Friday Noon Movie Club: "The Iron Lady"

In the 1980s I was floundering through the social minefields of middle school and high school. I knew there was a Margaret Thatcher, and I understood clearly from my Dallas circles that Ronald Reagan was the savior of the US, and I sort of knew that the two of them were sort of connected. There, you pretty much have the sum total of my political awareness in the 1980s.

For a brief while this morning, I sat alone in an empty movie theater waiting for The Iron Lady to begin. I’m not put off by seeing a movie alone, and I wasn’t expecting anyone to make the drive in the aftermath of last night’s big snow, but as I waited for the movie to begin I found myself a little worried about the solitude. Political movies are the kind I should not be seeing and evaluating alone. Luckily for me, one of my neighbors braved the snow and joined me. In fact, she had lived briefly in England in 1986, and she was able to inform me as to who some of the characters were, as when Alexander Haig was referred to as Al, and I could not identify him. So take my review here with a grain of salt, politically speaking.

Meryl Streep gets rave reviews for her portrayal of Thatcher, but the movie itself gets very mixed reviews. One criticism I’ve seen several places is that the movie is too apolitical, which I’ll come back to. Another mentioned that by reducing her popular opposition to footage of protesters surrounding our main character as she sits in the car with her beloved husband, we can only empathize with her and see protesters as nasty, faceless, no-class hoardes. And in the days of the Occupy movements, this is inappropriate. Point taken.

One critic mentioned that if it weren’t for Meryl Streep’s performance, this would be no more than a TV movie. That one I take issue with. While it’s not The King’s Speech in grandeur, writing, and pacing (that quiet movie somehow tied my stomach in knots of suspense), The Iron Lady is a good deal more than a TV movie. Of course, this was a British reviewer, and he probably gets his TV movies from the BBC, not Lifetime. Maybe that’s like calling the HBO miniseries “John Adams” a TV movie. Whatever.

The movie is told through flashbacks, memories that loop through the present due to Mrs. Thatcher’s failing memory. She has long been grieving the loss of her husband, and he appears to her as if he is still alive. She is deciding if the time has come to give his belongings away, and each encounter with another person or with her husband’s “ghost” or with one of his belongings sets her mind back to a moment in her history.

Streep is fantastic as the elderly Thatcher. She disappears into the character. She moves between the world of her mind and the world of the present, showing with subtle expressions the emotions that assail her with each change.

There is no judgment of her in the film, if that’s what you are looking for. I know there were protests of this movie in Britain in the working class towns, partly due to Thatcher’s anti-union stance, and perhaps if I were in England I might have stronger opinions on this. But for me this is more like watching The King’s Speech than a movie about George W.; it’s a character study of someone I know little about. And as a character drama, it is well done. I’ll consider it creative non-fiction, not fact. One thing that my friend and I conferred about as the movie got going--we weren't sure if Thatcher was still alive. Neither of us remembered hearing that she'd passed away, but surely they wouldn't portray her as an elderly woman losing her memory if she were still alive? But they did.

So yes, you want to love this woman that you feel you are getting to know, especially when she is the only woman in Parliament. You grieve with her that she and her family pay a price for her success. You love her spirit and determination. But there are a few moments that show how stubborn and prickly she could be. How she might not have given her family all that she could. How nasty she sometimes was in the office and out. (Remind me not to become famous; I hate to think what faults would play out on the screen someday.)

I, personally, loved the scene where the young Thatcher warns her would-be husband that she cannot be like other wives, that her life must mean something, and that she "cannot die washing up teacups."
I can’t say that the faceless protesters made me think more of her and less of them. First of all, the very existence of the Occupy movements make that impossible, as does the footage of protests that I have seen throughout my life. The feeling I got from those scenes was that as she moved further and further from her own daughter-of-a-grocer roots, seeing protesters upfront was more and more of a shock to someone who now lived in the world of words and ideas and fighting over decisions and legislation, rather than physical labor and struggles for money and livelihood. In that way, I don’t think it vilifies her or grants her sainthood.

So that’s my humble opinion. I enjoyed it very much, though it was a little slow. Another movie that demands some patience. I don’t think it’s as well crafted as it could have been. But it gave me a bit of insight into history, and it served to continue my reverence for Meryl Streep’s acting prowess.

Now, while I refuse to "die washing up teacups," I really must do something about this house.