Last night I watched The Iron Lady. Put it this way, £7 would have been better spent elsewhere. Good films engage you,great films make you think. Unfortunately this did neither. In fairness, when writing a historically accurate/true story film it is hard keep the audience guessing, but this film whilst littered with good performances, it lacked the script to make it a must have on DVD. As i mentioned in person yesterday, i was more concerned about whether or not McDonalds would be open at the end of the film, rather than how Michael Heseltine was going to stick the knife in when ousting Maggie.
As someone reasonable political knowledge, the film really was disappointing. The majority of the film was spent in the present day, as Thatcher's frail health is accompanied by flash backs of semi-relevance to her career as politician. This did not really work. Her life as Prime Minister was far more interesting than present day. Indeed, i wanted to know about how she became leader elect when Callaghan lost a vote of no confidence, not who was coming for dinner that evening in the 2012 Thatcher household.
The main problem however was that the actually political events barely scratched the surface. Perhaps the most interesting of all premierships was never really documented as thoroughly as i would have liked. Indeed, her downfall was touched up in a 5 to 10 minute segment, that in the end rather made her look like the victim. Interesting take, but perhaps the wrong one. I wanted to see heated cabinet discussion as a flailing leader clung to power, as the other ministers grow increasingly restless at her presence, before they all one by one push her towards the edge, when finally Heseltine see's her fall all the way to the bottom.
Further, there were too many slap you in the face lines that were meant to be subtle metaphors. Like when teaching Carol to drive, Maggie is urging her to drive round a cyclist "to the right" with Carol saying "you must not drive to far to the right!!". I rather assumed the director, Phyllida Lloyd, would have given her audience more credit. Then again, she did direct Mamma Mia.
By all means watch this, but if you're after some hard hitting, exciting, heart racing political confrontations...stick BBC Parliament on television, Wednesday at 12pm.
Well said. As I said yesterday, a film about Thatcher without politics is like Senna without the driving. All the interesting stuff is gone
ReplyDelete