Watched: Pride (2014).
I openly sobbed while watching this film, which doesn’t necessarily make it good (though I think it is), but does give you an idea of the tone of the film. In a sense, to make a film about gay rights and anti-Thatcherism so unabashedly populist is a powerful act, given that much of the audience for films with this kind of tone tend to occupy more socially conservative ground.
The film documents the efforts of a group of LGBT activists who, in the mid-eighties, banded together to raise money for the striking miners whose welfare benefits were being forcibly cut off by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Much of the narrative focuses on the two apparently disparate groups finding common ground and learning a lesson in tolerance, and there are often times where the larger political struggle takes a backseat to interpersonal drama.
At times, the tone is a bit strange. A casual look at Britain’s recent history will reveal the fact that the miners ultimately lost this fight - eventually, the union voted to return to work, and it was a significant blow to collective bargaining power in the UK, with the eventual result that mining was largely privatised and massively reduced - but this is underplayed in the film. There’s a third-act turn to focus almost exclusively on the LGBT activists and what they did next, and it just about saves the film from ending on a sour note.
It’s extremely funny sometimes, and the characters shine through, and it tells a story that deserves to be told in a way that the maximum number of people can appreciate. There’s value in all of that. Films like this matter.