Ed. Note: In August of 2010, Big Hollywood reviewed the “Iron Lady” screenplay. Looks as though we got it right Of course, guessing that any film about Margaret Thatcher would be a smear job is no real stretch.
Today’s Daily Mail:
Friends of Margaret Thatcher last night expressed their revulsion at a new film that shows her having nightmares about the miners’ strike and the Falklands War, while her late husband Denis appears as a ghost in a pink turban raging at her -‘insufferable’ selfishness.
Viewers invited to an early screening of the film, The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as the former Prime Minister and Jim Broadbent as Sir Denis, were aghast at the way that it mocks her frail condition in recent years.
One called it ‘insulting’. Another said: ‘I didn’t come here to see a film about granny going mad.
One person who attended the event, organised by Anglo-French film-makers Pathe to test audience reaction, has given a detailed account to The Mail on Sunday.
In the film, Lady Thatcher constantly hallucinates, under the impression that her husband, who died in 2003, is still alive.
Pathe says the story is about ‘power and the price that is paid for power’ and claims her health is ‘treated with sensitivity’. It concedes the film is fiction but says it is ‘fair and accurate’.Made by Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady is based on a script by UK screenwriter Abi Morgan, whose television drama credits include The Hour and Sex Traffic.
Friends of Lady Thatcher are also furious at the timing of the film, which is due to be released in January. The former Prime Minister has been forced to give up public appearances following a series of strokes and is so poorly she was unable to attend the unveiling of a statue of her political ally Ronald Reagan in London last month.
Read full piece here.