Breach of trust - Alexandria Times

18 | January 12, 2012 ALEXANDRIA TIMES‘The Iron Lady’ has no opinionYou have to be very talentedto work with Meryl Streep.It also helps to know how touse her. “The Iron Lady” failsin both of these categories.Streep creates an uncanny impersonationof British PrimeMinister Margaret Thatcher,but in this film she’s alldressed up with nowhere togo. Director Phyllida Lloydand writer Abi Morgan seemto have little clear idea ofwhat they think about her, orwhat they want to say.If there has ever been abiopic that required an opinionof its subject, that biopic©2012 DisneySORRY, NO PASSESFOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEATRES INLIMITED THEATRICALENGAGEMENT!would seem to be “The IronLady.” Thatcher held officefor an unprecedented threeterms, bitterly dividedGreat Britain,and led hernation during aFalklands Warthat seemed to belargely an exercisein hubris onboth sides. Beforethe war (and now)no one frankly gavea damn about theFalkland Islands, and Thatcher’sforeign policy amountedto: “They’re ours and youSTARTS FRIDAY, JANUARY 13Plus The All-New ShortAND AT THEATRES EVERYWHEREPRESENTED IN 7.1 DIGITAL SURROUND IN SELECT THEATRESAT THEMOVIESBy Roger Ebertbloody well can’t have them.”For this, brave troops on bothsides were killed, and thosewho cared to coulddeceive themselvesthat there was onesmall spot of foreignsoil that, asfar as Thatcherwas concerned,would be foreverBritish. (Footnote:The British didn’tconsider it foreign.)Of course the Argentinesstarted the war byinvading the Falklands, overwhich they had disputed Britain’sclaim since 1833. Youcan’t say they didn’t wait longenough before taking action.And if Argentina mounted amilitary invasion, what couldThatcher do? She was compelledto defend the islands.The loved ones on either sidewho lost someone in that warmust have been hard-pressedto understand why the deathphoto/Weinstein CompanyMeryl Streep shines in her portrayalof Margaret Thatcher in“The Iron Lady.”was useful or necessary.That wasn’t Thatcher’sconcern. In a striking scenethat takes place in her increasinglysenile old age,she declares that ideas aremore important to her thanfeelings. That seems to havebeen a governing principle inher life, allowing her to lookwith apparently limited concernat unemployment, hungerand homelessness on thedomestic front. In “ShanghaiExpress,” Marlene Dietrichutters the immortal words:“It took more than one manto change my name to ShanghaiLily.” In a similar way theIron Lady seems to have beenwell nicknamed.Few people were neutralin their feelings about her,except the makers of this picture.They approach Thatcheras a figure in a time-honoredbiographical template inwhich a convenient fictionalmechanism allows the heroineto revisit key chapters inher life so that we can understandthat it was quite a life,indeed. From her humblebeginnings as the proverbial“grocer’s daughter fromGrantham,” she began on thelowest rungs of the ConservativeParty and never pausedin her climb. Her ambitionwas unlimited, her strategyruthless, her victims many ofthe male generation the Conservativesthought they weregrooming for power. Washers a feminist triumph? Sheherself seems hardly to havethought of it that way, andthere are scenes suggestingan emotional distance fromher children and a marriagebased on the self-effacementof her remarkably recessivehusband (Jim Broadbent).Was she a monster? A heroine?The movie has no opinion.She was a fact. You leavethe movie having witnessedit. Whatever your feelingsabout Thatcher were beforeyou saw it, you now havesome images to accompany it.Part of its failure may be attributedto Lloyd, whose firstfeature also starred Streep.That was “Mamma Mia!”SEE Iron Lady | 19