I was reading an article about Margaret Thatcher by John O'Sullivan when I encountered his description of her visit to Poland in 1988. He writes that as she left the port of Gdansk in a small boat, Polish workers dipped seawards the huge shipyard cranes in her honour (link). Then I thought, what a scene for a film! Yet I remembered that there was no such scene in The Iron Lady, the 2011 film about Thatcher's life.
When I first saw the film I said to myself 'That was a hit job'. Certainly, if Meryl Streep was to play the character of Margaret Thatcher and if the project had financial support from the British Film Council, it was very likely that the picture would not be favourable. On seeing it again I confirm my first impression but now I see how skillfully it has been done. Instead of the too obvious hatchet they used a thin dagger.
Many found it odd that director Phyllida Lloyd chose to portray The Iron Lady at the time she was still living and suffering from dementia. Indeed, a doctor with no political sympathies to Margaret Thatcher wrote an article in a leading British newspaper (The Telegraph, link), saying that the film was 'despicable' and made the public 'voyeurs' of the mental decline of an old woman when she was still alive and ill. He wrote 'as a doctor, I have direct experience of the reality of dementia for the sufferer and their family....As I watched scene after scene showing this once all-powerful woman as old, bewildered and scared, my discomfort turned to rage'.
Nevertheless, by choosing to portray Thatcher's dementia the director could show, not an Iron Lady but a woman who does not know what is real and what is not, someone isolated who rigidly repeats stale phrases and clings to the past. In short, we see Margaret Thatcher as their enemies like to see her.
From Thatcher's old age and dementia the film makes flashbacks to her youth and time as a Prime Minister. We see young Margaret looking wistfully as three girls pass by and make fun of her. They go to the cinema while she is sweeping the pavement in front of the family store. She looks at the girl's jewels, nice shoes and stockings (minute 09.11). The scene is repeated later in the film when Margaret is already Prime Minister and overhears members of her cabinet murmuring about her. That makes her flash back to the scene that apparently still haunts her when girls derided her for not going to the cinema.
In fact anyone who has read Thatcher's memoirs knows that as a young woman she frecuently enjoyed going with friends to the cinema (The Path to Power ps. 14-15). She even mentions that she liked musicals by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as well as the films of Alexander Korda. She listed a number of other films and added that she liked actors Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, James Stewart, Robert Donat, and Charles Boyer. Thatcher's biographer Charles Moore cites many letters that she wrote in her youth that refer to films she saw with friends. In spite of all that those who made the The Iron Lady chose to show Thatcher as a woman marked by her early experience of seeing other girls go to the cinema while she swept the pavement.
The thin dagger is put to work again in a scene where Thatcher preaches austerity to her cabinet ‒'we have to cut spending'‒ while some underling sews jewels to her magnificent dress. The camera comes and goes between the jewels and Thatcher's argument with her ministers. That is clever, the film does not tell you that Thatcher was hypocritical, you see that with your own eyes.
That scene was duly prepared by another one taking place in Parliament where the leader of the opposition, Michael Foot, piles data and statistics about 'the biggest collapse of industrial production since 1921' and that Thatcher's 'free-market policy ensures that the rich get richer and the poor are irrelevant' (59.12). The camera shows the Primer Minister bored and unconcerned about all that. When cabinet members join the criticism privately and tell her that there is the perception that the government is 'out of touch with the country', that 'people can't pay their mortgages', 'industry is practically on its knees', and 'honest, hard-working people are losing their homes' (1.01.00). Thatcher's answer is that she knows the price of butter and margarine. All the while we see that Thatcher is having jewels sewn to her dress.
Apart from hypocricy, the point is to portray Thatcher as a simple minded woman, not much different from a poorly educated housewife in her political notions, someone who thinks that she can dismiss statistics because she knows the price of margarine. Then we can forget that she had two degrees ‒chemistry and law‒ that she worked in both those fields, and read, among many others, the works of Lord Macaulay, Churchill, and Hayek ‒a trio that provides excellent instruction to any statesman. Moreover, Thatcher had the advice of brilliant men, among others Keith Joseph, to whom she dedicated her authobiographical book The Path to Power. It is also worth mentioning Shirley Robin Letwin, who worked for Thatcher and wrote a insightful book about The Anathomy of Thatcherism.
However, it is when it comes to Thatcher's personal motives that the film turns really brutal. For the job they chose none other than her husband Denis. Again, that was clever as we must assume that nobody knew Margaret Thatcher's motives better than her husband. Although there is no evidence for it, Denis is shown as a cynical critic of his wife, dismissive of any higher purpose for her actions in cutting remarks sprinkled throughout the film.
There is a scene in which Margaret announces she will enter the competition for leader of the opposition and says that she probably will lose but had to do it as a duty to force the party to reaffirm its principles. Denis interrups her and in anger says 'Don't call it duty. It's ambition that's gotten you this far' (40.00).
A few seconds later in that scene, Thatcher's daughter Carol is added in support of the same sordid view. Carol was about to take her test for a driving licence ‒for which her mother has prepared her‒ and on hearing that she plans to run for the positon of leader of the opposition she storms away protesting that her mother is more concerned about her own political career than on her daughter's approaching test. In truth, Carol Thatcher has always been a self reliant woman ‒she is a journalist and a keen traveller but was not afraid of working as waitress. It is very unlikely that she made such a scene about her driver's licence test.
Nor is it likely that Denis was so cynical about her wife's aims. In Carol Thatcher's autobiographical book A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl she writes that the only time she saw her father cry was when his wife resigned as Prime Minister. Both Carol and Denis carried on with their lives without carping about the failure of the head of government to minister to their personal needs. They were not such wimps.
Unconcerned with truth, the creators of the film inserted scenes where Denis, already dead, appears as a ghost to chastise his wife. When she remembers the victory in the Falkland's war Denis mocks her jingoism (?) making clowinsh gestures and donning a paper hat with the Union Jack. Then he, or rather his ghost, blows a paper trumpet and tells her 'Gotcha! Well, that paid off, old girl! Your ratings have soared from the most hated Prime Minister of all time to the nation's darling!' (1.18.37). Did Denis think that the war was a stunt to increase her wife's popularity? For all we know, that was very unlikely. The film would have been more honest if such view had been put in the mouth of those who really thought that sending a task force to the Falklands was meant to “pay off” raising the image of the Prime Minister. There were some Britons, but not many, who held that opinion.
In another scene Denis's spectre is made to visit Margaret to blame her for neglecting him. The spectre tells Margaret that she was so self-centered that probably had to ask their house maid to discover that Denis had travelled to South Africa to recover his health. He says 'Too busy climbing the greasy pole, MT' (40.29).
Denis's death is covered in a scene in which, in Margaret's imagination, he abandons her. When she asks him not to leave ‒'I don't want to be on my own'‒, he retorts 'You will be fine on your own, you always have been.' (1.35.00). If her own husband reveals to the audience that she was pure ambition and no heart, we have to believe it don't we?
Then there is the issue with tea cups. At the beginning of the film Margaret opens a letter and full of emotion tells her parents that she won a place at Oxford. Her mother does not congratulate her, refuses even to look at the letter, says that her hands are still damp, and returns to wash cups in the kitchen. One wonders whether that was true, and if so why there were no rags in the Roberts family home that could be used to dry one's hands.
Certainly many of the scenes in the film are of a kind that make it impossible to ascertain how close or how far they are from the truth. According to a friend of the family (link), both Mark and Carol Thatcher thought that the film is an appalling left-wing fantasy but decided no to speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity.
Tea cups turn up again when Denis proposes marriage to Margaret (26.00). She happily accepts but warns him that she 'will never be one of those women...remote and alone in the kitchen doing the washing up...One's life must matter, Denis...I cannot die washing a tea cup'. Then in the last scene in the film, Margaret Thatcher is shown old, alone, washing a tea cup. The final defeat.
I cannot fathom how some people reviewed the film and claimed that it showed sympathy for Margaret Thatcher. Certanly there is no open attack on her, apart from showing the images of protests, the diatribe by Michael Foot, the critical choir in her cabinet, and above all the cynical remarks that the film puts in Denis's mouth. But even that last stab, though cruel, is not so serious as it is less credible. It is with images and scenes that the film makes its most effective attacks. So they lead people to find 'their own' conclusions. Thatcher haunted by the memory of her humiliation by other girls ‒resentful woman‒, Thatcher repeating set phrases again and again ‒simpleton woman‒, Thatcher preaching austerity and having jewels sewn to her dress ‒hypocritical, detached from reality.
Be it as it may, does the film still matter, or even Margaret Thatcher? I think they do matter. The fight between new Tory leaders and a party bureacracy bent on administering decay still rages on. Leaks to the press are still used as against Thatcher, and today perhaps even more effectively. Besides, the portrait made in a film reaches more people than books. And as the left as always understood, the way a country sees its past is never irrelevant.
