Pride: Joyful and Uplifting

Pride is based on a very strange and wonderful true story out of 1980s Britain. A group of gay and lesbian activists decided to raise money to support Welsh miners who were striking to protest the harsh policies of the Thatcher-led Conservative government. The LGBT community had suffered a great deal under the Conservative opposition to gay rights, so they sympathized with the miners' struggles and thought it was only right to support their fellow sufferers under Tory rule. As you can imagine, miners aren't the most gay-friendly people on the planet but Pride outlines how these two very different communities united behind a common cause and developed a rather beautiful friendship.

The cast of characters includes Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), the outspoken gay man who comes up with the idea of creating LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners); his friend, Mike Jackson (Joe Gilgun) who supports him when everyone else thinks it's an insane idea; Gethin Roberts (Andrew Scott) who runs the gay bookshop that LGSM operates out of; his partner, Jonathan Blake, a flamboyant actor (Dominic West, as you've never seen him before, in a simply sublime role); the young Joe Copper (George MacKay) who is not out to his parents but inadvertently becomes a part of LGSM and is cautiously finding his foothold in the gay community; and the one lesbian, Steph Chambers (Faye Marsay), though a few more do join the group later on. Together, they represent quite a range in terms of life experience and level of self-acceptance, but they become a close-knit family as they strive to make LGSM a success.

Initially unable to find a miner's union that will accept money from an LGBT group, they cold-call the tiny Welsh mining village of Onllwyn and become allied with this remote community. Paddy Considine plays Dai Donovan, the leader of the striking miners in Onllwyn, and after getting over the surprise that these donations are coming from a group of gay people, he quickly proves himself to be a faithful ally to his new friends. He and Mark believe in the same philosophy that people need to put aside their differences and support each other for the common good, and he is fully grateful for LGSM's aid. But when Dai and his Committee members invite LGSM to their village to thank them for their support, there is of course plenty of controversy. The more conservative members of the village are pitted against the more empathetic folk who make up the Committee, and things get off to a shaky start. However, after a rousing evening of disco dancing and general camaraderie, the villagers start to wonder if these gays and lesbians might not be so bad after all. The movie is by no means looking at the world through rose-colored glasses: there is plenty of opposition, prejudice, and heartbreaking pigheadedness to endure; yet it somehow retains a constantly uplifting and joyous tone, a promise of the changes to come and the gradual dawning of a new day for both the mining unions and the LGBT community.

Writer Stephen Beresford and director Matthew Warchus have put together a stunning movie about the ability of people to empathize and evolve to love and support their fellow humans. The Onllwyn Committee members are played by British stalwarts like Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton, and they all do a wonderful job of portraying how different people can approach the topic of gayness with clumsy kindness and eventual acceptance. Some elements of the story are more predictable than others, and a fair amount of cinematic liberties are taken to dramatize key moments. Yet I was astonished and thrilled to learn how much of this story was actually true.

Pride is a truly triumphant tale, all the more impressive because it never gets too sanctimonious or treacly. It doesn't hide the dangers the LGSM members faced against the rampant homophobia prevalent at the time, but it shows how much they still managed to achieve through sheer force of will and goodness. We definitely need more stories like this.