Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley

I loathed Margaret Thatcher. I loved this film. It's perhaps the best political movie I've ever seen, certainly far far ahead of even the best American political films. It's an interesting approach to document Thatcher's early years rather than her later fame as prime minister. Yet the future leader is strongly evident in Andrea Riseborough's brilliant interpretation of Thatcher as an iron willed flirt. No small feat to transpose the well known Thatcher haughty expression, purposeful gait and swinging handbag to the younger and sexier woman of an earlier era. Rory Kinnear has captured Dennis Thatcher's bumbling anonymity perfectly. And Geoffrey Palmer... The wonderful and versatile Geoffrey Palmer... His curmudgeonly establishment Tory character is priceless. I stumbled on this film on TV Ontario. Rather than watch it, because I was tired, I recorded it. I'm glad I did because the DVD now has a place of honour among my "keepers."

Originally shown as part of a season of programmes on Margaret Thatcher on BBC4, The Long Walk to Finchley presents a very different view of one of British politics most divisive figures. Here we see her not as the strident leader of the 1980s, but as an underdog, in her early years as a prospective Parliamentary candidate. Trying to gain election to Parliament in the 1950s, she is the victim of the establishment, the old boy network, and most especially of prejudice against her as a woman. The film gets across very well her tenacity in fighting for constituency after constituency before finally being selected for the safe seat of Finchley.

Tony Saint's script is actually surprisingly light hearted, full of in-jokes and random innuendo, some of which is quite funny. There are many sly references to future events in Thatcher's life - about to dance with Ted Heath, her predecessor as Conservative leader in the 1970s, she says "You Lead, I'll follow"; Mark Thatcher as a boy says to his mother "Can I go to Africa one day? I won't cause any trouble" (a reference to his becoming lost in the desert in the 1980s); Thatcher to a French waiter "I want a refund; I want my money back!" (EU rebate), etc.

The performances are generally good, especially Andrea Riseborough who successfully captures some of Thatcher's mannerisms and especially her speech, without ever sounded like a straightforward impersonation. More surprisingly, she also captures Thatcher's flirtiness as a young woman, and presents her quite sympathetically. Rory Kinnear's successfully suggest Denis Thatcher's long-suffering nature, while Samuel West is very good as Edward Heath, capturing his essential awkwardness and unsociability. Heath is seen uncomfortably standing by while Thatcher grabs the limelight during the election, or struggling to make small talk while she wins over a luncheon club meeting. The film is quite mischievous in suggesting Thatcher propositioned Heath for, we assume, some kind of political or actual marriage. But there's no evidence for this and it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Like Thatcher, Heath wasn't part of the establishment and he isn't portrayed entirely unsympathetically here, although the script does get some laughs at his expense. After Heath likens a political party to an orchestra and suggests that all elements should work together (implying that Thatcher is too dominant), one of the luncheon club ladies asks the eternal bachelor innocently, "Is that why you prefer playing with your organ alone, Mr Heath?"

The film caused a bit of controversy before it was even finished because Thatcher was apparently going to deploy the F word at one point, in frustration at not being selected for Parliament. In the end she says "Damn the establishment", rather than anything stronger, which is a wise choice. A woman of Thatcher's "respectable" middle class methodist background probably wouldn't have even heard such language in the '50s, but this is something that has cropped up in other recent BBC dramas, including BBC4's The Curse of Steptoe, where period characters don't always use period language.

The Long Walk to Finchley is actually quite entertaining, with the 1950s world of constituency meetings, chaps with pipes, open top sports cars and smoky back rooms, quite successfully evoked. The random jokes can be quite funny (even the title is a sly political reference). But it can be most easily recommended to those with a rough knowledge of, and interest in, British politics of the last 40 years or so.

'The Long Road to Finchley' presents Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) as a flirty and calculating young lady, hell bent on getting into the House of Commons and then on to the top (gamely played by Andrea Riseborough). It deals with her engagement to Denis (Rory Kinnear) and her - at first - friendship with Ted Heath (Samuel West playing the future PM as crippled with shyness and embarrassment around Mrs T), while dealing with her attempts to find a Tory seat to represent.

I loved the flighty character in her hats and pearls striding into the establishment (presented best by Geoffrey Palmer, and no one could display the indignation of England better), alongside her anonymous husband who was only useful to get his wife votes, and their twins who presented a withering annoyance. Despite its refusal to deal seriously with political issues, rather presenting Mrs Thatcher as the feminist dream to empower all women, this drama is interesting, and a good companion piece to the programme about her later years 'Margaret', made a year later.

It certainly needed that sub-title 'How Maggie Might Have Done It' - freeing the producers to serve up a pick-'n-mix docu-drama that does at least hold the attention happily enough for an hour and a half.

Much is made of the tortured relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath, the Conservatives' young-man-to-watch in 1949 when the story starts. But it is stretching credulity too far when Heath tries to fight-down his romantic feelings for the flirty Margaret (which she wasn't, when young) and ends up using his influence to get her a winnable seat in Finchley, just to spite her predecessor, a crusty old-style Tory prejudiced against candidates with working-class backgrounds - like Heath!

But it is prejudice against women candidates that bulks-up bigger in the story, accentuated further by the voters' apparent need to trust a candidate with a good war behind him. (Just count the medals on show at those constituency meetings.) There is a poignant scene where Margaret suddenly collapses in tears at yet another rejection. All her life, she had been assured that talent and hard work would take you wherever you wanted, and now she learns that it's not that simple. At these moments, we see how much she needs the apparently redundant Denis as a shoulder to lean on - realistically played by Rory Kinnear, even though the famous lordly voice is replaced by something closer to John Major's classless delivery. Clearly the producers discouraged the temptation to impersonate rather than act. Samuel West's Heath conveys all of the man's social awkwardness, but stops short of replicating the curious hybrid accent that always seemed to reveal a man uncomfortable in his skin.

Andrea Riseborough, as Margaret, sometimes verges on caricature (those mannerisms!), but the sheer gusto of her performance heightens her credibility in the role, as she shares with us both her soaring ambition and her vulnerability and private self-doubt. And don't miss scene-stealer Georgie Glen as the minor official at the Finchley conservative group, slowly warming towards Margaret, and giving vital encouragement when she seemed to be losing.

As the story ends long before she achieves ministerial office, we have to sit through a whole lot of amateurish nudge-nudge referencing of future events in her career - her demands for a better deal from the EU, the school milk controversy, son Mark's misadventures in Africa, even a suggestion of 'Anyone for Denis?' as he marches proudly into the maternity ward, declaring "We're going to win the Ashes back!"

Also the production values are a bit uneven. Too many lines are simply lost through poor acoustics, especially in the restaurant scene when she is apparently prompting Denis to propose to her. The dialogue is unlikely enough anyway, but the crucial question and answer are literally impossible to catch.

Andrea Riseborough, who reminds me of Claire Hoy in The Crown, sometimes actually looks and sounds more like Queen Elisabeth, than Margaret Thatcher. But, she, along with a number of well-known actors and actresses have done a fairly decent job of portraying her rise to power in this production. It's not a documentary and that shows with the occasional foray into imagined conversations and interactions with various characters and scenarios. An interesting but not great interpretation of how this willful and determined woman overcame many obstacles in her fight to gain a place in parliament. She may not have thought of herself as a 'feminist', but she was certainly not the traditional wife and mother that the Conservative Party expected her to be. However one views her, she is still as divisive now as she was then. Her policies and beliefs shaped her whole life and changed Britain in many ways. An okay production but to be taken with a grain of salt.