I love the movie I just couldn't stand that judge in fake white wig who sentenced Vera Drake to a longer than usual sentence "to set an example". That judge appears as dull, snobish and out-of-touch of plight of poor women as the laws prohibiting abortions.
shareThat was Jim Broadbent playing the judge.. I didn't like his character, but he is one of my favourite supporting actors in recent years. I am a fan of most of his work.. If you want to see an astonishing performance by him, watch Iris. If you're feeling in a good mood, watch him in Moulin Rouge! and he'll really get you going.
He's a great actor.
Jesse Taylor
That's what I meant I don't like his character. It's easier for an actor to play a likeable character than an unlikable one. So he's a great actor indeed
shareWell, he was playing the part as it was written, probably. In the 1950's the judge would have been upper-class and Vera was lower-middle-class. The British set a great store by what "class" you are.
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I think you'll find Vera was working class, rather than lower-middle. Unhappily, people here in Britain do still set store by class, usually without even realising it. Things are changing, but oh-so-slowly. As depicted in the film, snobbery is a part of society here. I'm working class myself, but I think that the worst snobs these days are working-class people who have 'come up in the world'. It seems they are hell-bent on hiding or denying their roots, as if they are something to be ashamed of. There is, of course, inverted-snobbery too.
As annoying as the whole thing is, I think I still prefer it to the 'success is everything' kind of mentality that seems to prevail in the USA. I'm not knocking Americans, as I genuinely like them, but just giving my view on society as a whole there.
I couldn't stand that judge either, full of his own importance and totally out of touch with reality, had probably been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and lived a life of luxury in an English stately mansion and considered people who had to work for a living as scum. Mind you a lot of the other people in authority were no better, that JP was pig ignorant, snapping at the defendent to 'stand up' didn't have the common courtesy to say 'stand up, please'.
shareI was a Judges clerk in the late 80's and even then it was still the case that the 20th century was a mystery to some of the judiciary.
Fear my ratings: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=26319984&s=reverse_uservote&o=00
So true. I went to a run-of-the-mill Catholic secondary school. The school liked to think it was good but some of the kids were awful. But there was a local hierarchy, as it were.
Some kids at my school thought they were "better" than those who went to the secondary school in the town I lived in. (My school was 3 or 4 miles away.) But then there was a grammar school in my home town which the kids at my school thought was full of stuck-up posh kids. (It wasn't. I went to the sixth form and they were much nicer, better behaved etc than at my secondary school.) There were a couple of other private schools around, too - to the kids at my secondary school, the pupils there were automatically rich and privileged.
So, I would agree. Before my parents married, my mum went out with someone who lived in a council house and my grandma looked down on them for that. (Even though she was only living in her own home because she happened to marry my grandad - the house first belonged to my grandad's mum! - and originally Grandma was just the youngest of a big family born to a farm labourer and a former domestic servant.) And that would be about 40 years ago now.
"If we go on like this, you're going to turn into an Alsatian again."
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Well, Vera was a criminal, however noble (and naive) her motives. The judge had to sentence her according to the law - that's the way the law works. I thought one striking aspect of the film was that it didn't demonise anyone - the policewoman, for example, were depicted as supportive when she could easily have been written as a hard, uncaring so-and-so.
shareYeah...
Even though I stand fully on the side of Vera in this case, I can understand how the judge thinks. He's doing his job, first of all, he has to pass sentences in line of the law. It would not make sense that he should act differently. And he has to take in consideration that a girl was ill and almost died. Of course he had to focus on that. Most judges would have done that, even though they'd a gree on Veras motives.
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They blew up Congress!!! HAHAHA!
Yes, you could tell he was a Slytherin! He later played Horace Slughorn in the Harry Potter movies.
share@Positivist He also did the looking-over-the-glasses move that makes us instantly despise him. Leigh must've told Jim Broadbent to play the judge as a cünt, and he delivered.
shareThe tall female cop with the brunette hair was very nice and seemed very emphathetic towards Vera. She didn't seem like the stereo-typical prison guard.
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