Pride movie review & film summary (2014)

Director Matthew Warchus reveals a Broadway musical theatricality in his juggling of these plot lines, tying everything together into a neat, effective package that will play well to a packed house. He sometimes let scenes ramble on longer than expected or even warranted, but this is a forgivable sin when the actors so compellingly inhabit their characters.

Now, about all that cliché: You know me. I’m Mr. “cliché isn’t a bad thing if it’s done right.” There are several predictable aspects of “Pride,” some of which, believe it or not, actually did happen. You can see the “Pits and Perverts” concert idea coming from a mile away (and not just because it’s an actual event that took place). You can easily predict that one of the mining town characters will out himself as gay. The outcome of Gethin’s visit to the mother who kicked him out is never in doubt. The biggest adversary to LGSM’s charitable efforts tows a hard line of standard-issue villainy. Someone will dance with reckless abandon and use his skills to help some straight guys woo a few ladies. And of course, some of the stodgy old mining town people wind up unashamedly partying at a gay bar and looking at dirty magazines. (Seeing Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge hold up a huge sex toy might be worth the price of admission.)

And yet, inside each of these elements, “Pride” finds a way to surprise and move us. Some of them unfold in a quieter way than one would expect. And we are never completely untethered from the movie’s harsher realities. They are woven in, sometimes at the fringes and sometimes in the center of the action. The 80’s era paranoia and misinformation about AIDS haunt the proceedings, as does the danger of being out and proud in a hostile environment. The fear of identifying and associating with people whom society rejects is always in the background, as is the fear of familial rejection because of one’s identity.

That last one is most notable in Joe’s story. At one point, Mark gives Joe a button that says “I am (discreetly) gay,” and the running joke about Joe using a fake college cooking class to cover for his LGSM activities gives way to a haunting and sad confrontation with his family. Warcus shoots it so that we cannot hear what is being said, eventually panning away as if it were too painful to see.

The title “Pride” comes to mean different things for the film’s characters. For some, it’s pride in their achievements; for others, it is pride in who they are or what they have become. Each actor gets to play a riff on this, with the standouts being West, Nighy, Schnetzer, Staunton and MacKay. They all contribute to a movie that is a lot of fun to watch and, for me, was profoundly moving at numerous intervals. The last scene, at the 1985 London Gay Pride parade, is as good an emotional moment as any I’ve seen this year.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46pqaKclWJ%2FcX2T