Every movie has to be adapted a bit when you translate it for a new audience in a foreign country, and The Iron Lady is no different. The Meryl Streep-Best-Actress-Oscar-winning film recently spawned a pirated version in Russia, in which Thatcher is portrayed as a Hitler-admiring leader who wants to destroy the working class and is voiced by a man. Eh, sounds about right. I consider the people who forced me to see it worse than Mengele.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Margaret Thatcher, as played by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, explains what she would do as prime minister: “Crush the working class, crush the scum, the yobs.”
FYI, I believe that’s ‘yob’ as in British for young thug, not Mexican for job.
The pirated Russian translation of the film, voiced over in a monotone by one man, depicts Thatcher as a bloodthirsty, Hitler-admiring leader, whose fondest desire is to destroy the working class. While some of her critics might say this is an accurate representation of her plans, even her fiercest enemy would concede the Russian version takes it too far.
The translation, no matter how over the top, has fooled at least one film critic on the Russian newspaper Kommersant, who quoted parts of the pirated version in a generally positive review.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. “I loved the part where she finally stood up to the Learned Elders of Zion.”
In a scene from the original film, two Conservative advisers tell Thatcher that she needs to soften her image after they watch her being interviewed on television. In the Russian version, which has been dubbed to have her say that she would crush the working class, an adviser responds: “Of course you went a bit over the top … One of them [the workers] could be literate and have a television and see everything and tell all the rest,” he says, “and then rumours would spread that you are a pitiless, heartless bitch.” [TheGuardian]
I wish I had seen this version, it sounds a lot better. It would be especially great if her dead husband whom she has extended visions of throughout the film was dubbed over by a disagreeable thug from a Clash song, to give more voice to the audience’s concerns. “Oi, fa fock’s saike, Madge, if Oy wisn’t dead awlready, dis convasation wid’ve done it. Oy mean really, oo gives a bleedin’ piss about da cost a tea?”