Pride (2014)

Absolutely fabulous, this is based on the true story of Lesbians and Gays Supporting the Miners in 1984 London and Wales. We laughed, I cried, we loved it. During the prolonged miners' strike, Mark Ashton, a young gay Brit, saw the parallels between the two groups' struggles and organized the highly unlikely alliance. Ben Schnetzer (wonderful in The Book Thief, though I failed to mention him as the Jewish refugee) turns in a powerful performance as Mark, and I never would have guessed he's American. The movie starts and ends with closeted Joe AKA Bromley, the one completely fictional character, who is played to naive perfection by George MacKay (last blogged in Defiance). The others in the LGSM group are Dominic West (I didn't see his 60 episodes of The Wire, but he's been recognized as part of the ensemble of Chicago (2002), and was good in Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and the mini-series The Hour (2011)) as flamboyant Jonathan, Andrew Scott as brooding Gethin, Joseph Gilgun as quiet Mike, and Faye Marsay as practical Steph (the latter three are new to me but not to the profession).

Representing the elders of the Welsh contingent we have heavy hitters Imelda Staunton (most recently in Another Year) as Hefina, Bill Nighy (last in About Time) as Cliff, Paddy Considine (most recently in The World's End) as Dai, and Menna Trussler (a veteran I haven't seen before but will surely notice from here on) as Gwen, to name a few.

Stage director Matthew Warchus (Tony for  God of Carnage (2009), nominated for Art (1998), True West (2000), and The Norman Conquests (2009)) directs his second feature in 15 years with this first-rate script by Stephen Bereford (a stage and TV actor) in his writing debut, expertly combining comedy with drama.

Pride won the Queer Palm Award at Cannes earlier this year in the fifth outing (ha!) of the award. There's a youtube video about the real story, called Dancing in Dulais. I haven't watched it yet but I will.

Some of the visuals that tickled us were the ubiquitous instances of garish wallpaper in the homes, and aerial shots of the characters' frequent crossings of the Severn Bridge between England and Wales, not to mention the hair and wardrobe crimes of that era.

The soundtrack contains a great selection of 80s dance tunes, which can be streamed here, including a few instrumentals by the movie's composer Christopher Nightingale.

Jack and I aren't the only ones loving this one--Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are averaging 93%. To paraphrase a line from late in the movie, you'll love this whether you're gay, straight, or haven't made up your mind yet.