I understand what you and Simplicio mean, but it’s the (alleged) whitewashing I’m wary about. The Last King of Scotland never downplayed what a murderous psycho freak Idi Amin was, even as it also portrayed what a charismatic and fascinating figure he was. Forrest Whittaker won a Best Actor Oscar for a good reason. I think there was a lot of whitewashing going on in J. Edgar. I only saw it in case DiCaprio gets nominated for an Oscar, which is exactly the reason I’ll see The Iron Lady, whitewashed or not (I guess I’ll find out). I never saw Nixon, though it’s funny, he was a liberal pinko communist socialist pansy pussy compared to Thatcher. I saw Dick! 
Loved it. I also saw and enjoyed Oliver Stone’s W., a movie which is, strangely enough, very sympathetic to the utterly despicable George W. Bush. I just remembered that one. My mind has just been a bit more opened to TIL, but it better be a really good movie. It’s at 57% at Rotten Tomatoes, which means nothing since I like lots of films rated way lower than that.
When Thatcher came to power there was a nice little power clique run by certain powerful unions in nationalised industries, that meant other ordinary working people on low wages elsewhere had to supplement these overpaid bully boys out of their taxes.
Corruption in the Unions at that time was rife, I remember as a teenager my fellow workers and I being presented with a list of those that we were required to vote for in the up coming union elections.
(T&GWU)
When I asked who were running against this list of candidates, I was told to forget about that and just vote for the names on the list.
It was then as a low paid working class, working man that I left the union.
When Thatcher came to power she smashed this sort of abuse of power completely.
Unfortunately she didn’t stop at ousting the union bully boys but ended up removing a hell of a lot of ordinary working peoples basic rights.
Yep we have, and had a lot of things to thank the union movement for.
If they’d shown some sort of restraint at the time we might have generally good working rights now for ordinary people, instead of what we actually have at the moment.
I think that as a work of entertainment it is too soon, too many people will be watching it as a partisan affair, rather then as something to enjoy for its own sake.
But enough of politics, I don’t enjoy films (Or books for that matter) that are retrospective.
It always seems to make the story a bit anticlimatic to me.
Everythings already happened so theres no surprises, and we know that the narrator at least survived.
If you look at the statistics the UK had one of lowest growth rates in Europe during the seventies and one of the highest growth rates since. Economic growth positively affects almost every citizen, not just a few rich people. Tens of millions is being conservative, it is probably scores of millions.
Indeed. Or Al Capone, or Henry VIII, or Richard Nixon, and many others.
Oh boy, this is funny!
Michele, Maggie would eat you for breakfast, spit you out in disgust and have all the other idiots you’re running with for a mid-day snack (then spit them out in disgust).
As much as I think Thatcher was a horrorshow, she was at least smart!
Hmmm, factually and intellectually challenged female US conservatives trying to get some Margaret Thatcher kudos to rub off on themselves doesn’t necessarily work out too well. If Thatcher thinks Palin is “nuts” then I would love to know what she thinks of Bachmann.
Scores? Mate, there’s only three score million people in the whole of the UK.
Growth rates are meaningless without looking at the social impact of her policies. Look at the destruction in the major cities as manufacturing was decimated. The UK’s growth came in the financial sector which is entirely based in London, the rest of the UK was left to rot. Hence the massive divide, insanely rich people in London and fuck everyone else.
And let’s not forget, her first term saw recession and the country in the toilet and the only thing that saved her was the Falkland’s War, which is why she was oh so happy to go into it and arguably ignored possible ways to avoid it just so she could have a war.
To be fair, it was a Thatcher “ally” (maybe not even an aide) who said Palin was nuts. Maybe Thatcher thought the same, but that’s not what the article said.
You are right, although I always wonder whether when an aide or ally says something startling and their principal doesn’t move to distance themselves from the comment, it means the principal agreed and may even have been the underlying source but has wanted plausible deniability.
Oh yeah, I agree with that.
Good to see that Meryl Streep has picked up the Golden Globe for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. Her performance was really very good.
Just saw the film today. Holy smokes, Streep is awesome. Playing Thatcher over such a wide range of years, it’s almost like playing two different characters. Not to mention the makeup crew from J. Edgar could have learned a lot from the people who turned Meryl into an aged Maggie.
That said, I surprised myself with my active hatred of the directing, writing, and overall structure of the movie. The flashback technique was rather clumsily done, in my opinion. The movement of the actors in some scenes was overly ‘stagy’ and unnatural. And the choice of camera shots in many instances detracted from the action. One example: during the Falklands War sequence there’s a moment where the military is asking for the go-ahead to attack the Argentinian battleship Belgrano, while Thatcher’s domestic advisors are recommending caution. We see Maggie mulling it over momentarily, then she strongly delivers the command, “Sink it.” But we don’t SEE her deliver that line. The director chose to cut to a shot of the military commanders’ faces just as she speaks - a very odd, and I think, wrong choice.
I usually find interesting and creative choices by the director in pretty much every movie I see, so this was an unusual reaction from me. In fact, after the first fifteen minutes or so, just before we finally see Streep take over the role of ‘younger’ Thatcher, I wished I could reach through the screen and shake Phyllida Lloyd silly for this abominable directing. I hated it even more for Denis’ final scene - what a hokey payoff there!
But again, Streep is a marvel and absolutely deserved her Golden Globe win. I also enjoyed Jim Broadbent as Denis, but his entire role as ghostly foil to the somewhat addled elder Margaret got to be a bit much - hence my dislike of the writing.
I think the criticisms I’ve heard would make the comparison with the Thatcher movie, as it being about that nice man Hitler who braved adversity and got to run and country and no mention of genocide and war…
Getting back to the movie itself:
I think Meryl Streep absolutely deserved an award for her performance. But I wouldn’t recommend the movie. I found it to be unfocused and not very clear. All of the action happens in flashbacks. It was hard to create a narrative thread for the sequence of flashbacks.
I walked out of the movie thinking “GREAT acting job. Terrible movie.”
YMMV,
J.
She tried her best, but now! may she ‘RUST’ in peace.