Pride is funny, moving and a little too tidy about the difficulties of solidarity. Matthew Warchus makes the alliance between activists and miners worth caring about, with a cast that earns most of the uplift.
Pride is a warm, funny social comedy that deserves its tears, despite some determined nudging from the screenplay. It takes the alliance between London’s gay and lesbian activists and Welsh miners during the 1984 strike as a reason to put people together and let them talk. Matthew Warchus wants the politics to bring pleasure as well as indignation. That is a sound ambition, and he gives the actors room to be funny without making their characters’ convictions ridiculous.
Stephen Beresford’s screenplay understands that an alliance has to survive contact with the people in it. The culture-clash jokes are broad, but they let embarrassment and uncertainty into a story that could easily have settled for congratulating its heroes. Ben Schnetzer gives Mark Ashton the conviction the film needs without making him feel like a visiting lecturer. George MacKay, as Joe “Bromley”, offers a quieter presence alongside him, and the contrast helps keep the activists from seeming like a single voice.
The casting is the strongest reason to trust the film when the writing becomes eager to please. Paddy Considine gives Dai a welcome lack of fuss, while Imelda Staunton’s Hefina has a comic firmness that keeps the warmth from becoming soft. Bill Nighy makes Cliff worth watching without insisting on our attention, and Andrew Scott brings a necessary reserve to Gethin. We were moved by the sight of these miners and activists taking one another seriously. The actors make their growing concern for each other believable, even when the writing has made an encounter too convenient.
Tat Radcliffe’s cinematography keeps the ensemble readable, which matters with so many people competing for our attention. Simon Bowles’s production design gives the London and Welsh settings a welcome everyday quality. The visual restraint works: there is enough going on between the actors without the surroundings demanding equal notice. Christopher Nightingale’s music is less restrained, helping the feeling along when the performances have sometimes already done enough.
Melanie Oliver’s editing gives the crowded story a useful forward movement, though some of the supporting strands need more room. At 120 minutes, the film still occasionally hurries past people we would like to know better. More troublesome is Stephen Beresford’s tendency to make prejudice seem readily manageable once everybody has been properly introduced. The political difficulties receive less patient attention than the personal ones. A little more time spent on the stubbornness of people’s objections would have made the warmth more convincing.
These are familiar weaknesses in the British social comedy, and this film does not escape them by having admirable sympathies. It earns our affection through the humour and the care taken over performances, including the quieter ones. The broad emotional cues can be tiresome, but they never quite drown out the people we have come to like. Go for the company, and do not expect a detailed account of the strike.
