A funny and touching tale of how London's gay community supported striking miners in 1980s Britain. Read our review.
With and a dash of The Full Monty and a splash of Brassed Off, Pride is another British comedy with a big heart and both subtle and broad humour. It tells the remarkable true story of how a ragbag of gay and lesbian agitators in London began to support striking miners in the dark days of the mid-eighties.
They felt a kinship of sorts with the miners’ long campaign against pit closures because they too faced persecution by the tabloids, Thatcher, and the heavy-handed British police of the day.
Determined and charismatic young Irish man Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) is the de facto leader of the haphazard LGBT bunch. Needless to say they are deadly serious group who are also delightfully amateurish, the kind of association who argue over the minutiae of political ethics, rather like the Tooting Popular Front or Monty Python's Judean People's Front in The Life of Brian.
Mark may be the instigator and he has to deal with the double whammy of the homophobia and sectarianism that saw him flee his native Northern Ireland but we see the story through the eyes of innocent suburbanite, Joe (Jamie Bell lookalike George McKay), who is on the brink of coming out when he falls in with the group.
Initially, their support and cash is refused by the miners who baulk at the association with London’s gay community but when the determined group take matters into their own hands and arrive in an isolated Welsh village at the invite of local activist Dai, played by Paddy Considine, we are in for glorious fun.
Cultures clash as macho meets high camp and the saucy malapropisms fly, amid what was an atmosphere of great poverty and anger. Sherlock star Andrew Scott is very good as Gethin, an anguished Welshman who has been disowned by his own mother but it is Bill Nighy who is the real stand-out here. He gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as dignified village elder Cliff and manages to steal the whole movie with just two words.
The mid-eighties also marked the spread of AIDs, another example of the crude misunderstanding and prejudice whipped up by the tabloids, and director Matthew Warchus covers the issue with the real story of how Dominic West’s character Jonathan, a flamboyant former actor, was the second man to be diagnosed with HIV in the UK.
Levels of toxic homophobia are thankfully dying off but in today’s seemingly post-political world, radical politics has all but vanished too. Pride is a welcome reminder of an era of direct action and DIY social spirit. It’s a bit hackneyed in places but this tale of opposites attracting is a real tonic.
Alan Corr
Watch our interviews with Bill Nighy and Andrew Scott by clicking on the video link above.
