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| Meryl Streep is no Iron Lady, makeup notwithstanding |
From a review of the script (the movie comes out this year):
Sucker Punch Squad: Script for Meryl Streep’s Margaret Thatcher Bio Smells Like a Hit Job
Posted By Pam Meister On November 4, 2010
...When BH editor extraordinaire John Nolte asked me if I wanted to do a Sucker Punch review of the script for The Iron Lady, the upcoming film [1] featuring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, my response was (and I quote), “Yes!!!” After reading the script, however, I almost wish I had declined the offer.
Why? Well, when I think of Margaret Thatcher, I think of an extraordinary woman who defied the odds to become the UK’s first woman prime minister and who did her best to bring her nation, kicking and screaming, into a period of prosperity - a nation that was on the brink of financial collapse when she first came to office in 1979. Being human like the rest of us, she had triumphs, and also some failures...
...Unfortunately, Thatcher...after a lifetime of strength, courage and fortitude, is now known to be suffering from dementia, a terrible disease in which one begins to forget little things and slowly forgets more and more...
But it’s great fodder for a movie, especially if the subject is a strong conservative woman whose policies have always been loathed by the left. Who cares if she’s still alive but unable to defend herself against the film’s implications?
The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and produced by Damian Jones, is a bit of a roller coaster and it was hard at times to keep track of what time period it was, even with it written right there on the page in front of me. Flitting back and forth from present day (noted in the script as 2008) to 1943 to 1990 and many different years in between, we “see” the world through the eyes of a Thatcher who is losing touch with reality and who frequently travels back through time to relive a life once full of activity and purpose - a life which has now been reduced to the occasional dinner party and trips to the doctor. And don’t forget the whisky – lots of whisky. To dull the pain of what’s become a menial existence, I suppose.
Once surrounded by powerful men and the occasional woman, Thatcher’s constant companions now consist of her home health aide, her private secretary, and her grown daughter Carol (Olivia Colman), who pops in often to check on Mum and make sure she is okay.
Oh, and husband Denis Thatcher (Jim Broadbent). Trouble is, Denis died back in 2003. Lady Thatcher is talking to a ghost – or, rather, a lively figment of her imagination that only she can see and hear, causing concern for the few people who she sees on a daily basis. In the film, Denis acts as her confidante and her conscience – at times trying to cheer her up by doing silly things like wearing a pink turban, while at other times he lectures that no one listens to her anymore because she is just an “old lady who is losing her marbles” and when a public bored with socialism votes the conservatives back into power, “they’ll wheel you out to show again.”
Denis also – and this is key – claims that what Lady Thatcher achieved during her long and storied career was really not any of her doing. He says that all of her accomplishments “would have happened anyway darling” because that’s “the way politics always goes” and she was “just in the right place at the right time.” He continues by saying that she’s “yesterday’s news, just another footnote in history.”
Isn't this the common note of Reagan? He was only lucky to be there at the time the Soviet empire imploded who everyone knew would happen. However there is a problem...all the "smart people" said "the Soviet Union was something that is there, will be there and needs to be delt with..." I am quoting a geogrpahy teahcer from a class from 1985. The Soviets were on the ash heap of history six years later. I recall a point I made more than once about intellectuals. Being educated doesn't necesarilly make you intelligent. Many a moron I've known in my life has the term doctorate behind their name.
...In this, The Iron Lady is simply another vehicle to for the contemporary Left to rewrite history more to their liking, despite polls like this one [5] where Lady Thatcher is considered the most influential woman 20 years after leaving office.
...However, there are some depictions of Lady Thatcher’s maternal nature in the script. Lady Thatcher is depicted as a woman who, no matter how hard she tries, will never be “one of the guys.” What’s an alienated female politician to do? Act like a mother hen to both her husband and colleagues, buttoning the cuff links of one and pouring tea for another, saying, “Shall I be mother?” This script is chock full of such moments calculated to show Lady Thatcher in a most unflattering light...
...Hillary’s famous comment about deciding to forge ahead with her career after marriage instead of “baking cookies and having teas” also comes to mind in The Iron Lady during a flashback where Lady Thatcher tells hubby Denis that she refuses to be one of the women who stays “silent and pretty on the arm of their husband…washing up the teacups.” In fact, she declares, she “will not die washing a teacup.”
Guess what the Iron Lady is depicted as doing in the final scene?
Cameron McCracken, managing editor of Pathe Films, says of the movie:
“It is a film about power and the price that is paid for power. In that sense, it is the story of every person who has ever had to balance their private life with their public career.” He says Lady Thatcher’s health will be featured, but insists that it will be “treated with appropriate sensitivity”. He adds of the film: “Although fictional, it will be fair and accurate.”
I have to wonder: Someday, if (heaven forbid) Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi or another powerful female politician is struck down with dementia, will filmmakers do a ”fictional” but “fair and accurate” movie about a woman who preferred to be a formidable political force to staying at home with her daughter, creating a completely unsympathetic character who deserves to face impending death alone with only memories of a career fit for being “just another footnote in history” for company?
I leave you to guess.
I remember when the Reagan film came out a few years ago it showed a man suffering from the beginning of the Alzheimer’s during his presidency. I don't think we need to guess.
Another movie to miss...go see The King's Speech instead.
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