Shakespeare wrote,"An honest tale speeds best being plainly told " The movie "The First Lady " is neither. It is a grotesque depiction of Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest heroes of liberty in the 20th century, told in such a convoluted manner that what comes through is the story of a cynical, old woman.
The movie starts with Margaret Thatcher as an old and frail woman hallucinating in conversations with her deceased husband. This theme gets repeated constantly throughout the film leaving one to wonder is this a film about the Iron Lady?
The scenes of her tenure as Prime Minister focus on the political struggles from her principles but with hardly any explanation of the successes from those principles. Her greatest accomplishment, the alliance with the United States to end the cold war and break up the Soviet Union, doesn't even get that. It is covered without dialog by only by a 10 second glimpse of Soviet leader Gorbachev and less than a 30 second glimpse of Margaret Thatcher dancing with Ronald Reagan.
Margaret Thatcher gave herself to something bigger than herself -liberty. She showed us what we all can be capable of at a time when the world desperately needs heroes.
It is ironic that the freedom that Margaret Thatcher fought for allows Hollywood the freedom to distort her life into some kind of Greek tragedy in such a way that the film "The Iron Lady" isn't even entertaining fiction. But Shakespeare would comment "Give the Devil his due, for thy own safety's sake."
John Aiello Hewitt