Hollywood

The Boss Wears Pumps

January 04, 2012

Multiple Pages
The Boss Wears Pumps

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher won the first of her three terms as Britain’s prime minister. By 2012, however, no American woman has yet reached the presidency. The only woman to make a serious run was considered presidential timber mostly by having been First Lady. Why are women still underrepresented in high office?

Judging by The Iron Lady, a Margaret Thatcher biopic starring a superlative Meryl Streep, one reason might be that women, on average, aren’t that fascinated by politics. For example, the three Englishwomen who wrote, directed, and edited The Iron Lady appear remarkably uninterested in the affairs of state that captivated their main character.

Abi Morgan’s screenplay even misses much of the human drama in Thatcher’s political career. For instance, we are shown the IRA bombing of her hotel suite at the 1984 Brighton Conservative Party conference at 2:54AM, but not her subsequent (and thus galvanizing) address right on schedule at 9:30AM. Nor do we see her stiffen George H. W. Bush’s spine the day after Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait in 1990 with, “Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly.”

“Women, on average, aren’t that fascinated by politics.”

While a political nullity, The Iron Lady is a first-rate women’s picture, a poignant depiction of a happy marriage, a sad widowhood, and the frustrations of eldercare. Streep plays the frail 86-year-old Thatcher (who has been in decline since several strokes in 2002) looking backward to some public but mostly personal moments, especially her extraordinarily successful 51-year marriage. Jim Broadbent tenderly portrays the late Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman who became a folk hero by having the good sense to give no interviews, thus encouraging onlookers to try imagining what the old buffer was muttering to “The Boss” behind his mannerly smile.

The intimate scenes between Streep and Broadbent are played exquisitely. It’s odd, however, to see a film devoted largely to a side of Mrs. Thatcher in which not even she seemed all that interested. Once in the 1990s, my wife enjoyed a woman-to-woman chat with the ex-PM on the sort of family topics that obsess the filmmakers. For example, the Baroness confided in her: “I was most fortunate to have had twins,” because giving birth to a boy and a girl simultaneously let her get on with her career more quickly. My wife found these personal revelations fascinating. Yet overall, Mrs. Thatcher seemed more concerned with statecraft, such as warning that the upcoming euro currency was unsound. (How’s the euro working out, anyway?)

The Iron Lady’s screenplay drew upon two memoirs by the Thatchers’ daughter Carol, who was her dad’s darling. (Her twin brother Mark, an Africa-based adventurer, is his mother’s favorite.) Carol published a fond biography of her father, followed by a tell-all revealing her mother’s recent struggles with memory loss. In the movie, Carol is portrayed as the dutiful child while Mark barely calls, although in real life Mark may visit more often.

The Iron Lady offers a kaleidoscope of Thatcher’s memories stretching back to the Blitz, when Margaret Roberts was a grocer’s daughter. If you wonder why Britain’s BBC caste still hates Thatcher so virulently, consider her pride in her “nation of shopkeeper” roots. Thatcher’s contemporary, physicist/wise man Freeman Dyson explained:

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class.…I learned to look on the commercial middle class with loathing and contempt. Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher, which was also the revenge of the commercial middle class. The academics lost their power and prestige and the business people took over. The academics never forgave Thatcher….

But don’t expect anything that insightful in Morgan’s script.

In the scenes of her plucky 1950 run for Parliament at age 24, Thatcher is played by the young actress Alexandra Roach as buck-toothed and plain. This fails to convey the head-turning impact the fresh-faced Miss Roberts had on Englishmen at the time, as later attested by admirers such as Alec Guinness, David Lean, and Kingsley Amis. This photo captures some of her English Rose appeal, but it’s still hard for contemporary Americans to factor in how worn most other Englishwomen looked in 1950 after a decade of rationing.

Cinematically, the best shot in The Iron Lady is of Thatcher’s first day in the House of Commons in 1959: a long ankle-level pan past all the MPs excitedly tapping their wingtip shoes, fired up for debate, to a lone nervous pair of pumps. The movie slightly exaggerates how few women were in Parliament before Mrs. Thatcher, but it vividly communicates how intimidating it could be for a woman to face the masculine energy in the “crowded House”—which for centuries symbolized male competition at its not-quite-violent best.

Streep, America’s greatest living practitioner of the acting arts, unsurprisingly nails Thatcher’s accent, including her mid-career switch from soprano to alto to sound more authoritative. The Iron Lady will no doubt bring the admirable Streep her 17th Oscar nomination to go along with her four children, one husband, and zero rehabs.

 

SIGN UP
Daily updates with TM’s latest


Comments



The opinions of our commenters do not necessarily represent the opinions of Taki's Magazine or its contributors.