Hm.

[selenak]

There seems to be a consensus across rightist on leftist lines re: The Iron Lady, to wit: Meryl Streep great, film mediocre, though the objections to the later come from different angles. For every complaint from the right that the film offers too much Thatcher in dementia now and not enough Thatcher in charge back then and that this is degrading, there's a complaint from the left that the film doesn't bother with politics at all, never offers reasons why Margaret T. was so hated and just namechecks various events of her reign era of goverment, instead using the dementia as an easy way to gain sympathy. The various reviews I've read offer variations of these positions, but no third thesis. Oh, and one review mentioned there was a montage in which the falling of the wall and German reunification is presented as part of Thatcher's triumphs. If that's true and Helmut Kohl ever gets to watch this film, he's likely to have a stroke at this point. (Between Thatcher's infamous cabinet meeting with lots of analysis of how it's in our national character to start the Fourth Reich immediately upon reunification and Churchill's dictum of having "the Hun" either at your throat or at your feet still applied, and Kohl's not that great sense of humour, that's a relatively safe bet.)

Now, when I reviewed the earlier Thatcher biopics, "The Long Road to Finchley" (young Maggie versus the boys' club of Tory inner politics; hint: she wins), and "Margaret" (Thatcher in her last year of power versus the boys club, take II: hint: she loses) , I noticed neither actually shows much of Margaret Thatcher having power. Gaining and losing it offers more of a natural dramatic arc, but I assumed The Iron Lady, covering more years, was bound to offer more on the ruling years, until I heard about the dementia frame. Not having actually watched the film yet, it's seems to me Phylida Law, the director, tried to have her cake and eat it: on the one hand, a biopic of a politician that covered much of its subjects life, but on the other, a narrative that did not have to bother with doing so in an in depth manner because much of the screen time is devoted to a point where you can only show the personal, not the political. One of the reviews, searching for a comparative loved/hated male iconic figure in politics to make a point about gender, wondered how the Americans would have reacted if an English actor had played Ronald Reagan in the firm grip of Alzheimer's while Reagan was still alive. I guess the the answer to this is much indignation, but then I'm not sure how much Reagan was hated by what passes for the left in US politics to begin with. Also I'm pretty sure Phyllida Law wasn't acting out of internalized sexism and/or hidden Thatcher resentment but because she found the idea that the one so powerful Margaret Thatcher is now steadily losing her mind poignant and thought it would make her easier to sympathize with across party lines. Would she have done the same in a biopic about a man? Would anyone? Hm.

Generally speaking, I think it's still easier for scriptwriters, actors and directors to present male characters in a critical yet compelling fashion while trusting their audience will be captivated even if it doesn't "identify with", whatever that means. I'm thinking of Capote a few years ago in which both script and central performance are not trying to milk sympathy for Truman Capote at all, on the contrary, they highlight his unsympathetic sides. (And they easily could have gone the other way - say, shown via flashback or Harper Lee conversations some bits of Capote's truly ghastly childhood.) Instead, they trusted that Capote and the story of how he came to write Cold Blood, the relationship to one of the two murderers that developed and its bizarre twist on the writer/muse tale would be compelling enough without the audience liking Truman Capote. I can't think of a comparable film about a real life female famous person.

Of course, if you tell the story of a woman and highlight her negative sides the way Capote did Truman Capote's, you have to deal with the added baggage of sexism through the ages - are you or aren't you feeding it, etc. Some of the Iron Lady reviews did some soul searching along the lines of "when X said that Margaret Thatcher was the one woman it was okay for feminists to hate, was that not mightily unfair?" and either decided that because Margaret T. never showed any interest in the cause or in female solidarity, she was not entitled to solidarity now, or decided that yes, in as much as she was a woman working her way to the top under hostile conditions, she also counts as a case feminists can be proud of. I'm always uneasy with such assertions as "the one woman it's okay to hate" anyway. Then again, I also don't think female politicians should be exempt from criticism. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, any fictional take on her that was neither a hagiography of the Sainted Maggie nor a Portrait of the PM As A Middle-Aged Demon was bound to be resented by one of the two main political camps, but I wish one could have been found that had the courage to do more than offer a spectacular central performance; a film which actually tried to capture some of the era its set in, some of the passions and politics, would be a start.

Then again: I haven't watched it yet. Maybe the reviews are wrong and there is something of that there. I guess I'll have to find out.

Comments

Come what may...

[legionseagle]

Given what RTD did to Harriet Jones in The Christmas Invasion I think every female politician from now until the heat death of the Universe is going to be saddled with the General Belgrano even though, whatever I believed at the time (I was in my second year at University) I now believe that Thatcher had little control over it and it was a more justified command decision than it appeared at the time, on all the evidence including that of the captain of the Belgrano.

Re: Come what may...

[espresso_addict]

I don't now hold Thatcher solely personally responsible for the Belgrano, but I date my political awakening to the Falklands War. To what degree Thatcher was personally responsible for the war, I can't assess, but she was certainly responsible for spouting jingoistic nonsense on television at the time. I was then in my early teens and one of my indelible memories from that era is of being forced by my school to turn out onto the quayside to wave the battleships off with union flags. It was a strong inducement to lifelong pacificism and a lingering distaste for expressions of nationalism.

You're right about the The Christmas Invasion. I suspect RTD had a similar politicisation event to me, though he's somewhat older.

Re: Come what may...

[legionseagle]

He's almost exactly my age and has a similar educational background (grammar school boy, scholarship to Oxford) except that his college, Worcester, was more trad and probably more conservative, and given that the Falklands War was absolutely polarising in our college it must have been God-awful in a college where the left-wing students were in much more of a minority. And then, of course, there was Section 28.

But someone can have good reasons for hating Thatcher and not assume that she's the ultimate fate of all successful female politicians.