THE IRON LADY IS NO CHARMING, STUTTERING ROYAL IN THIS UK TRAILER

Come on. Downfall has zero to do with this. Were we watching the same trailer?

I cannot speak of the full movie since I haven't watched it but the marketing so far has used every sort of shorthand available to paint this as the story of the badass hero rising to the challenge and taking the tough decisions to get the job done.

Plus, Phyllida Lloyd is a terrible, terrible director and not the sort of person I'd trust to make a nuanced version of anything.

Yeah, the movie itself might be interesting, but the trailer screams "Inspiring story of true leadership!" I think people are allowed to get pissed off about that, especially given the ham-handedness of the average Hollywood Oscar-bait biopic.

The moment of police brutality underneath Streep saying "The medicine is harsh" seems like the only concession I can see to what she really was. But the fact that it looks like they're going to emphasize IRA bombings already seems like it's tilting towards excusing her actions.

not sure I'm getting the shades of Grey vibes. It defiantly looks like they are painting her as some kind hero.

Plus was that Richard E Grant as Hessletine?

A large portion of the trailer paints her as an increasingly lonely and out-of-touch paranoid dictator, with her grand sentences punctuated by actual footage of protestors being beaten and bombs going off. That's just in the trailer, in today's atmosphere. I know you guys have deep, understandable personal feelings on this person, but come on, you can see what I'm talking about here. Of course it's going to be cut inspirational, because they're trying to frame the performance as epic, but the content is not patently favorable.

That's true Renn, but Thatcher is a HUGE raw nerve in the psyche of those of us who grew up in the 80s, especially those of us who came from British families/lived there at the time, so you can understand that even the possibility of a whitewashed, Oscar-bait biopic of her is going to get some of us gnashing.

I'm at work ATM but will check out the trailer when I get back. While I seriously doubt that the film won't play the 'Woman making it in a man's world' card, the implication that the film will be a bit less forgiving about things like the Miners Strike and Poll Tax riots is intriguing. If anything, I think the film could spark debate on some of the more unfortunate side-roads feminism took during the 80s, where suddenly women felt they had to have more testosterone than the men (Take the shoulder pads: people goof on them nowadays as cheesy period fashion, but they were that bulky for a reason) Thatcher was pretty much the epitome of that movement.

It could be interesting and hopefully not a whitewash, based on that trailer.  Slant aside, it looks like Meryl Streep is acting the hell out of it. 

Plus, isn't Streep like an archetypically Hollywood liberal? Would she attach herself to this kind of role, to this kind of woman, if the movie were whitewashing her?

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Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

Plus, isn't Streep like an archetypically Hollywood liberal? Would she attach herself to this kind of role, to this kind of woman, if the movie were whitewashing her?

I've read interviews where she said she was very specifically told and attempted to leave her own politics out of her performance.

Read into that what you will.

Yeah, she could easily just want another Oscar really badly.

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Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

Yeah, she could easily just want another Oscar really badly.

To be fair, she's has the most nominations for the least amount of wins of any actress in history - I think it's like 30 noms for one win or something ridiculous like that - so really, can you blame her? She'll be a shoe-in next year regardless.

Nah, I can't blame her. Heck, there's no doubt she's gonna win, so kudos ahead of time. I mean, it sucks that she had to go the biopic route to get more validation, but still.

If anybody doesn't have anything to prove by hoarding Oscars, it's Streep (and Eastwood, but that's another story).  It probably was just the challenge of embodying a complex character.  I'm not a Thatcher fan and would have no interest in seeing this if it weren't Streep playing her. 

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Originally Posted by stelios 

Come on. Downfall has zero to do with this. Were we watching the same trailer?

 

I cannot speak of the full movie since I haven't watched it but the marketing so far has used every sort of shorthand available to paint this as the story of the badass hero rising to the challenge and taking the tough decisions to get the job done.

Bait and switch?

Couple reviews suggest it's not great, but that Streep is amazing. Not necessarily any indication either way on how it handles her and her actions, just that it ain't great on its own merits

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Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

Plus, Phyllida Lloyd is a terrible, terrible director and not the sort of person I'd trust to make a nuanced version of anything.

This is the whole point for me, it's all very similar to the argument that "you're not giving it a chance" when Michael Bay decides to remake classic horror films.

Also, what's all this about Thatcher being a woman?

And it just went to a very different set of dogs over the 80s. We're still feeling the effects of Thatcher's greed-driven "me first and fuck everyone else" philosophy today. You can play "what-if" with how Labour would've governed in the 80s all you want, Thatcher's systematic dismantling of society actually happened, so forgive those of us who suffered through her near-sociopathic disdain for the lower classes for not dropping to our knees to worship her.

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Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

And it just went to a very different set of dogs over the 80s. We're still feeling the effects of Thatcher's greed-driven "me first and fuck everyone else" philosophy today. You can play "what-if" with how Labour would've governed in the 80s all you want, Thatcher's systematic dismantling of society actually happened, so forgive those of us who suffered through her near-sociopathic disdain for the lower classes for not dropping to our knees to worship her.

Precisely. I've never denied that Thatcher's policies had some positive effects. True, Britain was in a complete state by the end of the 70s. Could Labour have fixed it? Maybe. Did Thatcherism revive Britain as an economic force? For some, especially in the mid-to higher classes. But I don't remember people in Gateshead (Where my family are from and where I lived between 1984/85) or rural Wales or any of the big mining areas exactly skipping for joy. No, they were too busy being jobless/destitute/having their heads stoved in by riot coppers thanks to Our Heroine and her oh-so-graceful attitude to domestic policy.

That tends to be more memorable than the theoretical failings of a party who weren't in power by that point anyway. 

much as I intensely dislike Thatcher (see comments above from people who grew up under the witch's influence) the bit where she shouts "DENNIS" made me laugh out loud.

So like the Spitting Image puppet of her.

And the vibe I get from the trailer is "no-one else understood what she went through or why she had to be such a bitch but she did it because she HAD to" and frankly, fuck that.

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Originally Posted by Andy Bain 

So like the Spitting Image puppet of her.

Speaking of, there's also the bit in that trailer where her and Denis hold hands which suggests they're trying to go for some sort of warm & cuddly romantic humanization, but I bet SI's take on the Margaret-Denis relationship was probably closer to reality.
 

If it weren't for Thatcher standing up to the Argentines all you Brits would be speaking Spanish and wearing Ponchos now!

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Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

If it weren't for Thatcher standing up to the Argentines all you Brits would be speaking Spanish and wearing Ponchos now!

You've just given me the idea for a great alternate-history script: Kitchen-sink spaghetti western. Think Mike Leigh meets Leone in a Manchester council estate. You just know Timothy Spall would make a great Tuco the Terrible. So what if that was Mexico and this is Argentina? This is Hollywood, dammit!

http://www.google.com/search?q=argentina+ponchos&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=1059&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=RvbCTrfnEIeViQLJorTNCw&sqi=2&ved=0CG0QsAQ

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Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

If it weren't for Thatcher standing up to the Argentines all you Brits would be speaking Spanish and wearing Ponchos now!

and maybe our football team would be half decent

Beautiful women, great steaks, Jorge Luis Borges - I for one will welcome our new Argentine overlords.

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Originally Posted by Glisten 

Beautiful women, great steaks, Jorge Luis Borges - I for one will welcome our new Argentine overlords.

Didnt Borges say that the Malvines War was pretty much "two bald guys fighting over a comb"?

I hoping the movie evoids being a panderous biopic, given the controversial and divise nature of the subject in the public eye, but we'll be getting one hell of a performance by Street no matter what.