The Iron Lady

Meryl Streep Berlinale Masterclass: What the Oscar winner finds useless and stupid and un-artistic

February 19, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

meryl in berlin 2 On Sunday, Meryl Streep addressed a select group of actors and filmmakers at the Berlinale and I was fortunate enough to attend as tickets were scarce. While I wrote about her for VF.com, here’s more from the event, and the actress discussing directors Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood:

When asked by the British critic Peter Cowie if acting with a lot of makeup in The Iron Lady inhibited her acting, MERYL responded: “I feel I must disabuse. I was not wearing any make up. There are great things that they can do with lighting or not do. It’s fantastic. You can’t have a long career and really play a lot of different kinds of characters of all different ages and maintain your magazine-cover vanity. You just can’t. It’s useless and stupid and it’s un-artistic and who cares.”

About her preparation to play Thatcher, Streep said: “I prepared wildly. I read five biographies. I read some man who was the Samuel Pepys of his time in 70s London and noted every time she came to dinner — Woodrow Wyatt I listened to her obsessively. I watched film of her. And then I threw it away. We were concerned with her private life. It was on power in decline. After she’s out of power, the confrontation with mortality….when we feel least certain that is when we lash out most vehemently. When we feel attacked and not able to withstand it.”
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Adams on Reel Women: Oscar winner Streep asks, ‘Why don’t they want the money?’

June 29, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Where the girls are: Rudolph, Wiig, Streep, Stone

Earlier this month, Meryl Streep talked numbers at the Women in Film Lucy & Crystal Awards. To paraphrase her point, there were five movies over five years — “The Help” (2011) “Bridesmaids” (2011), “The Iron Lady” (2011), “Mamma Mia!” (2008), and “The Devil Wears Prada” (2008) — that earned a collective $1.6 billion for Hollywood. True, she starred in three of them, but if they had been cop movies, zombie thrillers, or Westerns, there would be a stream of films trying to cash in on the women’s market. So Streep’s question — “Why don’t studios want the money?” — hangs heavy in the air.

TV Writer Nell Scovell (“Warehouse 13,” “Monk”) had the most straightforward answer: “They want the money but don’t want to give women the power. It’s a conundrum.”

Animator Signe Baumane responded: “I think Hollywood is stuck in the notion that only 21-year-old men go to movies. The New Yorker article on Ben Stiller says that much too. Big studios are like big animals, they can’t adapt to small changes quickly, but small changes accumulate into BIG ones before soon.”

We hope so. In the meantime, where do we stand?

Those five movies are just the tip of the iceberg

If you add in the year’s top grosser, “The Hunger Games,” and the movies from “The Twilight Saga,” that earnings number grows exponentially. Then there’s a surprise hit like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which grossed approximately $38 million domestically and $121 million internationally on the backs of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith (anybody who’s watched TV’s “Downton Abbey,” starring Smith as the dowager matriarch who speaks her very sharp mind, wouldn’t be surprised). Add in the gushy Nicholas Sparks drama “The Vow” with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and there’s another 2012 film that hosed up $194 million globally, following on other films in the successful Sparks franchise (“The Notebook,” “Dear John”), which have frugal production budgets and easily earn out theatrically. Toss in the female-dominated action franchises like Kate Beckinsale’s “Underworld” ($459 million worldwide) and Milla Jovovich’s “Resident Evil” ($675 million worldwide) and the money grows. You, readers, can probably add more to this list.

One answer: The demographics within Hollywood

When it comes to green-lighting films in Hollywood, women don’t have their hands on the switch — and those who do tend to be part of a male scrum. They made it to the top by assimilating into the male studio culture, not by rebelling against it. On the production side, a San Diego State University study last year found that among writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, producers, and executive producers, the division of labor was 82 percent men and 18 percent women. The disconnect is that the audiences do not reflect that same split. The gap between 18 percent and 51 percent is a red flag. Serving that market has a huge profit potential. Healthy industries should be constantly seeking growth, and this is an underserved market.

Another answer: The power of critics as gatekeepers

The critics function as gatekeepers — telling readers what to see and what to skip. Guess what? Men dominate that arena, too. That’s why we’ve seen Michael Cera lose his virginity so many times in coming-of-age comedies and there were so many inexplicably positive reviews for “The Three Stooges.” A San Diego State study based on 100 newspapers, in 2007, concluded that men dominate movie criticism in a way that echoes male dominance behind the screen. In a study conducted by Martha M. Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, 77 percent of film critics are male. As a female member of the New York Film Critics Circle, which includes newspaper, magazine, and online critics, I’ve always been a fortunate minority. According to our website (www.nyfcc.com), there are 31 members, including the late Andrew Sarris. Of that number, seven (or 23 percent) are female — and that’s considerable growth since I joined the organization in 1995.

One solution: Women, vote with your box-office dollars:

Go see “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” or Streep’s upcoming middle-age marriage comedy, “Hope Springs,” or the cluster of microbudgeted and intensely satisfying movies like Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister”; Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz” (opening Friday); or Nancy Savoca’s “Union Square” (opening July 13). If we build the audience, the product will come — and it will come from a variety of sources, small and large.

Another solution: Women, make movies

Meryl Streep joined with director Phyllida Lloyd to make “Mamma Mia!” and “The Iron Lady.” She voted with her box-office clout. This is what Mira Sorvino is doing with “Union Square,” Emily Blunt with “Your Sister’s Sister,” and Drew Barrymore with her underrated movie “Whip It!”

And another solution: Opening-weekend grosses are not king, er, queen

Let’s ignore Hollywood’s obsession with opening-weekend numbers and echo models like that of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” building the female audiences one movie and one weekend at a time. Carla Stockton, editor in chief of Dapt’d, explained: “Women, especially women in the next-up age brackets, are more likely to weigh critics’ reviews, friends’ word of mouth, etc., and they will wait to see the film till it’s been out awhile. Too much focus, it seems, gets placed on opening weekend. So, while the industry is aware that we want films with strong women’s POV, it is intimidated by the pressure of first weekend from delving too deeply into that fountain. I also think we writers must persevere in creating more, better, stronger, more compelling women for stage and screen.”

[Related: ‘To Rome With Love’ star Greta Gerwig is wild about Woody Allen — just read her high school yearbook]

I’m definitely with Carla: We’re listening, and we’re going to be writing, producing, and directing the movies we want to see — and supporting them in print. And when one person speaks out, like Streep did, we’ll rally around her, until our voices are heard.

And there’s some reason for optimism. According to USA Today’s Susan Wloszczyna: “I think much like Snow White, they are slowly waking up to the fact that if you please them, women will show up in hordes, and even for more than one viewing. I was astonished and gratified that ‘Snow White and the Huntsman,’ which is essentially an action film with two female leads, did so well. How often does that happen? And even Pixar finally woke up and smelled the estrogen with “Brave.” There is movement afoot. The female screenwriting ranks have been growing, and now there just needs to be more female directors doing big studio films.”

See the trailer for ‘Brave’:

Yahoo! Exclusive: Conspiracy Theories and Meryl Streep’s Best Actress Upset

March 3, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Oscars, Academy Awards, Best Actress, Snubs, Surprises

Streep as Thatcher: She's iron not Teflon

It was a surprise that Meryl Streep trumped Viola Davis for the best-actress Oscar — but it was no shock. The “Doubt” co-stars were neck-and-neck the entire season. Rooney Mara winning: That would have been freaky.

On Sunday night, the major races had been called, the supporting categories had gone as predicted, and at the 11th hour Streep beat Davis. On Feb. 28, latimes.com’s Steven Zeitchik used the upset to spin conspiracy theories about the race under the headline “What Was Behind Meryl Streep’s Upset Win?”

Zeitchik actually quoted snippets overheard in an elevator on Oscar night — because no studio executive ever lies to the face of a movie star in a moving box. According to latimes.com, Disney/ABC Television President Anne Sweeney shared the lift with newly minted Oscar winner Octavia Spencer. Sweeney confessed that she was “upset. I feel bad for Viola.” When Spencer asked how it could have happened, Sweeney reportedly said, “I have my theories.” But Sweeney did not share them. And, besides, it sounds more ominous without elaboration.

Only two days before, Los Angeles Times theater critic Charles McNulty came clean about his “Streep Problem” in a pre-Oscar pile-on. McNulty got his knickers in a twist about how none of his friends wanted to see “The Iron Lady” with him. They would rather see “Shame” (which is interesting because they share a writer: Abi Morgan) first, or “Pina.”

Apparently the friend-o-meter went out with the buddy system. And as a way for a professional critic to root his own distaste for a performer (he strips Streep’s talent bare), or a film, it’s critique by peer pressure and should be left on the playground. Certainly, Streep has never followed the crowd — and that may be the root of her problem this year when she wasn’t playing beloved eccentric Julia Child. Instead, she was playing the controversial first female prime minister of the Western world.

After a very long Oscar race, I have come to believe that many Americans of the critical classes are just uncomfortable with a movie that takes a political figure who’s supposed to be “evil” and doesn’t treat her like Kim Jong-Il — either as the butt of jokes or Satan’s second coming. We have sadly become that polarized.

I have said elsewhere that someday American audiences will be able to look at Oliver Stone’s “W” with clarity, and recognize Josh Brolin’s brilliance as George W. Bush. But it didn’t happen at the 2008-09 Oscars. This was not a problem when Forest Whitaker won an Oscar for playing Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.” He had his charming moments, but he was clearly bad to the bone. Bravo! And brave, too.

“It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive,” the famous French intellectual socialist Charles Peguy said in 1905. It’s still true in 2012.

The Los Angeles Times theater critic snarked about Streep as Thatcher: “Such a star turn may earn her more bric-a-brac, but it certainly won’t enrich her talent.” I must have seen a different movie. While I juggled Davis and Streep as Oscar front-runners while covering the race, I never doubted the talent or merit of either actress.

Many things stand out about “The Iron Lady,” a cameo-sized biopic that echoes “The Queen” (for which Helen Mirren won an Oscar) or “The Deal.” The opening sequence sets the tone for those who are open to it: a wandering elderly Thatcher leaves her gilded cage of an empty London apartment to go to the market. The granny that once governed a good chunk of the world now suffers in silence and befuddlement as she’s buffeted by disrespectful young men and can’t quite register how milk has gotten so expensive. It’s a petal-thin moment of individual grace beautifully, quietly captured by Streep under an unflattering headscarf. Unlike Leo DiCaprio in “J. Edgar,” the actress disappears beneath the makeup — the makeup doesn’t wear her. We believe her to be Thatcher, if we leave our preconceptions at the door like well-behaved houseguests.

Thatcher’s moment on the phone with her far-flung grown son is equally heartbreaking — he’s in South Africa with his own family and no more likely to rush home than she was when she was remaking the world and he was a schoolboy. The power relationship has shifted. It hurts, but it’s not conveyed with a Medea wail. That wasn’t her way, nor is it Streep’s in this carefully calibrated performance. Streep’s Thatcher is a woman who has made decisions in her life, and now all the decisions have come home to roost.

This Maggie — and she is a fictional construct within factual parameters — is not a self-questioner, she’s a doer. That element of her character that pushed her to the pinnacle of power is also her Achilles’ heel. When Streep and director Phyllida Lloyd discuss their Thatcher in terms of King Lear, that’s what they are referencing. “One of the themes was how our significance diminishes,” Lloyd told Indiewire. “We thought of this as a ‘King Lear’ for girls.”

“The Iron Lady” is not about conservative ideology; it’s about universal humanity — and the human costs for choices that took place on the public stage. And, yes, this does not deny that Thatcher’s decisions as prime minister impacted many other humans and changed the face of England forever.

And what, ultimately, I cherish in this movie may be precisely what drew Streep and Lloyd and Morgan to the project. This is a portrait of an intelligent woman created in their own image, a professional who refused to wash up the tea things for the men around her. Their Thatcher is feminism in action, if not in identification. She doesn’t work hard to be liked. And some of the resistance to the movie, to Streep, is that totally uncool, friends-won’t-like-it element: that this is a portrait of a woman who, unlike “The Queen,” refused to play well with others when it comes to being a woman in power. To the victor should go the spoils — why should women be any different? And, certainly, Streep, at another peak of a peak-filled career, understands that the resistance to women succeeding still exists and, apparently, it’s not considered entirely polite to point this out.

Viola Davis? Meryl Streep? And What Ever Happened to Kirsten Dunst? The Yahoo! Best Actress Roundtable Dishes

February 5, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Viola Davis,The Help,Bestseller,Kathryn Stockett,Best Actress,Oscars 2012,Best Supporting Actress

Davis has a lot to smile about

I enjoy sitting around with my friends and chatting about Oscars — the discussions tend to be knowledgeable and irreverent. For our first Yahoo! roundtable I welcome my colleagues Jonathan Crow and Matt Whitfield, as well as actress-director Jordan Bayne, “Movie Mom” Nell Minow, IndieWire blogger Melissa Silverstein, Oscar obsessive Nathaniel Rogers, and the Hot Pink Pen blogger Jan Lisa Huttner. Now that the Oscar nominees have been announced, we unscrewed the top off our virtual bottle of Chardonnay and began…

Thelma Adams: When I first looked at this race last September, I wondered whether Viola Davis was going to be considered as a leading role for “The Help,” and now she’s the front-runner after taking the SAG award last Sunday night. As for me, I adore Meryl — 29 years since her last Oscar win! I also feel that if she can live with Viola Davis winning, so can I. One of them will come out on top next month, but I’m really mourning Kirsten Dunst getting completely shut out. Could that be why she was canoodling with Chris Hemsworth last week at Sundance?

Jordan Bayne: Streep deserves to win for this performance in “The Iron Lady.” Taking nothing away from any of her other remarkable performances, even I had to struggle to remember this was Streep and not Margaret Thatcher in front of me. Not even an Oscar can hold a candle to her talent.

Matt Whitfield: A few weeks ago, I was convinced Michelle [Williams] had it in the bag. Then I boarded the Meryl train. Now, I’m thinking Rooney [Mara] has a legit shot. The academy loves an ingénue.

Learn the latest about movies >>

Thelma: Rooney Mara? I know the academy loves an ingénue, and Mara looks terrific in black on the red carpet, but in my mind she makes Kristen Stewart look expressive as Bella in the “Twilight” series. I feel like Rooney is constantly looking out from under her lashes for the approval of some Daddy at the corner of the screen and, in the case of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” that Daddy is David Fincher.

Matt: We should be talking about Kirsten Dunst vs. Charlize Theron because they delivered the two best performances of the year. Both were robbed.

Thelma: I’m totally with you there, Matt.

Nathaniel Rogers: Thelma, I’m wearing black all this week as I’m also in Kiki mourning. The way she let her innate dreaminess as an actress curdle and sour for [Lars] von Trier’s vision in “Melancholia” Is amazing! But, happy thoughts. “Momentum” is powerful in the awards games, and two straight years of acclaimed performances for Dunst should help her next time. I mean, look what three straight years of acclaimed work did for Tilda Swin … oh, wait! [Read more…]

Unwitting Feminist: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady”

December 29, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Meryl Streep, Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady, Feminism, Women in Politics

Streep raises eyebrows as Thatcher (Miramax)

My latest — and possibly most controversial — column on AMC Filmcritic.com:

Meryl Streep has been raking in awards and nominations for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. But accolades for best picture, best director, or best script? Zip.

That’s the conventional wisdom on The Iron Lady: Streep deserves the Oscar for playing the British Prime Minister, but director Phyllida Lloyd does not craft a movie equal to the performance. That’s typically when someone snorts that Lloyd also directed the critically panned Mamma Mia! Reality check:

Not only did that musical showcase a bold, silly, sexy, singing Streep, it was also her all-time biggest money-maker, grossing $610 million worldwide.

No one expects that kind of global take for Streep’s current biopic. The Oscar winner is consistently so fantastic that when she channels Thatcher, political icon and real woman, audiences tend to be a little jaded about her talent. What can’t this actress do?

Still, as Thatcher, Streep faces steep resistance: Few liked Maggie — at least not publicly. She was the cod liver oil of politicians, nasty but effective. Working with Lloyd, Meryl creates a monumental woman in sensible shoes, from early ambition to late dementia. She takes this Tory tyrant and creates if not a feminist role model then a formidable woman who refused to wash the teacups of the lesser men around her, and boldly went where no Englishwoman had gone before: 10 Downing Street.

Streep herself defined the challenge inherent in playing a powerful woman onscreen: “There’s no part like this because there’s no woman like this. I’m going to turn that down because I don’t like her politics? My God,” Streep told Donna Freydkin of USA Today, “Part of what interested me about this whole thing was seeing why we are so uncomfortable on a certain level with women leaders and with their male partners feeling diminished. It’s an interesting thing for us to contemplate.”

More than 20 years after her political reign, Thatcher’s detractors remain impassioned. And her legacy is controversial. In 2009, Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the liberal Labour government, released a fact sheet celebrating “Women in Power: Milestones.” Oops! The list omitted Thatcher’s name. Another reality check: Maggie was the longest-presiding British P.M. in the twentieth century, winning three general elections, as well as being the first woman to lead the Conservative Party and to become Prime Minister.

What we have here is a controversial woman in power (and a meaty character onscreen) whose rise was all the more remarkable because she was a grocer’s daughter who attended Oxford University, where she got an incredible education in both academics and class snobbery. Thatcher as written (and in reality) was a woman, wife, mother, and leader who drove her own destiny. She was a women’s libber role model without embracing the feminist movement.

Sophisticated audiences of both sexes would like to believe that they are undeterred by the prospect of a powerful woman. However, the cries that this movie should confront Thatcherite politics and her ideology miss the point. It’s a telling sign of resistance to a movie where a woman is unabashedly carrying the narrative.

Much like Stephen Frears’s 2006 Oscar-nominated The Queen, which delivered Helen Mirren a best actress Oscar, The Iron Lady constructs a very personal look back at a living legend’s private life and public career. In this case, it’s seen through the lens of a widowed, out-of-power Thatcher recalling the past subjectively through the lens of dementia. Nothing could make this chosen point-of-view clearer than the opening scene, when the elderly, anonymous Thatcher wanders out to buy milk and is shocked by the current price of a pint — and her disrespectful treatment by fellow customers. We meet this once-powerful character at a point of intense yet mundane vulnerability, and we empathize. The scene succeeds because Streep, too, seeks anonymity within the role. She disappears, humanizing the public figure in these private moments.

A parallel situation was the reception to Oliver Stone’s 2008 W. Critical reaction to this brilliant film with a terrific title performance by Josh Brolin as George W. Bush was filtered through writers’ understandable resistance to embrace the man and sacrifice political pieties. At Filmcritic.com, the DVD review led with politics: “As President Bush’s second term winds down and the race for 2008 spins at fevered pace, now is the time to make a statement — reflecting on the failures of the current administration and projecting our hopes for the next. Oliver Stone’s W. is not that statement.” The truth was: Stone wanted to give us the man and his psychology, not the straw man or the messiah. No Oscar there, but plenty of critical censure.

Resistance to The Iron Lady as a whole, rather than simply a single Streep performance, reflects
unspoken but existing conflicts. Liberal viewers are not supposed to like this woman, but if we get wrapped up in the story as we should, then we do. If we deny her humanity, what does that say about our own politics? If women can’t recognize her struggle to make a difference outside the home simply because her beliefs are at odds with ours, what does that say about our notions of inclusiveness? Love her or hate her, Thatcher was the rare decisive woman in power who fearlessly took unpopular and difficult stands that she thought right, darn the costs of popularity among voters, the media, and her colleagues.

In light of Stone’s W., it may also suffer from a gender-neutral problem in American politics, where we have become so polarized, and self-centered, that we lose sight of the humanity of the opposition — male or female — when they fail to confirm our own convictions.