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The Iron Lady
Watched The Iron Lady. Meryl Streep is a fantastic Margaret Thatcher. The script, however, is not fantastic. The movie uses Thatcher in her old age and dementia as a narrative framing device. Two things. One, Margaret Thatcher is still alive (I looked it up), so this seems kind of insensitive. I kept thinking how my grandmother would feel if they made a movie about how craaaazy she was. Two, it's not actually used to tell a story about old age or dementia. It's just a narrative device to allow them to talk about the rest of her life.
And they talk about all of it. Starting in WWII in the grocery store, her first run for parliament, her run for prime minister, IRA bombings, strikes, the Falklands, the ousting-- This is the problem with the movie. I know some of the history, so I could follow, but you're not going to learn anything by watching this. You're not even going to get insight into what it was like for her, the ostensible purpose of a biopic, because it's mostly done with voice overs over stock footage and shots of Streep in profile looking thinky. I watched a bit of the behind the scenes, where they talk to Anthony Stewart Head about how interesting he finds his character--and I couldn't even figure out who his character was. He shows up an hour in and has a few scenes, but that's not enough to establish any weight or relationship with Thatcher. That's the problem with each conflict. Everything gets a five minute montage. So when Thatcher says she's been fighting all her life, you have to take her word for it.
I wish they'd just picked one. And there are so many they could have picked--the run for prime minister, the Falklands, breaking the unions, or what I think would have made the most interesting movie, the infighting that led to her resignation. Instead we got a tiny piece of all of that. Or, in other words, nothing. Except helmet hair and tweed suits.
And they talk about all of it. Starting in WWII in the grocery store, her first run for parliament, her run for prime minister, IRA bombings, strikes, the Falklands, the ousting-- This is the problem with the movie. I know some of the history, so I could follow, but you're not going to learn anything by watching this. You're not even going to get insight into what it was like for her, the ostensible purpose of a biopic, because it's mostly done with voice overs over stock footage and shots of Streep in profile looking thinky. I watched a bit of the behind the scenes, where they talk to Anthony Stewart Head about how interesting he finds his character--and I couldn't even figure out who his character was. He shows up an hour in and has a few scenes, but that's not enough to establish any weight or relationship with Thatcher. That's the problem with each conflict. Everything gets a five minute montage. So when Thatcher says she's been fighting all her life, you have to take her word for it.
I wish they'd just picked one. And there are so many they could have picked--the run for prime minister, the Falklands, breaking the unions, or what I think would have made the most interesting movie, the infighting that led to her resignation. Instead we got a tiny piece of all of that. Or, in other words, nothing. Except helmet hair and tweed suits.