“Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become...habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny! What we think we become. My father always said that... and I think I am fine.”
This is Margaret Thatcher. This is the Iron Lady, called by Soviet media in 1976 for her staunch opposition to communism.
This is the woman who changed the rules and the political mind in Britain.
She has the strong determination and the tough vocations to lead a country and facing challenges, believing the possibility of wealth is still in all the society but it need a severe measure to come out.
She aimed a society of “haves”, letting the ordinary people to do more and become better. She reinforced the British government. She lead and shift the Conservative Party, showing a male unparallel willing and power.
Her life was voted to the country. This her destiny.
Speaking with her doctor about the illness, her words sound unquestionable and assertive. She is fine.
After her brilliant career in public as one of the best-known political figures in twentieth century, Margaret Thatcher starts suffering from dementia in her elderly.
The film is set in the present, with Margaret as old lady, showing her speaking with her dead husband, coming back with memories about her ministry and her battles. She seems to not accept that she is alone now and out of any political games. She is struggling to have relax and peaceful feeling, staying awake late in the night and drinking.
Her anxious and sad present recall vivid memories and events of her past, about her ministry, her achievements in politics and many battles she had to face, from the Falklands War to the Poll Tax riots and the Grand Hotel bombing. All her flashbacks include her beloved husband Denis who was part of her life and his big support and she can’t admit to herself that he passed away.
Her life was devoted to her public mission but her family was her backing and her strength, particularly Denis. Her son went to Africa and is still there, her daughter is helping her mum compassionately with worries for her shameful mental illness.
Merlyn Streep has made a brilliant performance acting this difficult role, being a strong women over-prepared with a head man. She learnt how to lower and deepen her voice to become a credible candidate.
She wore blue dresses to go to the Parliament and act in her public life. At the end she left the scene in red, while her shoes where stepping with shoes on rose petals, as a mark of her strength in resignation unwanted. She decided to go out the politics with sorrow because she had lost the support and this harsh action made her more admirable. In her opinion “One of the great problems of our age is that we’re governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas” . She was interested in thoughts and ideas.
Meryln Streep has done a great job to fill the role. It was not easy for an American actress become the most important women in the UK. She has to study a lot how wearing that difficult dress.
Interviewed for the Daily Mail, she said: “I still don’t agree with a lot of her polizie. But I feel she believed in them and that they came from an honest conviction, and that she wasn’t a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times. She stuck to what she believed in, and that’s a hard thing to do…She’s still an incredibly divisive figure, but you miss her clarity today. It was all very clear and up front, and I loved that eagerness to mix it up and to make it about ideas.”
The husband Denis, played by Jim Broadbent, is a funny presence. Actually he is just a ghost because he is dead but his personification in the house is real and relevant for Margaret. He was her true love, instead of her ambitions he was so stay back to her always and without any reservations. He excepted Margaret as she was as supported.
The Iron Lady, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Abi Morgan is delicate human story. Charles Moore described this film as “a poem of the triumph and the tragedy” of a great personality who believe that politics was about thoughts that lead to actions. The film inspires some reflective questions on current issues amid the economic crisis. The unemployment is just one example as a big and critical problem present also today but it needs different way to be addressed.
"I think the important thing is in these debates we are having about executive pay... about the economic situation for young unemployed people particularly, is that we don't repeat the mistakes that were made in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister." said Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury from Lib Dem.
However he added that the Baroness Thatcher had done "many good things for this country" .
Newspaper and Media are divided and careful on judging and reviewing the film. However many of them show concens.
The Guardian has claim the film is the transformation of “a poor Margaret Thatcher into biopic drag queen”. It remains a controversial portrait of the vulnerability and decline of Baroness’s Thatcher. It can being a distressing portrait that shoe the loneliness, mental illness of a fragile old lady what “was used to trying to do something” and now is just “trying to be someone”.
The film can upset many Tories and conservative supporters of the government.
According to the BBC, the Former Conservative minister Lord Hurd has called the film "ghoulish" and the former party chairman Lord Tebbit said the prime minister he had known was never the "half-hysterical, over-emotional" woman portrayed by Meryl Streep. Conservative MP Rob Wilson has concern on the "intrusive and unfair" representation and has called for a House of Commons debate. He said: "It left me wondering about the humanity of the film makers who are very subtly denigrating someone who was a great prime minister.”
Meryl Streep has a different opinion, she said to the Daily Mail: “If you think that debility, delicacy, dementia is shameful; if you think that the ebbing end of life is something that should be shut away; if you think that people need to be defended from those images — then yes, if you think that it’s a shameful thing. But I don’t think that. I have had experience with people with dementia. I understand it, but I think it’s natural”.
The PM David Cameron commented the portrait by Meryl Streep as "a fantastic piece of acting", but it has been made "another dayr day"' because there is more about her fragile situation than focusing on what she has done has a prime minister. The story is set in the present, in the tragic illness of their on lady, with flashbacks to her past during her premiership. But this is just a film and has its angle, right or wrong is not a matter in a creative filmmaking. Cinema is a point of view on the world, on something. It is a representation made by her director and nothing more. A personal and relative true that can be criticised.
The Iron Lady is an impressive and courageous portrait of the Margareth Thatcher, well acting and well written, but is still controversial. The question can be about the timing but mainly about the protagonist. She was a great woman with iron force and determination that no many has, she was an hero. And all big names have done good and bad things to run a country. This is not an easy job.
