Monday 30 January 2012

The Iron Lady

Two dialogues which completely personify the spirit of The Baroness Thatcher’s biopic would be, “It used to be about trying to DO SOMETHING but nowadays it is about trying to BE SOMEONE”. That is what the young baroness stated when she was contemplating running for Parliament way back in the 1950s. The basic desire to make a difference i.e. stop fussing and if you CAN do something about the issue then DO IT and not keep sitting on your backsides personifies the reason why The Baroness got the pseudonym of The Iron Lady. The other one being, "The sad part about today is the people are more concerned about "feelings" and not as much concerned about "thoughts"".
Shown as a flashback of her life, The Iron Lady, shows the Baroness as someone who is a really old and forgotten figure today striving to come to terms with her husband’s death. Dennis Thatcher (Jim Broadbent) who is vastly believed to be one of the few men “behind a successful woman” (understatement of the millennium) continues to hound The Baroness – she still believes that he is around her; hallucinations of sort. And as she is trying to get him out of her life for good, she reminisces about how it all started as Margaret Hilda Roberts in the 1940s where she drew inspiration from her father to join politics. Never been one to walk the beaten path, she fights her way through to being elected into parliament and then eventually goes on to become the first woman Prime Minister of The United Kingdom (Great Britain and Northern Ireland). The movie traverses, her life from being the MP of Finchley in 1959 to the Secretary of Education where she earned the name “Milk Snatcher”, Leader of the Conservative Party, the Prime Minister, The Falklands War, The IRA Attacks during her time as PM, sorting out the cold war, falling out of favour of her loyalists and eventually her resignation from office in late 1990 to make way for John Major.

While I haven’t seen Albert Nobbs, My Week with Marilyn & The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and while I have a lot of respect for Glen Close, Michelle Williams and Rooney Mara respectively, I think the Oscars this time around are a 2 horse race only. Meryl Streep OR Viola Davis. Knowing the academy, they would give it to Viola Davis. But in my books, Meryl Streep has once again proved why she is probably the best actress after Katherine Hepburn and why she is probably best placed to beat Hepburn and go onto win 5 Oscars. Her ability to portray a variety of characters is quite unparalleled. Leo DiCaprio could learn a thing or 2 about getting into characters and more importantly selecting character roles from her. For my money’s worth, she should have got 5 by now. Regretably, she has only 2 out of the 16 nominations ( record in itself).

However, take nothing away from director Phyllida Lloyd and the support cast led Jim Broadbent who have do equally well in executing their respective roles. Lloyd in her 2nd movie leaves quite a solid impression and while she doesn’t get a nomination @ the Oscars, she has definitely done enough to give us a movie that is not only well made but is worth watching as well. I am going to go out on a limb as say this - A much better job than Eastwood did with J Edgar. A very watchable biopic – like a documentary in parts and could have lost a few minutes in between but still very good. A nomination in make up was just too logical. 7.5 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1047305753/

4 comments:

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    1. Thanks Anna!!! More the merrier as they say :)

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