Meryl didn't disappoint, she had the voice and mannerisms and her old lady Maggie was incredible. Oscars due for the makeup, the crash helmet wigs and of course Ms Streep.
The film focuses on Maggie today and her decline into dementure, this is obviously a very sad and serious condition and very upsetting for the family. The actress playing Carol Thatcher was great but lets not forget that whilst Margaret has round the clock protection paid by the tax payer to keep her safe in her own palatial home, whilst she was Prime Minister she cut every benefit for the disabled , especially those suffering from mental illness, and the current Tory government feels the same about these benefit scroungers who should be selling their homes to pay for their care.
Shuffling about thinking her husband is still alive and that she is still Prime Minister you could quite easily warm to this dreadful woman but thankfully they didn't shy away from the terrible things she did. Going to war for no reason but to win an election, ordering the sinking of the Belgrano as it sailed away, the Poll Tax, hunger strikers, it was like an 80's history lesson.
It was mixed with real footage from the time, including the Brighton bombing, which was eerily weird to see as I was sitting yards from where it actually happened.
I actually loved this film and rather than making me feel sorry for Thatcher it made me come out singing all those anti Thatcher songs from the time, The Beat's Stand Down Margaret, Morrissey's Margaret On The Guillotine and that classic from The Exploited Maggie Is A C**t !
3 comments:
On this side of the pond, we are eager to see this movie. We hope to see it this week.
I saw it 3 days ago at a packed- out matinee showing to an audience if about 90% 'Senior Citizens' like myself.
I'd half-expected to hear grumblings around of "It wasn't like that!" but was pleasantly surprised when there was a spontaneous burst of applause just before the final credits.
Indeed, so much of it wasn't quite "like that". I recall every one of the re-created events vividly. However, one accepts the use of a degree of cinematic and screenplay licence to conflate, approximate and simplify events. It was a good film. Meryl was, as always magnificent - bang-on accurate in her voice imitation, and even in her physical bearing and appearance she often got so eerily close to reality it was hard to believe that we weren't seeing the real Mrs T.
My only reservation is that I wasn't prepared to have so much of the time taken up by the lady in advanced age conversing with Denis' ghost (Jim Broadbent not even looking slightly like D.T. - but that's a relatively minor quibble) or, at other times, with daughter Carol. I think in terms of minutes on screen the old Mrs T was there for at least as much as the younger one coming up to and living out her political prime. I had been expecting to see her in this forgetful, slow-moving, senile state (which almost made me sympathetic) only at the film's start and close.
It appeared also that for her entire Premiership (apart from a break to celebrate the Falklands victory) the entire country was in the grip of riots of one kind or another.
But overall, I regard the film as a major achievement and would recommend it highly, not least for the chance to see La Streep doing yet another absolutely astonishing chamelionic turn, fully deserving her recent Golden Globes award. Is there anything at all that this woman CANNOT do?
I saw this film today.
I admit I don't have much of a grasp on Mrs. M, so I didn't have bias. I thought the movie rather sweet. I liked that it reminded us of some of the controversial things she did/saw. Of course, I don't know what it was like to live with her.
Still, apart from Churchill, she is the only PM a Yank can name. She left (better or worse) a lasting impression over here.
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