Monday, Apr 08, 2013
Perhaps the only thing Margaret Thatcher’s fans and detractors have ever agreed is their deep dislike of any portrayal whatsoever of the Iron Lady. While several actresses, including Meryl Streep, have nailed the former prime minister’s unmistakable mannerisms, most critics have agreed the full story of her tumultuous reign has always been short-changed.
Steep took on the role in the 2011 film The Iron Lady, and the film won two Oscars, for best actress (Streep’s third) and for make-up, for a portrayal that few dispute impersonated Thatcher perfectly. “Technically brilliant mimicking of this standard is much rarer than run-of-the-mill good acting,” wrote The Guardian in its review.
Many in Britain, however, took umbrage with director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan’s choice to portray Thatcher in her later years, during which time she suffered from dementia.
“Britain’s most important and controversial postwar prime minister has been recast... into a bewildered old lady cherished in dramatic terms for her poignant vulnerability and decline, rather than for the mature achievements of her pomp,” continued The Guardian.
David Cameron, the Conservative Prime Minister in office now and at the time of the film’s release, told the media that the film could have waited until Thatcher died, although he commended Streep’s portrayal. “You can’t help wondering, why do we have to have this film now?,” he told BBC Radio Four in January 2012. “It’s really a film about ageing, dementia, rather than a wonderful prime minister.”
“It consistently, and predictably, sacrifices complexity and depth in order to pretend that Margaret Thatcher was something she never set out to be, a feminist icon,” said the Thatcher-supporting Daily Mail.
Others less enamoured of Thatcher’s legacy dismissed the film’s one-sided view of her reign. “The uncritical nature of the film, its acceptance of Thatcher as a self-made legend, will infuriate those who remember the 1980s as a bitterly divisive era,” wrote The Independent.
Streep’s portrayal wasn’t the first attempt to impersonate Thatcher; setting aside the ubiquitous Spitting Image dummies of the 1980s, Maggie was portrayed in a 2008 BBC drama, The Long Walk to Finchley, which covered her early political career in the 1950s. Thatcher was played by Andrea Riseborough, who, like Streep, was commended for her portrayal while the film was dismissed as “silly” showing Thatcher as “flirtatious”.
By Natalie Long ?tabloid! Editor
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
