The Real Story: Margaret Thatcher and ‘The Iron Lady’

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 8:00 am

Meryl Streep stars as Margaret Thatcher in this week’s release, “The Iron Lady.” Thatcher, the first woman Prime Minister of the UK, was one of the foremost political figures of the 20th century. While her close ally Ronald Reagan brought a new era of conservatism to the United States, Thatcher did the same in the UK with still-controversial fundamental changes that made her a polarizing figure.

Streep and director Phyllida Lloyd have insisted in interviews that “The Iron Lady” is not a biopic. It departs from the usual format for stories of real-life historical and culture figures with selected personal events that are portrayed as triggers or inspiration for the character’s good and bad choices followed by re-enactment of well-known turning points: the character amazing people with his/her ability and drive, personal and professional set-backs and triumphs. Similar to “J. Edgar,” released just a few months before, it is a more impressionistic exploration of what Thatcher’s thoughts might be as she looks back, the moments of pride and her regrets, based on part on A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl by her daughter Carol Thatcher. Streep said in an interview:

“It’s a very subjective look at a very big life, but it is a look back from the waning edge of power. It’s a look back at power from the point of view of powerlessness. It is a very selective look at certain challenges that an old lady remembers based on the challenges that she faces in her daily life.”

Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire in 1925, the daughter of a grocer who was involved in local politics. She studied chemistry at Oxford and then became a barrister (lawyer). She was first elected to office in 1959. Her early political positions supported lower taxes, capital punishment, decriminalization of homosexuality, and legalized abortion. She served in cabinet positions, became the head of the Conservative Party, and, after she led them to victory, became the Prime Minister from 1979-90. She lowered taxes and decreased government spending, supported privatization of government services and property (raising £37 billion), and limiting the power of unions. As shown in the movie, one of the key defining moments of her tenure was her response to the Argentine invasion of the British-controlled Falkland Islands in 1982. Thatcher responded by sending a naval task force to engaged in armed combat, resulting in a surrender by Argentine forces after 74 days.

Some of her best-remembered quotes:

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.

Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.

Defeat? I do not recognise the meaning of the word.

The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

Ronald Reagan called her “the best man in England” and she called him “the second most important man in my life.” A 2011 poll named her the most competent Prime Minister of the past three decades.

Now frail following several strokes and struggling with memory loss, the Baroness Thatcher seldom attends public events.

For more information:

More “The Real Story” posts:

Related Tags:

It’s Complicated

Posted on April 27, 2010 at 8:00 am

Forget the accents. Forget the anguish, the steely resolve, the iambic pentameter. All hail Meryl Streep for what she is best at — comedy. She spins screenplay straw into movie gold, turning yet another fungible Nancy Meyers saga about a beautiful and accomplished middle-aged woman triumphing over a womanizing man into a miracle of warmth, heart, and wisdom just from the power of sheer acting genius and being the truly and deeply glorious person that she is.

Meyers does have a talent for, in the words of one of her movie titles “What Women Want.” She knows that there is an eager audience for a story about a middle-aged woman who is so universally adored that even her ex-husband, the hound who left her for a gorgeous young woman (cue the slo-mo stroll in the midriff-revealing sarong) can’t get enough of her and admits that he was crazy to let her go. What could be more satisfying than that?

One of the wisest and most entertaining books ever written about movies is Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, where he discusses the power of movie romances that bring estranged couples back together. As beguiling as it is to think of the freshness of first falling in love and the pleasures of learning everything about one another, there is something even more deeply satisfying about the idea of falling in love with someone with whom there are no illusions, and especially having that someone fall in love with you. Anyone can fall in love with what we think we know or with someone we’ve seen at his or her best. But when it’s someone we’ve seen at his or her worst; that’s got to be love for sure.

Or, it can be something satisfying in a different way — payback.

Streep plays Jane (as in plain?), divorced for ten years from Jake (Alec Baldwin, perfecting the art of the appealing but infuriating male) finds herself in bed with him following a tipsy dinner when they are in New York together for their son’s graduation. She can’t resist the chance to feel pursued, validated, desired. The spark they once had is still there. And she would be inhuman if she did not feel a little triumphant about his preferring her to his beautiful young wife.

But there are (grown-up) children to consider. Being back together frees Jane to admit that she was not blameless in their break-up. It allows her to allow Jake to see her (literally) as she is, not as he remembers. And it opens her heart to some other possibilities, including the shy architect working on the addition to her house — including the dream kitchen to replace a kitchen already pretty darn dreamy.

Meyers, astutely profiled by Daphne Merkin in the New York Times Magazine, seems to be the only person in Hollywood today interested in and capable of connecting deeply to an audience of women who want more from a movie than frothy rom-coms or sex and shopping. Rare in the world of chick flicks, there are no trying-on-clothes montages or makeovers. Her movies feature capable women with good friends and loving families. The most preposterous fantasy in her films may not be the gorgeously decorated settings or even the swains in pursuit but the unequivocally devoted friends and especially children and even the prospective son-in-law — take another look at the way Jude Law’s little girls fall into instant love with Cameron Diaz in “The Holiday.” Like Jane in this film, who considers and then rejects the idea of a little cosmetic surgery, Meyers’ women start out fine with who they are and then get even more so.

Streep is what Meyers’ women want to be — supremely warm and nurturing (watch the way she keeps feeding everyone exquisite but apparently completely non-fattening meals), self-aware, and able with a little adorable struggle, to impose some boundaries in a very familiar way. She fills in what Meyers’s slightly calculating formula leaves out and makes this movie as guilty a pleasure as those chocolate croissants she whips up that make her date fall for her as we already have.

Related Tags:

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Posted on March 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for action, smoking and slang humor
Profanity:	Humorous use of the word "cuss" in place of swear words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Character smokes a cigar, alcoholic cider
Violence/ Scariness:	Characters in peril, violence includes guns, fights, explosions, character injured but no one seriously hurt
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, retro gender roles
Date Released to Theaters:	November 25, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	February 18, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00GRA7KBY

Today Criterion issues a gorgeous new Blu-Ray edition of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” with lots of great behind-the-scenes extras. Director Wes Anderson has often seemed more interested in his films’ props and sets than the characters and stories. His last movie’s most memorable character was a set of luggage (The Darjeeling Limited). The previous one’s most memorable image was a cutaway that turned a sea-going vessel into a sort of doll’s house (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). And so perhaps it is not surprising that his liveliest and most appealing movie is “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a story told through stop-motion animation, every shot filled with precise and intricate detail. This is movie-making as Cornell Box.

The effect might be suffocating but for Anderson’s superbly chosen collaborators. While his previous films have been based on original material, this time he uses a beloved book by one of the foremost children’s book authors of the late 20th century, Road Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory James and the Giant Peach). And as voice talent, he has George Clooney and Meryl Streep, whose smooth, subtle performances lend emotional grounding to balance Anderson’s clever but claustrophobic tendencies.

It’s a Peter Rabbit-style story, with the title character in a battle with three farmers: “Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, one fat, one short, one lean,” according to a taunting children’s song. Fox (Clooney) agreed to stop stealing from the farmers when Mrs. Fox (Streep) became pregnant and has settled into a foxy middle-class life, working as a newspaper columnist. But he feels the call of the wild — and the call of the farmers’ plump chickens, apple cider, and geese. He starts stealing again, bringing down the wrath of the farmers on the whole animal kingdom. It is up to Fox to find a way to save them all.

The theme of the call of the wild comes up several times as the story shifts back and forth between ultra-civilization (Fox wears a shirt and tie) and the animal instincts of the non-human characters. The combination of the very familiar (Fox’s son Ash feels neglected, especially after his more talented and cool cousin comes to stay), the very cerebral (the “Oceans 11”-style heist plans), and the strangely feral (watch the way Fox eats) keeps the story as intriguing as the tiny props and costumes and the odd, stiff movements of the stop-motion figures. Unlike plasticine-based stop-motion (“Coraline,” “Wallace and Gromit”), the high-touch textures of the figures make them seem like toys come to life.

The screen is filled with enticing details, but it is the performances that keep us connected to what is going on. The script is filled with arcane non sequiturs but the warmth of those voices, with able support from Anderson’s brother Eric and regulars Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson, keep us in the story. And that really is fantastic.

Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Posted on February 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

Families should make a point to watch “Faces of America,” an engrossing new television series on PBS. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. sits down with celebrities like Stephen Colbert, Meryl Streep, Mario Batali, Eva Longoria, and others to use their family histories to illuminate the story of America. It is touching and inspiring to watch the participants learn for the first time the details of the courage and dedication of their forefathers, those who came to America filled with hope and those who were brought here as slaves. Professor Gates said,

We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that’s before she married King Hussein of Jordan. We found that the African American poet Elizabeth Alexander is related to the emperor Charlemagne!

We went even further and used DNA analysis to look for “deep cousins” — common ancestors among our guests — and we found genetic connections between eleven of our twelve guests. I found that despite all our apparent differences in terms of culture and history, we are all the same.

Visit the show’s blog and share your own family’s story.

Faces of America With Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Julie & Julia

Posted on December 8, 2009 at 8:00 am

“Julie & Julia” is — I can’t help it — a scrumptiously satisfying film about writer/director Nora Ephron’s two favorite subjects: food and marriage.It is based on two true stories. Julia Child revolutionized American notions about food with her cookbook and PBS series that brought haute cuisine to the “servantless” American housewife in the early 1960’s. Cookbooks and magazines in those days had recipes that included canned peas and crushed potato chips. But Child (Meryl Streep), newly settled in Paris with her diplomat husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci) fell in love with the fresh, subtle, deeply sensual quality of French cooking and decided to study at the Cordon Bleu. She was an unlikely epicure and an even more unlikely spokeswoman, over six feet tall and with a rather horsey quality, a voice with a trill that made her sound like a cross between Eleanor Roosevelt and Miss Francis of the Ding-Dong School. But she was passionate, knowledgeable, accessible, and completely fearless. She boned a duck with knives that could slice through granite and scooped up food from the floor and put it back on the plate, crisply assuring her audience that it was all right because no one could see them in the kitchen. Americans fell in love with boeuf bourguignon, chocolate mousse, and with Julia, too. Half a century later, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) was in need of some of Julia’s resolute forthrightness. While her “cobb salad lunch” friends made million-dollar deals on their cell phones, Julie had a half-finished novel and a job answering the phone in a cubicle, listening to the problems of people seeking help with their 9/11-related injuries and losses. She and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) lived in a tiny, dingy apartment over a pizza place, with a handkerchief-sized kitchen. But Julie wanted to do something big and important. She wanted to finish something. And so she decided to work her way through Julia’s famous cookbook, to take on every recipe including deboning a duck, to do it all in one year, and to do it in public, on the then-novel outlet of a blog. Both Julie and Julia were drawn to the literally hands-on nature of cooking, the sense of purpose and mastery, and the generosity of it. Ephron’s screenplay, based on memoirs by each of its main characters, touches on the parallels without overdoing it. And one of the sweetest is the rare portrayal of tender, devoted, and, yes, very passionate married love, even more palpably luscious than the abbondanza array of diet-busting delicacies.It is the Julia story that is the heart of this film and it is Meryl Streep who is at the heart of this story. A little bit of movie magic makes the 5’6″ actress tower over her co-stars and even the furniture. But it is sheer, once-to-a-planet acting that makes Child so touching and inspiring. No one is more adorable than Amy Adams, and she wrinkles her little nose and throws her little tantrums as a twinkly romantic movie heroine must. But Streep as Child is revelatory, real, and irresistible. In one scene, when she responds to some good news from her sister (wonderfully played by Jane Lynch), the mixture of emotions that cross Streep’s face in a moment tell us of decades of pain. In another, as the Childs and their friends celebrate Valentine’s Day, we see an expression of love and trust so deep and enduring and joyous and sexy that it makes most expressions of movie romance feel like whipped cream made with skim milk and fake sugar.This is a movie about food and love and courage and dreams and lots and lots of butter, and doing something — cooking or acting — brilliantly and with gusto. And it is delicious, nourishing, and good to the last drop. (more…)