Two Iron Ladies

Oh for crying out loud, give Meryl her third Oscar! The Iron Lady is not a perfect film, but I can’t find a more perfect performance than Streep’s as Thatcher. What in heaven’s name does this woman have to do to earn that third Oscar? Bowl a perfect 300 left-handed while singing Casta Diva better than Callas? I tried and tried to find just one Streep-attributed mannerism in that performance and I could not. It was an incarnation.

Yes, Streep embodied an aged Thatcher, (and if one person mentions prosthetic makeup I’ll scream NICOLE KIDMAN BY A NOSE!)  but this Thatcher could have been any aged woman suffering from dementia. If one were to take Margaret Thatcher out of the equation, we all would marvel at Streep’s ability to accurately posture herself into someone we all fear: You and me in our dotage. According to articles, Meryl didn’t get to see Thatcher in her private life, or meet her, so she had to innovate. She had no choice. And it was frighteningly accurate. She did all the things my mother does in her dementia-like moments. I especially remember once wanting to help my mother put away clothes that were draped over a chair for a way-too-long period of days, and having her tell me to leave them there because she had “plans” for them. She did eventually move them when she was ready. I saw Meryl’s confused memory and the search for clarity in her eyes; and the dulling of the irises.  She had the stooped back and the faltering steps — yes, Meryl nailed it. And maybe it was all fiction but it was the best darn fiction she has done in years.

The movie wasn’t perfect but it was a catalyst, at least for me, to reacquaint myself with the Falklands War. I had (shamefully) completely forgotten that there were so many casualties. I was living an uncomplicated life during those times. I had a small black and white TV with rabbit ears but I followed the conflict for all the wrong reasons. You see, about ten years earlier I had taken a 17-day cruise aboard the s.s. Canberra. It was a wonderful cruise which was only blemished by one bout of sea sickness in the Strait of Gibraltar. The Canberra was the flagship of the P&O lines; well-outfitted and enormous. It was about half the tonnage of the QE2 (then the largest liner in the world), but by comparison, the Titanic wasn’t a whole lot bigger than the Canberra. When Thatcher ordered troops to the Falklands, the slightly-rusty Canberra and the QE2 served as troopships during the Crisis. The Canberra also ferried defeated Argentinians back to their mainland. So I followed the war because I followed the ship. Anyway, toward the end of The Iron Lady I thought, just for a moment, that I saw documentary footage of troops aboard the Canberra returning home to a jubilant crowd. I’ll have to rent The Iron Lady DVD and do a freeze frame to see if my eyes really did recognize the Great White Whale. Sadly, I heard that the Canberra was eventually sold, beached, and dismantled for scrap.

It’s a shame that ships like the Canberra, with their sleek looks and cutting bows are disappearing. Now they build them bigger and with smaller draughts to allow them to dock or drop anchor in shallower waters. On the Canberra I had to “walk the plank” (see photo below) down to a boat to take us ashore in Greece. Today’s cruise ships, like the Oasis of the Seas, are ugly. Their decks look like thick pieces of white corrugated cardboard that are stacked high and beyond the dimensions of the barge-like hulls. The tragedy of the Costa Concordia has reminded me that I have always thought, architecturally speaking, that these new cruise ships were structurally imbalanced.

I’m afraid I have digressed from one Iron Lady to another. The very things that keep us alive, water and oxygen, rusts one British Iron Lady, and the elements have already taken the other. I’m sure Meryl can successfully pantomime a cruise ship in a game of Charades, but she has mastered the disconcerting manner and voice of my mother — anyone’s mother — in the twilight of their lives.

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