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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Trailer of the Day: The Iron Lady

From the director of Mamma Mia!, the highest-grossing British movie of all time (?!?!), here comes another tale with Meryl Streep at the centre. Even more so in this one. In the upcoming "The Iron Lady", she portrays - well, it's obvious, isn't it? - the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister that reigned from 1979 to 1990 and that put her mark on Britain and British politics. Literally. Google Thatcherism if you don't believe me.

The trailer does not present us with anything special. There is the King's Speechesque fooling around during a session with a therapist/trainer/adviser type individual. There is the root of a conflict with the husband (played by Jim Broadbent). It has the necessary inspirational "Hero wants to achieve something great" or "Hero fights for something/ with someone/ against all odds" Aaand there are the obvious full page adds for Academy Award Winner. But all that aside, isn't Meryl Streep completely morphed into the woman herself?

Stylistically, I feel too great a similarity with the King's Speech. Ok, I see you take the true story of a personality with historical importance, you add an excellent cast, and you tell that story. But it is a bit cheating if you ride The King's Speech wave of popularity, change the personality, find something else to drive the story other than a speech impediment, and you get a few Oscars and a few hundred millions for it. I hope it will not be the case because Thatcher's story is quite astonishing and it deserves to be given an adequate cinematic rendering. Trailer, below:




Oh, and by the way, the teaser trailer released a while back has the soundtrack stolen from Clint Mansell's Moon. For other complaints about over-used songs: kolcs on Clint Mansell's music




PS. As I was reading kolcs on Clint Mansell's music, I saw that he had complained about this as well.

3 comments:

  1. and i also posted this trailer, the teaser one. that's what started the clint mansell post.

    i was thinking about posting the new trailer, since it seemed a logical, since i already posted the teaser, but i was too slow. just as rutzky was too slow with snow white

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  2. I mentioned that you had said smth about the teaser trailer in my PS :) any opinions on what i said about king's speech?

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  3. one of us is not quite following the other one. not only did i say something about the teaser, i posted the teaser previously to the clint mansell post, and already expressed an opinion about the film.

    1. i don't think it is riding the king's speech wave of popularity. i think production probably started before that film had the succes. nor do i think they are stylistically similar. sure, they're both biopics about british rulers, but that's pretty much it. the king's speech is about the one story of his impediment and his relationship with geoffrey rush, here we have more of a oliver stone type biopic. so probably more comparable to "ray" or "gandhi", though no film will be ever comparable to that one. biopics with a great cast are nothing new, and they usually are oscar favorites. besides the king's speech was based on a play (even though it won the oscar for best original script, even though the director said in his speech that he adapted it from a play...best original script, think about it! this people are retardet), so the way the story is built is very different from your classical-adapted-from-real-life biopic. thus it is more apt to say that the king's speech is riding the wave caused by "the queen" and "frost/nixon". "the iron lady" is rather in the same vein with "milk".
    2. about meryl streep. i don't like her in this one. it just seems she mimics rather than acts. at no point those she seem anything else than an actress with prosthetics who gives a first rate impersonation of Thatcher. sean penn seemed lost and absorbed by his role, i don't feel it here.

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