Handbagged but not horsewhipped

Otto von Bismarck, the iron chancellor, posited that Germany could either produce more guns or more butter but not both simultaneously.  The film, The Iron Lady, would have you believe that Margaret Thatcher favoured the latter over the former, as one of the tour de forces has her reeling off the prices of various makes of the spread.  The al-Manama military deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia (while much traditional industry was eviscerated) would suggest otherwise but it is not recorded here.

A book on Bismarck, partially obscured and on display for less than five seconds, implies a kindred ruthlessness between the written subject and the filmed one.  The Iron Lady is resplendent in homespun wisdom imagery, beginning with milk being taken (not snatched but the idea is there) from a shelf and this feeble, old lady being treated with contempt by a hurrying, uncaring and ill-mannered society – the one she helped shape.  There is also the metaphorical flourish as Thatcher leaves Number 10 Downing Street for the last time, her feet awash with rose petals – this not some intrusion by American Beauty, rather that New Labour and its red rose symbol had its success paved by her and whose free market ideology it would perpetuate dogmatically.  In one scene, Thatcher decries that she would never die washing a tea cup (unspokenly because her mother was always downtrodden and up to her arms in suds) and the film’s coda teases those observant among us with this line.

It is not surprising that the scriptwriters (along with the director, women at that, to fit the theme) should take this tack, given that they have crafted what is, to all intents and purposes, a love story between Maggie and Denis.  Though she dresses down a GP, declaring that thoughts and ideas, not feelings, are of the essence but philosophies such as monetarism or ‘Wet’ Conservatism are not broached.  The story defies chronologly yet as a series of flashbacks (usually fatal for a motion picture) for a woman with dementia, it is clever in slicing up her life to click with the direction of the narrative.  At the moment of her greatest triumph – victory in the Falklands War – a rapid decline in her political fortunes sets in almost immediately, just as the supposed fruits of her policies bloom, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall (though she feared German reunification would bring renewed militarism) and dancing with Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda who, suspiciously, is made to look like the far better known Nelson Mandela (the end of apartheid even though she opposed sanctions against South Africa?).

There were many resonant passages as history sashayed along.  From the standpoint of being British living through 2011, the 1981 riots had a tremendous immediacy in the archive footage.  The rampaging police at the time of the poll tax disturbances were no mere urban cohorts but Thatcher’s praetorian guard.  The IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel was referenced frequently early on (though it would have been more poignant to see Norman Tebbit hauled out of the rubble on a stretcher, Denis complaining about his ruined shoes was funny) and the bombing of Horseguards’ Parade meant something to me (I was born several hours later). The moment Airey Neave hove into view, his fate was sealed and I waited for his assassination in the Houses of Parliament parking lot by the Irish National Liberation Front, the sound of the blast shaking Altaa.  That Thatcher said goodbye to him seconds before his car exploded is a dramatic liberty that crops up sometimes a little too obviously (for instance, Denis proposing to her on the night of the 1950 electoral defeat in Dartford may be true but seems unrealistically melodramatic).

One can see why the Thatcher family would shy away from a trip to the cinema.  Maggie may be shown for much of the running time as a doddery, old woman, neglected and losing her marbles, but the boot is really put into her children.  Carol is portrayed as a middle-class twit of the year (trying to pay for a taxi with a cash card, almost running over a cyclist, etc), while Mark is a bad lad, frequently AWOL, so desperate to abandon his mother (or at least care for her) that he goes and lives in South Africa.  Maybe Maggie’s decision to divert government resources to find him after he got lost in the Sahara during the Paris-Dakar Rally Race would have been over-egging the case against him (if that were possible).  Then again, Maggie is seen neglecting her family for political ambition – pointedly demonstrated in a 1970s kitchen with the bread brand Mother’s Pride lying on the side.

The acting was top notch throughout.  Meryl Streep would be a worthy Oscar winner on this performance.  Even when you think she is about to slip, she pulls it out the bag as if it were the most natural thing.  Anthony Head is superb as podgy Geoffrey Howe, much distant from the toned and slim Giles, Uther and Maxwell House man.  Richard E Grant is a bit of a hammy Heseltine, denied his Westland resignation moment (his banishment from the inner circle is only alluded to in a montage section of Thatcher strutting the halls of the Commons).  Stephen Fry continues his many fingers in many pies (as Private Eye critiqued “Fry, Fry and Fry again”), though probably feels the prevalence of his persona is starting to grate and his cameo is uncredited.  Jim Broadbent, who is nearly as ubiquitous, does well as Denis though the face is too full for the starched, lean man behind the scenes (captured in the depiction of the young Denis by Harry Lloyd) and with cadences that are more Broadbent than Thatcher (see Ian McDiarmid’s overall display in 2009’s Margaret).  Denis moreover would probably turn in his grave at having a ‘pinko’ act him.  Indeed, the point where his hallucination chides Maggie for drinking too much is rich from the old soak.

I was pleased to recognise The Daily Telegraph from its back page alone before Maggie/Meryl acknowledged it by name.  It was also fun spotting the impersonated personalities of yesteryear.  There was the odd factual mistake – Maggie talking about the EU in 1990, which is deeply anachronistic, given that the institution was not created until the Maastricht Treaty of 1993; she should have said EC or European Community in full for greater effect.  I should be a historical consultant.  There was a curiously large number of retrospectives on Thatcher’s career on the television too.

There is only so much a coherent two-hour film can capture of life stretching over more eight decades.  The clip from the trailer where she invites the European dignitaries “Gentlemen, let us join the women” would have been a nice counterpoint to earlier in the film where she has to leave a drawing room with other females, yet it ended on the cutting room floor (the editor another woman).  Though demonstrated all along, the quip “You turn [U-turn] if you want to.  The lady’s not for turning,” would have made for a decent mental checklist moment and there is only one mention of her handbag.  Her disastrous appearance at the 2000 Tory party conference (in terms of the impression it gave off rather than the delivery) would have made no sense in the thrust of the tale and does not make the final cut either.

Not quite up there with The Comic Strip pantomiming Thatcher’s battle with Ken Livingstone (but streets ahead of the comedy series’ latest incarnation of her via Jennifer Saunders), The Iron Lady has plenty of pops at her (as one would expect from something partially funded by Film Four), yet also humanises the woman, much to the chagrin of those who would regard this as a horror flick.  Geoffrey Howe’s quitting of the Cabinet and verbal assault on Thatcher in the Commons was brought a new dimension for me – that of Governor Julius Vindex’s revolt against Emperor Nero.  Vindex had no legionary forces at his command, nor did he claim the title of Caesar himself but gained the adherence of the ultimate victor Servius Sulpicius Galba (whose carping epitaph by Tacitus ‘all would have agreed that he was equal to the imperial office if he had never held it’ could well apply to John Major).  Thatcher was not as vainglorious as the clot Nero but her personality (namely her obstinacy) was her undoing in later years as much as it was her success early on.  In the end, the Iron Lady fell to rust.

Four out of five.