Posted on 10/14/2004 12:28:26 PM PDT by mountaineer
It's no coincidence that Brit director Mike Leigh's film "Vera Drake" - a sympathetic portrayal of a working-class lady who performs illegal abortions to help young women in 1950s England - has come out at the height of a presidential campaign.
"When we decided to make the movie a couple of years ago, we calculated that it would be released around about now," Leigh told me yesterday. "I'm trying to get the audience to confront that abortion is a moral dilemma. We know that life is destroyed. But I'm pro-choice. So far as I'm concerned, it is an overcrowded, hostile, chaotic world, and we should think very carefully before bringing unwanted, unloved people into the world."
The pro-choice lobby has embraced "Vera Drake" and its message: Keep abortion safe and legal. This week a consortium of Planned Parenthood, Catholics for a Free Choice, NARAL and others hosted a screening in Washington. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has written a letter urging folks to see the film starring acclaimed actress Imelda Staunton as the good-hearted cleaning woman who ends up in jail.
"I'm very happy for the film to stimulate any discussion," Leigh said, "but when you see it, you'll see it doesn't lay it on in very crude, black-and-white terms, and it's quite subtle. I don't want to bludgeon the audience with a propagandist's hammer."
And this is a year when movies that stir controversy - like Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" - have also been big at the box office.
"If we are accursed with that fate," Leigh said, "we'll just have to live with it."
I can think of several people I neither want nor love, but I hardly believe that gives me or anyone else the right to kill them, Mike. But then, I never understood how the Nazis justified eliminating "undesirables," either.
If that's the case, then why doesn't he help reduce that overcrowding by killing himself?
"So far as I'm concerned, it is an overcrowded, hostile, chaotic world, and we should think very carefully before bringing unwanted, unloved people into the world."
I can fix that statement right up.
"So far as I'm concerned, it is an overcrowded, hostile, chaotic world, and we should think very carefully before having unprotected sex and risking disease and unwanted pregnancy."
There. Fixed it.
Keep abortion safe...except for the unborn...
and legal,,,for the women who may choose to have one after another.....
I trust he's celebrating the activities in the Sudan, then, to relieve us of this pressure of 'overpopulation?'
I think I'm going to be sick! Despicable!!
Even in the '50's, there were long waiting lists of parents wanting to adopt babies.
"We know that life is destroyed."
How can you be pro-choice knowing that its a life? At least most pro-choicers delude themselves into believing it is a clump of cells.
Great. Kill yourself, and hope you like the next world better!
"So far as I'm concerned, it is an overcrowded, hostile, chaotic world, and we should think very carefully before bringing unwanted, unloved people into the world."
Where is Dr. Kavorkian when you need him?
Aside from the question of what exactly constitutes a "good-hearted" murderer, I wonder if the filmmakers bring up the fact that this wonderful baby-killer turned away women who came to her if they were short on cash.
Regardless, few people will see this movie.
Mr. Leigh's most popular film ever, Topsy Turvy, an Oscar-promoted biopic of Gilbert and Sullivan, made $6M at the box office.
This movie, which will not have all the comedy, light-hearted music and elaborate costumes and scenery will probably do a fraction of that.
Anyone who pays money to see this movie will most likely be a NY, MA or CA Democrat anyway.
The Liberal mindset is a whacky thing. According to the Leftists, women should NOT be counseled on the risks of abortion, nor should they have a waiting period to think things through. And abortion consistently results in the death of at least one innocent human being.
Meanwhile, the Leftists think all law-abiding gun owners should be forced to sit through hours of hand-wringing haranguing over the dangers of firearms and should be subjected to 10-day waiting periods to "cool off." Nevermind that there's a Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the firearm will typically be used only on paper targets or not-so-innocent nighttime intruders.
Yup...that's the Leftist mindset. The evil must be protected and the innocent must be sacrificed. And anyone who says otherwise is guilty of "hate speech."
I don't think this movie will make the slightest difference in this election.
The left is consistently illogical. When one is talking about John Kerry, it can be said that the left is consistently inconsistent, while being consistently illogical.
Curiously, Oracle has just come out with a new version of their OLAP tool Discoverer named 'Drake'.
If I had a tin-foil hat, I would be dangerous....
What you suggest already is considered okay, isn't it? I mean, people with terminal diseases and the physically disabled, for example, are fair game under this "logic." Whew, Christopher Reeve dodged a bullet!
I have noticed that:)
That takes talent!
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