AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Watching a series of movies and biopics dealing with extraordinary individuals, one notes a ubiquitous and disconcerting tendency to debunk or diminish their rare achievements and remarkable characters. It is almost as if a spirit of envy or resentment is implicit in what purports to be a celebration or, at the very least, a neutral account of their accomplishments.
For example, the Netflix blockbuster
The Crown delivers an entirely unflattering portrait of Britain’s brilliant and most effective prime minister since Churchill, Margaret Thatcher. It was Thatcher’s clarity and determination—her “intimidating personality and her complete mastery of the business in hand,” as David Cannadine writes in