The Iron Lady (2011)
Feb. 20th, 2012 16:04![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyThe Iron Lady. Dir. Phyllida Lloyd, 2011.
I am of two minds about this movie, although all in all I think it's well worth seeing, and that is because (no surprise) Meryl Streep is AMAZING. I mean, obviously, she's always good, but most of this movie is set fairly recently, in late 2009, and Meryl Streep is mind-blowingly good at portraying Thatcher's senescence--not Alzheimer's, apparently, but rather much more pedestrian dementia. At any rate, Streep is fantastic, and her portrayal of Thatcher is amazing.
The rest of the movie, though, does Thatcher and her achievements a number of disservices that amount to a rather gender-biased evaluation of her and her record. I saw it with two of my roommates and one of my roommate's friends, and we all convened in an impromptu critique session outside of the theater after one of our fellow movie-goers turned and asked us what we thought. Our consensus was that the movie didn't focus enough on the content of Thatcher's policies. It doesn't; instead it focuses on her relationship with her husband (oh, the huMANity!) and how her career was so bad for him and their children. Charitably, the film doesn't mention that the reason her wastrel son can't come visit in 2009 is that he's been indicted in South Africa for, if memory serves, arms dealing and sedition. We don't get a sense of the woman whose policies, with Ronald Reagan in the States, forever altered the shape of political discourse in the advanced industrial economies, as people like Barack Obama and Tony Blair have acknowledged. Instead we spend a lot of time in the present with her dementedly hallucinating her dead husband's presence at her side. To add insult to injury, the movie also intimates that the dissolution of her government was due to Thatcher's incipient dementia, totally ignoring the fact that she continued to serve as a back-bencher for two years after she left Number Ten. Argh.
Thatcher is also obvious a close personal friend of HM the Queen--you're not named a Companion of the Order of the Garter and a life peer and your husband a baronet without the monarch's closer personal friendship--and I was incredibly disappointed to see the movie totally ignore what has to be a fascinating relationship between two women of similar history and similar political views but with vastly different origins. But no, let's focus on manpain!
The other thing is that I find this politically suspect. I am fine with sympathizing with Thatcher's struggles as a woman in the 1950s, as a politician in a male-dominated world throughout her life, but since the movie does refuse to give us much of the actual policies of her government, I feel as though the movie is trying to make its audience sympathize with the Conservative agenda out of ignorance. I don't like feeling manipulated in that manner, either.
There are things about this movie that I liked--Thatcher's difficult relationship with her daughter, her total incomprehension of what her own career meant for women of her daughter's generation, her own idiosyncratic understanding of feminism, her campaign to take over the Convservative Party in the mid-1970s--but all in all this is not the movie I wanted about Maggie Thatcher. It may be, however, that its condescending admiration is the best we can currently expect.
I am of two minds about this movie, although all in all I think it's well worth seeing, and that is because (no surprise) Meryl Streep is AMAZING. I mean, obviously, she's always good, but most of this movie is set fairly recently, in late 2009, and Meryl Streep is mind-blowingly good at portraying Thatcher's senescence--not Alzheimer's, apparently, but rather much more pedestrian dementia. At any rate, Streep is fantastic, and her portrayal of Thatcher is amazing.
The rest of the movie, though, does Thatcher and her achievements a number of disservices that amount to a rather gender-biased evaluation of her and her record. I saw it with two of my roommates and one of my roommate's friends, and we all convened in an impromptu critique session outside of the theater after one of our fellow movie-goers turned and asked us what we thought. Our consensus was that the movie didn't focus enough on the content of Thatcher's policies. It doesn't; instead it focuses on her relationship with her husband (oh, the huMANity!) and how her career was so bad for him and their children. Charitably, the film doesn't mention that the reason her wastrel son can't come visit in 2009 is that he's been indicted in South Africa for, if memory serves, arms dealing and sedition. We don't get a sense of the woman whose policies, with Ronald Reagan in the States, forever altered the shape of political discourse in the advanced industrial economies, as people like Barack Obama and Tony Blair have acknowledged. Instead we spend a lot of time in the present with her dementedly hallucinating her dead husband's presence at her side. To add insult to injury, the movie also intimates that the dissolution of her government was due to Thatcher's incipient dementia, totally ignoring the fact that she continued to serve as a back-bencher for two years after she left Number Ten. Argh.
Thatcher is also obvious a close personal friend of HM the Queen--you're not named a Companion of the Order of the Garter and a life peer and your husband a baronet without the monarch's closer personal friendship--and I was incredibly disappointed to see the movie totally ignore what has to be a fascinating relationship between two women of similar history and similar political views but with vastly different origins. But no, let's focus on manpain!
The other thing is that I find this politically suspect. I am fine with sympathizing with Thatcher's struggles as a woman in the 1950s, as a politician in a male-dominated world throughout her life, but since the movie does refuse to give us much of the actual policies of her government, I feel as though the movie is trying to make its audience sympathize with the Conservative agenda out of ignorance. I don't like feeling manipulated in that manner, either.
There are things about this movie that I liked--Thatcher's difficult relationship with her daughter, her total incomprehension of what her own career meant for women of her daughter's generation, her own idiosyncratic understanding of feminism, her campaign to take over the Convservative Party in the mid-1970s--but all in all this is not the movie I wanted about Maggie Thatcher. It may be, however, that its condescending admiration is the best we can currently expect.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 04:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 04:36 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 08:36 (UTC)Is she really? I'd always heard that they didn't get on too well. Peerages at least are mainly political appointments: the Queen doesn't personally decide to confer them on someone.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 15:56 (UTC)Thank you for a really interesting review!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 18:36 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-21 19:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-22 08:17 (UTC)And Wikipedia says you're right on the Garter thing, fwiw. I have no idea!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-22 16:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-22 18:41 (UTC)In general I've consulted my