The Iron Lady

The Iron Lady, A Historical Account

Revised

I am an avid reader, movie buff and a big fan of historical works. Whether it is historical fiction (which is a work of fiction with fictional characters set in an accurate period, location and/or event, i.e. Titanic [Cameron, 1997]), a historical docudrama (think Lincoln [Spielberg, 2012]), a biography, documentary, etc., what is paramount for a historical work is that it be historically accurate and provide enough background to allow the audience a glimpse at the full picture. The Iron Lady (Lloyd, 2011), billed as a biographical work on Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of England (1979-1990) starring Meryl Streep, is widely considered a sub-par movie brilliantly acted in by Mrs. Streep, who won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.

C. Barsanti states in ‘The Iron Lady’ is Historical Mush, “There are some honest moments in The Iron Lady...  in between is a film that does nearly all it can to test the patience of the audience and to see exactly how little light it can shed on one of the most important political figures of the 20th century” (Barsanti, 2011). The Iron Lady is not a chronological portrayal of Mrs. Thatcher’s life or career and instead begins with her seen as a confused elderly lady, appearing to be suffering from dementia, and begins to jump around the timeline of her life and career. Margaret Thatcher has had an extraordinary life; in fact she is “…a woman whose influence extends far beyond Great Britain…” (Berlinski, 2011) even though the majority of it has been considered, by many, profoundly controversial. In the words of J. Mayén,

            The Iron Lady simply never works as a movie, given that Abi Morgan’s screenplay and Phyllida Lloyd’s inadequate direction turn Thatcher’s life into a series of political ‘greatest hits’, which essentially means that we never get enough time to figure out who the title lady was as a human being, or even who the politician was, for that matter (Mayén, 2012).

But lets leave the writer and director out of this and focus on the film’s billing as a historical, biographical account of Margaret Thatcher’s life and political career.

The thought that the film is just a small collection of her greatest hits is wide spread and mentioned in many reviews, both stateside and in the UK. In her book, There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, C. Berlinski states, “you must understand where she came from to understand what she accomplished” (Berlinski, 2011). The film does do some justice to a few of her accomplishments but it just plods along denying the audience the chance to get to know PM Thatcher for who she really was, learning what she did to help make the world the place it is today. Because of this I could not go so far as to call it a biography, as it does not introduce you to Mrs. Thatcher. Nor does it allow you the freedom, or even the ability, to find out whom she was; which is a controversially brilliant leader who will remain in our memory for years to come. It is with these thoughts in mind that I would like to propose the remaking of the film in order to correct the inadequacies of the original.

In the proposed remake I would attempt to use most of the actors in the original, and specifically Mrs. Streep, but that would be where the similarities end. Instead of portraying Lady Thatcher as a doddering old woman with few of her faculties intact while trying to tell her story though a series of confused flashbacks, I would tell her story chronologically. Starting during her time in her father’s grocery and following him in his political career to give the audience a little of her background, her scholarship to Oxford which was practically unheard of for a woman of her class, I would include her early days in Parliament and her remarkable ‘against all odds’ climb through its ranks from a relative nobody as a Member of Parliament, the lower house or House of Commons, to junior minister, education minister, leader of her party and finally as Prime Minister (PM).

My goal would be to arrive at her election as Prime Minister a little over 1 hour into the film. At this point I would also begin to include snippets of the economical conditions in England, or its fall from grace, her achievements and her failures, what she believed and fought for, her fight against being judged as ‘less than’ because of her sex and then, the respect she earned from the leaders of other governments, including the Soviets who first dubbed her as the now famous ‘Iron Lady’. I would include this in depth look at her time as PM because, as Berlinski put it, “She achieved things that no woman before her had achieved, and she did so in a remarkable fashion, simultaneously exploiting every politically useful aspect of her femininity and turning every conventional expectation of women upside down” (Berlinski, 2011). I would bring the movie to a close with her resignation from Parliament in 1990 and the writing of her memoirs. The original film came in at 1 hour and 45 minutes long and an in-depth retelling of it chronologically would be longer, in fact I would expect the remake would come in at closer to 3 hours in length.

Berlinski states that “Among the more muddled ideas … is that “Thatcherism” led to the financial crisis. The suggestion reflects significant confusion about what Thatcher stood for and what she actually did” (Berlinski, 2011). My hope is that this successfully remade biopic would clear up this kind of confusion and along with others, such as Lincoln, it would show the film industry that their audience will happily pay for, and sit through a long but well made biopic, docudrama or historical work that leaves them feeling like they know the person or were there for the event.

References

Berlinski, C. (2011). There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. (Kindle edition). New York: Basic Books.

Barsanti , C. (2011, December 30). 'The Iron Lady’ Is Historical Mush. PopMatters, Retrieved from http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/152694-the-iron-lady-is-historical-mush/

Foreman, A. (2011). The New Thatcher Era. Newsweek, 158(26/1), 32-40 Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.oclc.fullsail.edu:81/login.aspx? direct=true&db=a9h&AN=69921738&site=ehost-live

Lloyd, P. (Director) (2011). The Iron Lady [Theater]. Available from http://weinsteinco.com/sites/iron-lady/

Mayén, J. S. (2012, May 3). The Reason We Go To Movies: 'The Iron Lady’. PopMatters, Retrieved from http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/157915-the-iron-lady/