Having lived through the Thatcher years I remember the various events of the time and I know the vitriol that a mention of her name can evoke. I never liked Thatcher in the years of her premiership but since her departure, and in the light of the experience of subsequent holders of that office, I have come to view her with more ambiguity. She was a powerful, single minded woman who broke the conventions of her age and based her whole life on the common sense middle class values that she had learnt from her father. How appropriate those values, which may well work for a household and small business in the 1950s, are when transferred to the national and international stage is the core of many critiques of Thatcherism. But this is not what this film is about.
Much of what she did was wrong. Many of the opinions she held without compromise were abhorrent. But some of the things she did, could have only been achieved through very strong leadership. For example, it seems to me that radical reform of Trade Union Law was urgently needed in those days after the turmoil of the Ted Heath years.
My first reaction to the film was sympathy for the confused and somewhat frail elderly lady through who's misty eyes the recollection of her life occurs. (I question the ethics of making such a graphic portrayal of dementia when the main character is still alive.) This was not the demon often portrayed but a human being who still held strong views and yet still suffered. She suffered recalling the friends she had lost in IRA bombings and the service personnel she had sent to the Falklands who would never return. (I wonder if the inevitable biopic that will be made of Blair will show him similarly reflecting on those he sent to Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home in coffins) She was also alone and lonely, but perhaps this had been her experience all her life.
The political agenda was touched on lightly in the film. The immense changes that she brought about to society and on the world stage were acknowledged but this was a film about a person and not about politics. This has annoyed many critics who say that you should never discuss Thatcher without discussing Thatcherism. This was not a political documentary. It was a film about ageing, dementia, and remembering.
Streep has described Thatcher as a feminist, which both Thatcher and many feminists would deny, but the film showed clearly the male dominated and misogynist world of parliament that she entered and in which her political toughness was formed. Any woman who was not tougher than a man would never have survived in that environment.
The tragedy that the film highlights for me is that she had no confident with whom she could thrash out her ideas robustly. She was surrounded by yes men. Dennis, who might in reality have had this role was shown as a bit of a buffoon. Without that sort of combative development of policy, if any one persons ideas are accepted without question, they will enter the public arena without having the "corners knocked off".
Norman Tebbit said of the film that he didn't recognise the protrayal of haranguing and bullying of the cabinet. I am not so sure. Unlike Tebbit I wasn't there but I have read the reports of similar haranguing and bullying by the PM during the last days of Gordon Brown's premiership when he was under pressure from his own party as well as the rest of the country. In such a situation it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are the only one left who is in the right and regarding anyone who disagrees with you as a spineless coward.
Streep was brilliant, both as Thatcher in her heyday and in her old age. There was more to this portrayal than imitation. The actress who played Carol Thatcher I recognised as having recently been Mrs Smallbone in Rev. and I found this distracting!
I know of people who can't bear any humanity to be added to the mental image of Maggie that they have demonised for years. This film will annoy them. Thatcher was one of the key political figures of the last half of the twentieth century and an ambiguous product of her time.
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