MISSING TWO WOMEN & SHOTS OF CLASSICS-HOT COLORS AND HOT WHEELS

MOURNING TWO WOMEN

     Noting the passing of two women over the weekend surprisingly stirred a personal sense of loss and a low rage.

     The end of Margaret Thatcher's long decline into dementia is a merciful release and an occasion to recall her greatness in full power.  I met the Iron Lady and heard her address an American audience.  I didn't agree with all of her politics, but I admired her ability to lead, wield power and was in awe of her use of language.  It was not just her English cadence and pronunciation, it was the eloquence, even the elegance of her word choices and sentence construction.  She was an extraordinarily capable person.     

     Though Meryl Streep's performance was brilliant, I resented the Iron Lady film because its focus on Thatcher's declining years was inappropriate, disrespectful and needless.  

     As a father of daughters I have a special fondness for women of her calibre.

     And perhaps because Ann Smedinghoff is the age of my youngest, I was especially grieved to learn of the death of the US Foreign Service worker in Afghanistan.  She, and other Americans, were killed by terrorists as they delivered textbooks to children.  Her father says the family takes comfort in knowing she was doing something she wanted to do.

    I know, hired and worked with young women and men like Ann Smedinghoff.  Products of good homes, education and sound footing, they choose to work in areas where they could "make a difference" or "provide service."  There are more lucrative and less arduous paths, but some in that generation seek a more active participation in doing something good and meaningful.  She and her colleagues died trying to elevate the third century mentality of that cursed land of war lords, tribes, corruption, and ignorance.

     The Taliban are blamed.  They are the jackal thugs of an evil strain of death breeding zealots who are ignorant cowards that even their own demented version of their god would  surely wish to smite and send to an endless lake of fire. The deaths of the Americans, only the latest chapter as the Taliban once again seeks to destroy reason and leverage the stone age on Afghanistan. 

      Two women, one who fulfilled a life of contribution, the other, at the beginning of her service to humankind, taken tragically.  It's just been hard to shake this sense of loss.

CALIFORNIA CLASSICS

CRUISING CLASSIC

   See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER :) WHAT KIND OF IRON?

REEL THOUGHTS

THE IRON LADY

     First, Meryl Streep is absolutely superb, in all of the 

incarnations she portrays of Margret Thatcher.  

        In many ways the film is also superb, but it has a center of gravity that is disturbing and disrespectful.  

      Thatcher was one of the towering characters of the late

20th Century. Obviously she was a barrier breaker and an historic figure.  Regardless of her politics, and people are still divided about that, she deserves a more appropriate lens by which to view her life and influence.

      Screen writer Abi Morgan, whose credits are the movie Shame and TV movies, is inauthentic, disingenuous

and probably a wholesale fabricator in using an increasingly

incapacitated Lady Thatcher as the touchstone from which she launches into memories.  Speaking with her husband's ghost as a point of departure, for example. It is distasteful, contrived and demeaning to a true historic character.

     The director Phyllida Lloyd, a well regarded director in

British Theater, presides over a film that could have been

brilliant had it not been for her and Morgan's penchant to  make it a bit of a cheap English tattler.

     Despite those serious weaknesses in structure, Streep, Jim Broadbent as Dennis Thatcher and Alexandra Roach as a young Iron Lady were all brilliant. The film is well made

except for its orientation of focus.

      Thatcher's life was towering enough to find another through-line or means of story connection.  Seeing her in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease is cheap and in many ways a bit of a shot at her. There is enough known about her, that Morgan and Lloyd didn't have to resort to contriving scenes of

the once elegant lady rummaging around her apartment, disheveled and demented. 

      A personal note-the thing I remember about Margret 

Thatcher, made indelible in my meeting her after she had 

left office, was her supreme command and eloquent use of 

English. She spoke as well as anyone I've known or have seen.

She could be tough, yes, but so well spoken.

      There is a lot about the film that is commendable,

but the horrible contrivance of seeing her as a failing old 

woman is an artistic license that should earn scorn for Lloyd and Morgan. Streep on the other hand becomes more legendary by her uncanny and brilliant work though I wish she had not been called on to play some scenes.

GREAT THATCHER MOMENTS

A Young Iron Lady  1975

Later as PM in the House of Parliament

(Turn up the volume on this)

THE FILM VERSION

Have a good weekend. 

Enjoy the Super Bowl-at least there is a

Manning in it.

See you down the trail.