The Iron Lady

Whatever you think of Margaret Thatcher there is no denying that she was a strong and charismatic leader who changed the face of British politics. Her tacit determination and dogged refusal not to be ‘turned’ on issues relating to the miner’s strikes, Northern Ireland and the Falkland conflict casts her, depending on your perspective, as a figure of unremitting principle or a villain of pantomime proportions.

Given Lady Thatcher’s dramatic career you’d expect a biopic about her to focus on her varied and controversial premiership. However, the latest filmic adaptation of Lady Thatcher’s life, The Iron Lady, seems less concerned with her remarkable political ascent – overcoming as she did both class and gender bias to become the first female Prime Minister of the UK - than her recent decline as a result of Alzheimer’s.

The film, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, uses Lady Thatcher’s degenerative illness as a vehicle to explore the highs and lows of her public and private life. We see a present-day Lady Thatcher, firmly in the grip of the disease, plagued by the memory of her dead husband. Fading in and out of cognisance she experiences an array of flashbacks; watching a terrorist attack on the news triggers a vivid and terrifying memory of the Brighton bombing, whilst discovering a DVD of The King and I prompts her to recall fonder times spent with her husband.

Structurally, the constant flitting between past and present makes for a fragmented film, which provides only superficial coverage of some of the defining moments of Lady Thatcher’s political career. The Falklands gets about five minutes as does the ‘Et tu Brute?’ moment with her cabinet shortly before she left office, and there is no reference whatsoever to Lady Thatcher’s famous Conservative conference speech in which she uttered that immortal phrase, "the lady’s not for turning".

More importantly though, the decision to make a film about Lady Thatcher's terminal decline whilst she is in the throes of that terminal decline is morally reprehensible, as well as symptomatic of the lack of empathy we feel towards public figures. Just because Lady Thatcher is famous doesn’t make it acceptable to transform her suffering into a form of entertainment and to ride roughshod over her feelings and those of her family in the process.

Lord Russell Sanderson, a former Minister of State and a good friend of Lady Thatcher told The Journal, "I’m surprised they have made the film before she died. I don’t think Carol and Mark will like it". As Max Pemberton pointed out in 'The Telegraph', this portrayal of Lady Thatcher is unfortunately representative of how society largely views the elderly, particularly those with dementia. Those with dementia are written off well before they die and experience a loss not just of their memory and cognition, but of respect and dignity.

Without doubt the best thing about The Iron Lady is Meryl Streep’s faultless performance as Lady Thatcher. Lord Sanderson commented on the accuracy of her portrayal, "She has the voice and handwriting! And in the strong determined scenes such as the Falklands she is excellent." Ultimately though, Streep’s acting ability is not enough to redeem a film which engages in cruel, thoughtless voyeurism. Lloyd’s attempt to humanise Britain’s first female PM succeeds only in treating her in an inhuman and callous manner; reducing the once all-powerful woman to a shadow of her former self. One has to question whether any former male Prime Minister would be subject to the same treatment.