The Iron Lady

As a portrait of an old woman living with dementia, and as an insight into the driven personality of Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady is a good film. It’s not a political film, and the historic narrative mainly serves to highlight her character: strong and obstinate, rather than ‘iron’. There is only token analysis of the actions behind her rise and fall.

As a cinematic experience the film had a lot going for it: Meryl Streep’s portrayal of ‘MT’, the lack of distraction from the prosthetics, Jim Broadbent’s chipper interventions as Denis, and the well caricatured MPs of the time.

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the conflict in the South Atlantic, and more nuanced explorations of the sinking of the Belgrano will hopefully appear around the anniversary on 2 May.

For me, the take home line from the film was:

“One’s life must matter.”

The difficulty looking back at Margaret Thatcher’s life – particularly through the lens of this film – is that emotionally detaching from one’s family and humiliating one’s colleagues seemed to part of achieving what mattered. Not a great role model.

Had lunch in the Blue Chicago grill before going across the road to see the film in Lisburn Omniplex. Impressed with the food – though at the price, they’d need to throw in some fries with the scampi. Canadian (chicken) burger recommended.