Thatcher’s “Iron Lady” image softened by new movie

Meryl Streep (left) plays Margaret Thatcher

LOS ANGELES,  (Reuters) – Making a film about an  iconic politician like Britain’s Margaret Thatcher is akin to  walking into a movie minefield, and casting an American — even  one as revered as Meryl Streep — is asking for more trouble.

Meryl Streep (left) plays Margaret Thatcher

Yet the makers of new movie “The Iron Lady,” which opens in  U.S. theaters today, went one step further.
They chose to depict Thatcher, now 86, as a confused,  lonely woman looking back on past glories, and doing so takes  the kind of guts once exhibited by the former British prime  minister herself.
British director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan  said they never set out to make an historical biopic or a film  about politics. They wanted to tell the story of a woman of  ordinary origins who rose to great power only to fall back  again into a normal, elderly life that is much like anyone’s.

“It is a Shakespearean story about power and loss, and the  cost of a huge life, and letting go,” Lloyd told Reuters.

“The Iron Lady” is the first feature film about Thatcher,  Britain’s only female prime minister who was elected in 1979  and forced, in tears, out of office in 1990 after losing the  support of her cabinet. Thatcher, a Conservative, was revered for uncompromising  opposition to the Soviet Union and for putting the “Great” back  in Great Britain. But she also was reviled by labour unions and  blamed for creating deep divisions in British society.

Lloyd said there has been “astonishingly little backlash”  in Britain about casting American Streep to play the British  icon. Moreover, the role required portraying a woman in the  prime of her life and in decline, and that sort of contrast  meant a skilled actress who understood the nuances of both.

“You needed someone of the magnitude of Meryl Streep to  take on Margaret Thatcher’s size and personality. You needed a  superstar to play a superstar,” Lloyd said.
The casting appears to have worked. Streep, a master of  theatrical manipulation, has received an armful of awards for  her performance and is tipped to get her 17th Oscar nomination  when Academy Award nominees are announced in January.

MORE THAN A BIOPIC

But Streep and the filmmakers wanted to do more than a  movie biography of Thatcher and her politics .

“Meryl said that, for some time, she had been looking for a  project that considered the end of things. She didn’t see it as  a biopic in any way,” said Lloyd.

And fitting all the decisions in 11 years of leadership,  along with Thatcher’s rise from grocer’s daughter to the  highest echelons of power in a male-dominated world, was “like  squeezing a large lady into a too-tight dress,” Morgan said. So Morgan chose to set the movie in the present day, when  Thatcher has decided to let go of her dead husband Denis’s  clothes and is ambushed by selected memories of her past.

That decision meant introducing the fragile mental health  of Thatcher, who suffered a series of small strokes after  leaving office. In 2008, her daughter Carol revealed that the  former titan of British politics suffers from dementia.  Thatcher herself has been out of the public eye for 10 years.

“We considered very deeply the morality of discussing this  issue about someone who was still alive. But we felt Carol  (Thatcher) had given us this cue, that it was something that  could be discussed. And we were all confident that Meryl would  take care of Lady Thatcher’s dignity,” said Lloyd.

The filmmakers did not seek the cooperation of Thatcher’s  family but relied on her published memoirs, input from 1980s  politicians, and hours of TV footage and speeches.

Lloyd and Morgan hope their approach will help the movie  resonate with people who are less familiar with Thatcher.     “I think international audiences will see it as a very  humane study of power and the isolation of power. I don’t think  they bring the same baggage to the film as British audiences,”  said Morgan.

With a female director, writer and star, “The Iron Lady”  has strong feminist undertones and highlights nuances of the  British class system in which Thatcher was viewed as an  outsider.

Yet, despite dealing mainly with events 20 years ago, it  also has resonance today. “We find ourselves back in a position  where there are not many women (in high positions) in  parliament,” Lloyd said.     “Britain has a government quite dominated by men from very  privileged backgrounds. We are in a recession, our government  has taken austerity measures, we have riots on the streets and  strikes. Does that make Margaret Thatcher just one pendulum  swing in history, or the architect of where we are today?”