Tag: Richard E. Grant

The Iron Lady (2011)


Meryl Streep impersonates the Iron Lady to excellent effect in this otherwise bland and forgettable, compromised mess of a picture

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Cast: Meryl Streep (Margaret Thatcher), Jim Broadbent (Denis Thatcher), Olivia Colman (Carol Thatcher), Roger Allam (Gordon Reece), Nicholas Farrell (Airey Neave), Iain Glen (Alfred Roberts), Richard E. Grant (Michael Heseltine), Anthony Head (Sir Geoffrey Howe), Harry Lloyd (Young Denis Thatcher), Michael Pennington (Michael Foot), Alexandra Roach (Young Margaret Thatcher), John Sessions (Edward Heath)

In British politics has there been a figure as controversial as Margaret Thatcher? A domineering Prime Minister who reshaped the country (for better or worse depending on who you speak to), crafting a legacy in the UK’s politics, economy and society that we will continue to feel for the foreseeable future, she’s possibly one of the most important figures in our history. It’s a life rich for a proper biographical treatment; instead, it gets this film.

The film’s framing device is focused on the ageing Thatcher (Meryl Streep), now dealing with onset dementia and having detailed conversations with her deceased husband Denis (Jim Broadbent). Cared for by her daughter Carol (Olivia Colman), she reflects on her political career and the sacrifices she made personally to achieve these. Woven in and out of this are Thatcher’s increasingly disjointed memories of her political career.

The most surprising thing about this film is how little it actually wants to engage with Thatcherism itself. Perhaps aware that (certainly in the UK) Thatcher remains an incredibly divisive figure, the film’s focus is actually her own struggles with grief and approaching dementia. Her career as PM is relegated to a series of flashbacks and short scenes, which fill probably little more than 20-30 minutes of the runtime, shot and spliced together as a mixture of deliberately subjective memories and fevered half-dreams. Can you imagine a film about Thatcher where Arthur Scargill and the miners’ strike doesn’t merit a mention? You don’t need to: thanks to The Iron Lady it now exists. 

Perhaps Thatcher’s politics were considered to “unlikeable” – certainly, one imagines, by its writer and director – to be something to craft a film around, so it was thought better to brush them gently under the table. Instead the focus is to make Thatcher as sympathetic as possible to a viewer who didn’t share her politics, by concentrating on her struggles against sexism in the 1950s and her struggles with age late on. Why not accept what Thatcher stood for and make a film (for better or worse) about that? Perhaps more material on her actual achievements in office were shot and cut (the film does have a very short run time and underuses its ace supporting cast), but the whole film feels fatally compromised – which is more than a little ironic since it is about a woman famous for her lack of compromise.

In fact it’s rather hard to escape the view that Roger Ebert put forward: “few people were neutral in their feelings about [Thatcher], except the makers of this picture”. It’s a film with no real interest in either politics or history, the two things that defined Thatcher’s entire life. And as if to flag up the mediocre nature of the material they’ve chosen, it’s then interspersed with too-brief cuts to more interesting episodes from Thatcher’s life than those we are watching. Only when the older Thatcher hosts a dinner party and launches into a blistering sudden condemnation of Al-Qaeda and support of military action against terrorism (followed by her casual disregard of a hero-worshipping acolyte) do we ever get a sense of finding out something about her, or of seeing her personality brought to life.

The film’s saving grace is of course Meryl Streep’s terrific impersonation of Thatcher. I call it impersonation as the film so strenuously avoids delving into the events and opinions that shaped Thatcher that Streep gets very little opportunity to really develop a character we can understand, or to present an insight into her. Her performance as the older Thatcher – losing control of her mannerisms, deteriorating over the course of the film – is impressive in its technical accomplishment, but that’s largely what it remains. As the film doesn’t allow us to really know Thatcher, and doesn’t work with what defines her, it largely fails to move us when we see her weak and alone. So for all the accomplishment of Streep’s work, I couldn’t say this was a truly great performance – certainly of no comparison to, say, Day-Lewis as Lincoln or Robert Hardy as Churchill. I’d even say Andrea Riseborough’s performance in TV’s The Long Walk to Finchley told us more about the sort of person Thatcher was than Streep does here.

Despite most of the rest of the cast being under-used though, there are some good performances. Jim Broadbent is very good as Denis Thatcher, although again his performance is partly a ghostly collection of mannerisms and excellent complementary acting. However the chemistry between he and Streep is magnificent and accounts for many of the film’s finest moments. Olivia Colman does sterling work under a bizarre fake nose as a no-nonsense Carol Thatcher. From the all-star cast of British actors, Roger Allam stands out as image-consultant Gordon Reece and Nicholas Farrell is superbly calm, cool and authoritative as Airey Neave. Alexandra Roach and Harry Lloyd are excellent impersonating younger Thatchers.

The Iron Lady could have been a marvellous, in-depth study of the politics of the 1980s, and a brilliant deconstruction and discussion of an era that still shapes our views of Britain today. However, it wavers instead into turning a woman defined by her public role and views into a domestic character, and brings no insight to the telling of it. By running scared of Thatcher’s politics altogether, it creates a film which makes it hard to tell why we should be making a fuss about her at all – making it neither interesting to those who know who Thatcher is, nor likely to spark interest in those who have never heard of her.

Logan (2017)


One looks at the past, the other their potential future in bleak superhero thriller Logan

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Hugh Jackman (Logan), Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier), Boyd Holbrook (Donald Pierce), Stephen Merchant (Caliban), Richard E. Grant (Dr Zander Rice), Dafne Keen (Laura), Eriq La Salle (Will Munson), Elisa Neal (Kathryn Munsun), Elizabeth Rodriguez (Gabriela Lopez)

What were you doing 17 years ago? Personally, I was still at school: but Hugh Jackman was being parachuted into X-Men to take on the role of Wolverine after Dougray Scott’s shooting schedule on Mission Impossible 2 forced him to drop out. Since then he has appeared in eight films as the clawed superhero, some good, some shockingly bad – and this is his swansong. Taking a paycut, Jackman wanted to make the Wolverine “you’ve seen in the comics”: did he succeed?

The year is 2029 and mutants are nearly extinct. Logan (Hugh Jackman) lives in Mexico on an abandoned farm, caring for former X-Men leader Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), now suffering dementia and brain seizures with lethal effects on those around him. When young mutant Laura (Dafne Keen) arrives needing their help, Logan and Charles find themselves (reluctantly in Logan’s case) on one last adventure, travelling to reunite Laura with other new-born mutants – with a band of lethal mercenaries on their tail. Naturally a string of bodies follows in their wake.

Firstly I think its fair warning to say this is a bone-crunchingly, head-skeweringly, blood-spurtingly violent film. It’s easily more violent than every other X-Men film put together quadrupled. It’s also littered with strong swearing. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s not an 18 certificate – lord knows what strings they had to pull. Mangold’s intention is to show us what battle would actually be like if you were fighting with impossibly sharp knives for hands: limbs are hacked off, chests ripped to pieces, heads are punctured, bits of brain litter the floor. 

There is no romanticism of any of this violence – and the film needs to show it, as its primary theme is the impact a life full of this sort of extreme slaughter would have. Even Logan, his regenerative powers severely decayed, stumbles and limps through the action, often totally outmatched by those he fights – even a gang of car thieves get the jump on him in the opening scene. In fact, that scene serves to establish the mood of the film very quickly: Logan is slow and out of shape and eventually has to resort to extreme and brutal violence to desperately end the fight as quickly as possible. 

The action in the film is impressively filmed but never triumphalist in execution, and the overriding emotion is pain and sorrow. In many ways, it’s a bleak and depressing film, with precious little hope (it does find some peace and optimism in the final frames, but it’s almost the first time this happens). It has a huge body count, and many of the deaths hit home as both deserving and undeserving suffer. In this world there are no good decisions – whatever Logan decides to do, people around him suffer: and it’s the truth of this throughout his life that has led to such pain behind his eyes. The film’s comparatively small scale compared to previous films in the franchise helps keep the focus intimate and personal.

Its setting of course brings Westerns to mind, but also in its sense of the grim passing of an age. Emotionally, both Logan and Charles are exhausted and struggling under impossible burdens of guilt and sorrow., it’s a nihilist Western, a homage to especially perhaps to Shane and The Searchers. Mangold’s direction seizes these contrasts and infuses every frame of the film with visual and stylistic homages to this iconic American genre: even the inclusion of X-Men comic books “in-universe” gives the heroes the feeling of being, Wyatt Earp style, living legends, struggling to carry that burden.

Interestingly this is probably one of the first films that feels like a post-Trump movie. The future America it shows is grim and depressing, with big corporations ruling the roost and the little guy trodden down. The health system is a mess. The film is set partly across the border in Mexico (with brutally tight border control preventing easy passage). A large section of the plot even revolves around a desperate attempt to flee across a border before it is closed down. Of course it’s probably just part and parcel of the standard cinematic crapsack future, but right now the tone and mood of the film feels very much in sync with modern America. 

Hugh Jackman is of course front and centre in this film, and you can see straight away this project is a deeply felt one for him. Unlike any other X-Men film before, this is a character study and allows Jackman to first and foremost act. And he is terrific. With Logan’s powers failing, not only is he able to offer a very different physical performance than ever before, he also allows the character’s vulnerability, defensiveness and fear to come to the fore. Jackman explores the continual conflict in the character between his rage and isolation and his empathy and desire to be good. His protectiveness of Charles is balanced throughout by his deliberate distancing himself from Laura, as if he knows anyone whom he allows to get close will suffer. Jackman makes Logan feel old and beaten down, without losing the sense of fire under the surface.

There are in fact terrific performances throughout the film. Patrick Stewart similarly has never had a better written X-Men role in 17 years, and he makes the witty, profane, bitter but still optimistic and kindly Charles Xavier a stand-out. The interplay between him and Jackman is superb, drawing on the emotion of that years of working together on these films. Dafne Keen is a real find as Laura, convincingly feral and never less than compelling, even though she barely speaks for 2/3rd of the film – Mangold’s direction of her is perfect, drawing maximum impact from her performance. She perfectly captures the sense of being a younger version of Logan, struggling to understand the world and the impact of killing: is it any wonder Logan feels uncomfortable looking at her? Boyd Holbook is very good as a dry mercenary while Richard E Grant draws the maximum from limited screentime as a frightingly calm “mad” scientist.

While this is something very different from previous X-Men films, it’s not a perfect film. In terms of violence, I would argue it sometimes goes too far, like an excited child looking to see how far it can push us. It’s main problems are with narrative: far too many plot devices in the film are signposted like Chekov’s Guns, drawn to our attention in a forced way (often twice in case we forgot) so that most audiences could guess where events are going (there is only one real surprise in the film, and that one I defy you to really see coming). Similarly, while the film’s debt to classic Westerns is clear, to have the characters actually sit down and watch Shane seems a little too much (as well as giving a massive hint about the eventual destination this film is heading towards). Mangold’s direction is good but he lacks the profoundity of a Christopher Nolan to give these comic book happenings a shattering depth – their emotional impact comes from our familiarity with these actors in these roles over many years, not quite so much the film itself.

Saying all that, this is something strikingly different and showpieces some terrific performances. It also feels like it has something it wants to tell us about the burdens of violence on a man and how the past always eventually catches up with us.

Jackie (2016)


Jackie Kennedy patrols a White House she will soon be forced to leave behind

Director: Pablo Larrain

Cast: Natalie Portman (Jackie Kennedy), Peter Sarsgaard (Bobby Kennedy), Greta Gerwig (Nancy Tuckerman), Billy Crudup (The Journalist), John Hurt (Father Richard McSorley), Max Casella (Jack Valenti), Richard E. Grant (William Walton), John Carroll Lynch (Lyndon B. Johnson), Beth Grant (Ladybird Johnson), Caspar Phillipson (John F. Kennedy)

“Ask ev’ry person if he’s heard the story

And tell it strong and clear if he has not,

That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory

Called Camelot.”

Or so sang King Arthur in Alan Jay Lerner’s musical Camelot. It’s apt as it’s a musical cue Jackie returns to several times in this thought-provoking, if rather stately, film that with one eye looks to sharply critique the legend building of American political history, while with the other staring with adoration at the very legacy at its centre.

The film follows, in a slightly non-linear fashion, the period of time from Kennedy’s assassination through to his state funeral and Jackie Kennedy’s departure from the White House (although other scenes feature Jackie during the presidency, most notably her filming of A Tour of the White House in 1962, a TV special the film lovingly recreates with a mixture of existing and newly-created footage and audio). The framing device is an interview Jackie gives with an unnamed journalist, set after the events of the film, in which she alternates between frank honesty and careful legacy building – all the time stressing she will decide what is, and is not, printed.

The film is a both a careful deconstruction of legacy building and a celebration of it, with Jackie Kennedy portrayed as a contradictory figure – keen to give her husband a place in history and, at times, resentful of the impact of public interest in her life. In a neat scene, Jackie Kennedy asks the driver of her husband’s hearse if he has heard of the last two Presidential victims of assassination, William T. McKinley or James Garfield. He knows neither. When asked if he has heard of the first, Abraham Lincoln, he of course is able to name check victory in the civil war and the abolition of slavery. It’s a sharp reminder of the work she must do for her husband’s legacy, with his achievements ranking nowhere near Lincoln’s.

The films suggests throughout that the planning of the funeral was focused on giving Kennedy (and by extension Jackie and her children) a permanent place in American folk-lore. It’s why the reprise of Camelot works in the film – it’s sums up the attitudes of America an administration that has indeed lived on as a short time of hope, with Kennedy as the lost Golden Boy. The appropriateness of the song is something the film manages to both use and comment upon – and which it also manages to make feel fresh, despite the fact the “Camelot” has been a nickname for the Kennedy White House ever since the 1960s.

Simultaneously, though, it is a film that lingers with wide-eyed wonder on JFK himself, and which presents LBJ as a far more corrupted and overtly political figure compared to the reverence the film feels for his predecessor (his serial womanising is given only a brief mention by Jackie during her conversation with her priest). Kennedy (played by an actor with a remarkable physical and vocal similarity) is always a romantic figure, his motivations or his achievements very rarely questioned. He’s filmed like the very romantic hero, which the film is half encouraging us to question that he was – and I’m not sure this is deliberate.

The film is acute and quietly non-judgemental throughout the scenes covering the assassination, reaction and funeral plans. So much so, that the framing device of the journalist (Billy Crudup in a thankless part, scruffily dressed, alternately arch and adoring) seems like it belongs in another, dumber, movie – as if we needed Jackie to give voice to her feelings, to actually speak words stressing her power and determination in shaping what is printed about her husband, in order to understand it. It’s an obvious, TV-movie framing device that really adds very little.

This is largely because Natalie Portman gives such a sensational performance in the lead role. As to be expected, it is a brilliant capturing both of Kennedy’s vocal and physical mannerisms. But more than that, it is also a sharp performance of deeply confused grief and guilt over her husband’s fate, mixed with a public strength (at times bordering on furious anger) in her determination to plan a funeral she felt befitted her husband’s status. Weak as the journalist scenes are, she dominates them with her skilful portrayal of a woman split between a need for intimate confession and determination to maintain control over the story.

Portman’s performance also provides the emotional anchor to scenes that could otherwise be careful reconstructions. The assassination itself (filmed within the car) has rarely seemed so immediate – and the camera largely sticks with Portman’s stunned, terrified face throughout the long drive to the hospital. Her combination of lost alienation, bewilderment and shock equally dominates the rushed inauguration of Johnson, while scenes of her returning to the White House to finally remove her blood-stained clothing shimmer with emotional intensity. It’s a film that captures the stunned sense of alienation from reality that comes after undergoing any major, life-changing event.

The film has a ghostly, elegiac mood. Larrain uses rather murky photography effectively throughout the film. The slightly grainy focus given to the general world of the film allows sharper primary colours to stand out at key moments. The Oscar-nominated score for me was, however, far too insistent – a series of sharp notes and discordant sounds mixed with mournful refrains. It draws too much attention to itself and makes the same point too many times to be effective. I suspect its a score that might work better in isolation. Far better are the quiet and controlled shots of Jackie walking listlessly through a deserted White House, or the careful mixing of the tragic and the mundane (when selecting a positon in Arlington for her husband, she has to ask a companion to slow down as her shoes keep getting stuck in the mud).

It’s an intelligent, thought-provoking and adult piece of film-making, that carefully avoids passing judgement or making pronouncements. I can’t decide if it’s a film that can’t make up its mind about events, or if it challenges us to make up our mind for ourselves. Either way, Portman gives an extraordinary performance and is well supported by the rest of the cast, in particular John Hurt who gives a charming, witty performance as the Priest who Jackie allows herself (for a moment) to be completely honest with. A dynamic and interesting addition to JFK films, that manages to find a new angle and even some new ideas from well-worn ground.