The Iron Lady

While I am a huge fan of the actress Meryl Streep, I was somewhat disappointed in the movie "The Iron Lady". My disappointment has nothing to do with her acting, but rather to do with how simple they have made the story of Margaret Thatcher's life.

Perhaps it is easy to forget that Margaret Thatcher was elected to be Prime Minister of Britain back in 1979, which was 33 years ago. Considering that there are still so few women leaders in politics even today, her accomplishment was nothing short of astounding. I have always been fascinated by her, although I know little about her. Unfortunately, this movie was not much help. It was more of a caricature of a super ambitious woman wanting to be different from everyone else, only to end up in a way like everyone else. When Denis Thatcher proposed to her, she emphatically said that she refused to die washing tea cups, meaning that she would not be content as a housewife. The end of the movie showed her washing a tea cup in her kitchen, long after she left politics. Does it mean that her life was "much ado about nothing"?

Obviously the way we die, or at least the way most of us will die, will be like everyone else, just like the way we were born were just like everyone else. But it is how we lived the productive years of our lives that truly defined us, and not the years when we were babbling infants, or the years when we are perhaps plagued by dementia, as is the case with Margaret Thatcher.

I hope that there will be another cinematic attempt in portraying her life that is much more sophisticated and complex.