of the small towns and London communities where the underprivileged are scraping to survive. And that makes the laughs more real and the triumphs that come at the end more earned in a way so many of our American comedies – and even some dramas – honestly can't pull off.

And that's true in particular with the ending. For the record when the strike ended it was framed as a victory for the Thatcher government. The miners had no choice but to give in after months of hardship. When everything ended those who had organized had no reason to expect anything but to be forgotten.

But then at the meeting of the June 1985 gay pride parade in London, the miners from Swansea come out to support their old friends. This in itself would be enough of a moving moment. But the real story is more profound.

Because at that parade, representatives from every single chapter of the National Union of Mineworkers came out to support them. We see many proud banners of unity, including 'Miners Support The Gays And The Lesbians'. One of the reporters interviews Cliff. "Did you find it weird when a busload of gays showed up?" Cliff looks at her. "Why would we find it weird?" he says simply.

And on that day the National Union of Mineworkers marched in the Gay Pride parade. And in the subtitles which tell the fates of the real life characters in the film we see this political announcement:

In 1987, the Labor movement tabled a motion to have support for Gays and Lesbians in its platform. Although this had been brought to a vote several times before, this time it passed. The margin was due to the unanimous support of one bloc: The National Union of Mineworkers."

To be clear at no point during the protest does even Ashton consider the possibility that this is the kind of thing that will end up paying dividends for his cause down the road. Indeed, he's clearly as shocked as his friends when he sees the Mineworkers show up at the end of the film. At no point is there even the consideration of a quid pro quo one way or the other: Ashton never raises the question at any point. He has done this act for one simple reason: it's the right thing to do.

And that is as political potent a message as anything we see pointed out in Selma. Perhaps that's the other reason for the title of the film. The miners in Swansea are proud of their town and of the union, but most of them are not too proud too except financial help even if it comes from people who they find disgusting. That's the reason they came out for them. It was out of solidarity, a message that we hear frequently in the film. You help us when we need it and we help you when you need it.

What makes this message all the more poignant is when you compare it to all of the social movements today. Each identity group in America is divided by its type: race, gender, and sexual orientation. They all have the same enemy: the conservative forces of America. If they were to make alliances the way that Ashton is willing to do in this film, they might very well realize the equality they search for.

But as we've seen constantly throughout this decade and indeed long before, Americans on the left don't seem capable or willing to make these kinds of alliances. It's worth remembering that while these events were happening across the pond Ronald Reagan represented the same kind of threat to marginalized groups as Thatcher did here. Gay activism became a force during this period but it was almost always a strident and angry force, more focused on spectacle and rage than building alliances that could help them. Considering that during this same period Reagan was beginning the long process of destroying unions and organized labor, I can't help but think of a lost opportunity.

Did it ever occur to anyone in the AIDS community that the air traffic controllers that Reagan fired unilaterally or all the other unions he helped weaken were also the targets of conservatism and all its evils? Did it occur to them that if they had expressed support for them – even financially – it might have built alliances that long-term could have helped them achieve acceptability among the American political system? The answer is clearly no. Because in our society, the traditionally leftist identity groups abhor the working class communities like those that are the victims of what happens in during the  miner's strike in 1984. I can't imagine a group of gays from San Franscisco raising money for miners in Kentucky or West Virginia, much less voluntarily going there.

I do realize that the fault is as much on the conservative side for its own bigotry but so much of today's rhetoric on the left is basically about how the people in red states, while they are clearly as much the victim of Republican and conservative rule as the marginalized community, kind of got what was coming to them for being stupid enough to vote for Republicans in the first place. There are, as I've mentioned over and over, lesbians, gays, African-Americans and other Latinos in these days, and they need this support far more than the ones in deep blue states too. But by and large today's left has essentially written those entire areas of the country. You sometimes get the feeling by reading their posts they want them to suffer and pay the consequences. They don't seem to understand the simple idea "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" because in the binary world of American progressives enemies are enemies, pure and simple.

And that may be the main reason I think that Pride is a superior movie compared to Selma on the most critical level: Pride understands that change comes through building alliances that may seem unlikely at first but pay dividends long term while Selma argues that change, if it comes, is done solely due to activism. While Hilary Clinton was running for President she drew harsh criticism when she said that John Lewis (a character in Selma) may have marched for the Voting Rights Act but it took a President to sign it. In the leftist version of events by that statement Hilary was slurring John Lewis when all she did was point out a simple reality: all the marching in the world would have been meaningless if King and the marchers didn't have a President in the White House sympathetic to him. Duvernay in Selma essentially argues the opposite: King marched and advocated so powerfully for the Voting Rights Act that LBJ and the entire Congressional process were just bystanders. Pride makes it very clear that all the marching in the world is meaningless if you don't have the political muscle to back it up.

Indeed the fact that so many prominent African-Americans were more outraged on the Oscars lack of recognition for Selma that they essentially spent so much time and energy changing the rules of the Oscars – and spent almost no time doing anything about the attacks to civil rights going on during that period -  is another explanation as to the left's continuing ability to not see the forest for the trees. Now there is far more diversity in the membership of the Academy Awards voters and recognition of those in the film industry and many in Hollywood will tell you with a straight face these are victories for diversity. It's a victory for diversity for actors in Hollywood and that's basically not even trivial.

Pride, like Selma, also ends on a montage: this time of the various real life characters in the film and the goals they achieved. The most important one, to me, is that of Sian. We see Sian assuming now that the march is over she will have to go back to the role of wife and mother. Jonathan tells her that she has an incredible mind and it would be a shame to waste it. The final shots of Sian James tell us she went into law school, continued advocacy and in 2005 was elected to Parliament, the first female to represent Swansea in its history.

It doesn't matter to me if Sian James eventually chose to become a conservative or if she never did anything more successful outside of her work for the miners. What matters is that she was willing to leave the role of activism and move into politics because she understood that was where she had to be to make real change.

One last note: The song we hear over the credits is an old British song advocating for the 'Power of the Union'. The tune would be repurposed with new lyrics in the 19^th century for the Union during the Civil War, called 'Battle Cry of Freedom'. And I know this has to be a coincidence of filmmaking but I heard that song play in Lincoln after the House of Representatives has finally managed to make the 13^th Amendment that eradicated slavery into law.

Of course Duvernay has advocated that didn't really change much for African-Americans in our society given that was the title of one of her next films prominently arguing its flaws. That sadly is another reason why the British are better at so much of popular culture then we are.