Posts Tagged Meryl Streep

The Devil Wears Prada — Fashion, Power, and the Quiet Cost of Becoming Someone Else

June 14, 2026 at 11:34 am · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

There are films that arrive with a burst of hype and then fade, and there are films that quietly embed themselves in the culture, quoted, referenced, and revisited long after their release. The Devil Wears Prada (2006) belongs firmly in the second category. On paper, it’s a workplace comedy set in the fashion industry. In practice, it’s a film about power, identity, and the subtle, creeping cost of ambition — all wrapped in the immaculate tailoring of a Meryl Streep performance so controlled it borders on mythic.

Anne Hathaway plays Andrea “Andy” Sachs, the earnest journalism graduate who stumbles into a job at Runway magazine, a job she neither wants nor respects. Hathaway gives Andy a kind of open‑faced sincerity that makes her early awkwardness painful to watch: the shapeless sweaters, the clunky shoes, the hopeful smile that dies a little each time someone looks her up and down. She is the outsider in a world that speaks a language she doesn’t understand.

And then there is Miranda Priestly. Meryl Streep doesn’t play Miranda so much as inhabit her — a performance built on micro‑expressions, glacial pauses, and a voice so soft it forces everyone around her to lean in. It’s one of those rare performances where the actor’s restraint becomes the source of the character’s power. Streep strips away the clichés of the “boss from hell” and replaces them with something far more interesting: a woman who has survived in a world that punishes softness, and who has learned to weaponise precision, silence, and expectation.

Miranda is also, crucially, not remotely PC — and that’s part of her enduring fascination. She doesn’t flatter, she doesn’t soften her language, and she doesn’t pretend to care about the emotional comfort of the people around her. She judges ruthlessly, dismisses incompetence without apology, and expects the world to meet her standards rather than the other way around. In 2026, when workplaces are drenched in HR‑approved phrasing and corporate empathy theatre, Miranda’s bluntness feels almost radical. She is a relic of an older professional culture — one where excellence was demanded, not negotiated — and the film never tries to sand down her edges. It lets her be formidable, exacting, and occasionally cruel, because that is the truth of who she is.

Andy’s journey begins with humiliation. Her early days at Runway are a blur of ringing phones, impossible demands, and the constant sense that she is one mistake away from being fired. Emily Blunt, in her breakout role as senior assistant Emily Charlton, plays her with a brittle, hilarious desperation — a woman who has built her entire identity around serving Miranda and who sees Andy as an unworthy intruder. Blunt’s performance is sharp, funny, and tinged with sadness; she is the loyal soldier who has given everything to a system that will never love her back.

The turning point comes when Andy, after yet another icy dismissal from Miranda, decides she has had enough of being the office joke. With the help of Nigel — Stanley Tucci at his warmest and most quietly devastating — she undergoes the famous transformation. The clothes change first: Chanel boots, sleek coats, immaculate tailoring. But the real transformation is internal. Andy learns the rhythms of the office, anticipates Miranda’s needs, and begins to excel. Hathaway plays this shift beautifully, letting Andy’s confidence bloom even as the audience senses the cost.

Because the cost is real. As Andy rises, her old life begins to fray. Adrian Grenier’s Nate becomes the embodiment of the life she is drifting away from — supportive at first, then resentful, then quietly alienated. Her friends roll their eyes at her new priorities. Andy herself starts to feel the dissonance between who she was and who she is becoming. The film never condemns her ambition, but it does show how ambition can quietly rearrange your values when you’re not paying attention.

Paris is where everything crystallises. The city is a dreamscape of fashion and power, but it is also where Andy sees Miranda’s humanity for the first time. Streep allows tiny cracks to appear in the armour: the tremor in her voice when she mentions her failing marriage, the flicker of fear when she realises her position at Runway is under threat. These moments don’t soften Miranda; they deepen her. They show the cost of being a woman at the top of a world that still expects women to apologise for their success.

And then comes the betrayal — not of Andy, but of Nigel. Tucci plays the scene with heartbreaking dignity, the quiet devastation of a man who has given everything to an industry that discards him in a heartbeat. Miranda sacrifices him to save herself, and Andy sees, with painful clarity, the kind of person she would have to become if she stayed on this path. It’s not that Miranda is evil. It’s that she is pragmatic in a way Andy cannot be without losing herself.

The moment Andy walks away — throwing her phone into the Paris fountain — is not a triumphant escape. It’s a moment of self‑recognition. She has reached the edge of who she is willing to be. When she returns to New York, she is not the naïve graduate who started the film, but someone who has seen the machinery of power up close and chosen not to be consumed by it.

The final scene between Andy and Miranda is one of the most quietly perfect endings in modern cinema. Andy sees Miranda on the street. Miranda pretends not to notice her. But once inside her car, she allows herself the smallest, most private smile — a smile that acknowledges respect, recognition, and perhaps even affection. It is the closest the film comes to a reconciliation, and it is enough.

What makes The Devil Wears Prada endure is that it refuses to simplify its characters. Miranda is not a monster. Andy is not a saint. Emily is not a villain. Nigel is not a martyr. They are all people navigating a world that demands more than it gives back. The film understands the emotional complexity of female power, the loneliness of leadership, the seduction of ambition, and the quiet bravery required to walk away from something that is consuming you.

And perhaps that is why the film still resonates. It understands that growing up — truly growing up — means recognising the moment when the cost of staying outweighs the fear of leaving. Andy learns it in Paris. Many of us learn it much later. But the lesson is the same: your life is yours to shape, and no job, no matter how glamorous, is worth losing yourself for.

By Christopher Storton

Picture credit: By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8559391
Pat Harrington’s review of the Devil Wears Prada 2 is  here
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The Devil Wears Prada 2: A Sequel Crying Out for the Old Miranda

June 7, 2026 at 7:17 am · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Twenty years after leaving Runway, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) has built a respectable career in journalism — right up until her entire newsroom is laid off by text message during an awards gala. At the same time, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) faces a crisis of her own: a sweatshop scandal involving a major advertiser gives corporate owner Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) the excuse he’s been waiting for to interfere. Runway publishes what should have been a glossy, harmles puff piece  on a major fashion brand — only for that brand to be exposed days later for using sweatshop labour. Without Miranda’s consent,  Irv hires Andy as Runway’s new features editor, a move that lands like a diplomatic incident.

Miranda, once the terrifying high priestess of fashion, now finds herself hemmed in by HR briefings, “tone workshops,” and a younger staff who don’t instinctively recognise her authority. Print is shrinking, advertisers are restless, and the magazine is being pushed toward cheap digital churn. Andy tries to uphold real journalism, but her long‑form pieces barely register in a world ruled by algorithms.

Andy reunites with Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) — now a high‑powered executive whose company’s aggressive pricing strategies symbolise the industry’s moral drift. Meanwhile, tech investors circle Runway, including the serenely confident mogul Evan Roth (played with icy charm by an actor clearly enjoying himself), who sees the magazine not as a cultural institution but as an underperforming asset. As the pressure mounts, Andy becomes central to Miranda’s survival strategy — not as an assistant this time, but as someone who understands both the old world and the new.

The men orbiting Miranda and Andy remain so resolutely beige they could be painted directly onto the set. Kenneth Branagh, as Miranda’s latest husband, drifts through scenes like a distinguished but faintly bewildered museum patron — present, polite, and utterly incapable of matching her gravitational pull. Peter Brammall, playing Andy’s boyfriend Peter, fares no better: a man so gently supportive and narratively weightless he feels less like a romantic partner and more like a well‑meaning flatmate who occasionally remembers they’re dating. And then there’s Stanley Tucci, returning as Nigel, the lone male presence with actual flavour — sharp, warm, and effortlessly charismatic, reminding you how much more alive this world becomes when someone on screen has a pulse stronger than chamomile tea.

Themes: What the Film Tries to Say — and How Well It Says It

The film is preoccupied with change — who drives it, who benefits from it, and who gets crushed beneath it. It contrasts Miranda’s old‑world authority with the frictionless, jargon‑heavy ideology of modern tech.

The “techno‑manosphere” is embodied in nepo‑CEO Jay Ravitz (B.J. Novak) and Emily’s boyfriend Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux), a mash‑up of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. They spout shibboleths about “cutting expenses” (meaning people) and the inevitability of technological “progress.” Benji’s mantra — “You just have to get out of the way” — is the distilled essence of their worldview: change as inevitability, disruption as moral good, efficiency as destiny.

A critical planning session with a dozen consultants takes place, improbably, in the packed company cafeteria. When Jay invites Miranda, she asks, with surgical disdain, “Do we have one of those?” It’s one of the few moments where the film remembers who she is.

But the film’s biggest misstep is Miranda herself. The original Miranda was frightening because she embodied taste, hierarchy, and institutional authority at their most refined and ruthless. Here, she has been softened into something almost unrecognisable — tidy, tamed, and constantly shadowed by the moral anxieties of 2026. When we see Miranda struggling to hang up her own coat it’s clear that something has changed. And the dialogue tells us she no longer throws her coat at assistants due to HR complaints. The film seems more interested in showing a tamed Miranda than in understanding why she worked in the first place. The result is not growth; it is defanging.

And yet, the film does land one thematic point beautifully: tech’s victory is not inevitable. Without spoiling anything, the final movement hints at a future shaped not by dashboards but by people who still believe in the value of craft. It’s a quiet, almost stealthy note of hope.

Cameos and Watchability

Despite its flaws, the film is undeniably watchable. The cameos — designers, editors, influencers, and a few sly nods to real‑world fashion royalty — give it a fizzy, knowing energy. Lady Gaga’s brief appearance is a highlight: funny, pointed, and perfectly calibrated.

The film moves briskly, the locations are gorgeous, and the cast is uniformly committed. Hathaway remains a compelling centre of gravity; Blunt steals every scene she’s in; Streep, as Miranda, even in a softened register, still radiates authority. Even the tech bros are entertaining in their buffoonery.

It’s not the sharp, cruel, diamond‑cut satire of the original — but it’s never dull.

Would I See The Devil Wears Prada 3?

Absolutely.

And I’d like to see it go further.
I’d like the PC guff — the HR euphemisms, the corporate tone‑policing, the algorithmic hand‑wringing — to be presented as outdated. I’d like a return to mean Miranda, not just as a bully, but as a woman whose authority comes from taste, judgement, and the ability to see what others can’t.

If this sequel is about the world outgrowing its monsters, the third film should be about the world realising it still needs them. Because the truth is that industries don’t collapse from cruelty; they collapse from complacency. Prada 2 imagines a landscape where the sharp edges have been sanded down, where Miranda’s authority is treated as an embarrassing relic, and where institutions believe they can replace vision with workflow and taste with metrics. But the absence of monsters doesn’t create harmony — it creates drift. Standards loosen, identities blur, and the centre of gravity shifts from people who know what they’re doing to people who know how to present what they’re doing. A third film should confront that reckoning head‑on: the uncomfortable but necessary realisation that the figures once dismissed as tyrants were often the ones holding the whole thing together. Not because they were kind, or gentle, or easy, but because they cared enough to demand more than the world found convenient. We need the monsters and we need to learn how to deal with them.

By Pat Harrington

 

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Question and Answer Session: Meryl Streep

December 25, 2009 at 1:31 pm · Filed under Interviews ·Tagged ,

American actress Meryl Streep is considered by many to be the finest actress of her generation. Her 27 year film career spans a range of genres, and has accrued countless awards and nominations including two Oscars. Her breakthrough role in The Deer Hunter (1978) drew her first nomination, with Kramer Vs Kramer (1979)delivering the first award. Since then her films have included The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), Sophie’s Choice (1982), Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985),, A Cry In The Dark (1988). The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Adaptation (2002) and The Hours (2002).

Counter Culture is pleased to present a question and answer session with Meryl.

You’ve never seen the original version of The Manchurian Candidate – how come?

I’m not really a cinephile. I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies. So I missed it on the first time round. I would have been very young then anyway. Then when I got the job I decided not to look at it, because I thought I might steal something from Angela Lansbury [who played the role in the 1962 original] or I would be affected by the performance in some way and maybe react to it. Or do something arbitrary, so as not to be like her. I saw it afterwards and realised how different ours is, but also how specific both films are to their time.

Do you recognise any political relevance in the story that speaks to the times we are living in?

I think when things are really true and relevant to a time they’re relevant to every time and place. One of the biggest themes in this is the embeddedness of money and finance in influencing foreign policy. That’s something that, in America, our founding fathers worried about. They worried about the corporations. Dwight Eisenhower famously worried about the military-industrial complex unduly influencing governments. So it’s something that’s been around a long time it just periodically gets more pressing and more urgent. And another theme of this film is who pays? Who pays with their lives? Certainly not the people that make these decisions, or their children.

What then was the appeal of Eleanor Shaw for you?

I thought of it as a great opportunity to play, and to understand, someone who was not like me. I also thought that she presented a unique opportunity because she was the full embodiment of everybody’s fear of women in power. It’s interesting because people in England thinks it’s Maggie Thatcher, while everyone at home thinks it’s Hillary Clinton, because these are the two most formidable women in political life. But those two women couldn’t be more dissimilar from each other or from this character that I play, so I think we’re touching on something very deep about Mommy and the fear of her taking over. It was all a great opportunity.

She’s certainly a strong woman, an atypical feature film villain.

I thought it was really unusual, that in the first half hour of a picture it was a woman who drove the plot, who drove the machinery of the story so forceful and aggressively. I loved having that much to say, it was almost like a play more than a movie in a way.

There is a depth to the character even if her motives are flawed. She even has a sense of humour, doesn’t she?

I think everything serious has something funny in it, and everything funny has something tragic embedded in the bottom of it. That’s the Chekhovian way of looking at things. That’s the way I see life, so I couldn’t play her as a straight ahead Gorgon, it didn’t interest me because I think people that get things done in Washington have charm, often, in big measure. And they’re pushy. And not just Washington, I think in the wider world. So it helps to round out this character with that sense you get of her own understanding of how monstrous she can sometimes be. Of her self awareness. I think it’s more interesting when people are like we all are, self aware.

There’s a provocative scene with you and your screen son, played by Liev Schreiber, that hints at something more in your characters’ relationship. Was there more to it that we didn’t see?

The scene was shot in a lot of different ways and from many different angles and there were a lot of different choices in different cuts of the film. It really pulled it in an extreme direction each time we changed it. It was interesting, that scene more than any other worked its primal power. In the end we decided that less is more and you get what you get. But you see everything that happens.

Did you have a say in Eleanor Shaw’s power outfits?

I did. I think in my next life I’m going to be a costume designer because I really think what you wear announces something to people. I’m a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers I work with, because I have very strong feelings about this subject. Especially when I think of my women viewers. When I sit with my husband in a movie, he notices the costume if the female character is bra-less, other than that it doesn’t register. But women read these clues closely. It was very important to me to have really good jewellery, the clink of those heavy pearls was like the clink of power and entitlement. I thought that was important, and the power suit is a trope of that kind of woman.

Are there a lot of roles out there that you are offered?

I think that things are changing, but every time you say that they change back to the bad old days. The emergence of cable opportunities through HBO and Showtime, unconventional financing of films helps. Some of the most exciting work is now happening in those venues on television. There are many more independent pictures, and they are giving opportunities to older women. But in my case the biggest reason that I’m working is that there are two women running the studios where I’ve worked in the last few years. One is Amy Pascal who runs Sony Pictures – she gave the okay for me to be in Adaptation. That was really a part written for a 35 year old, but Spike said he wanted me, and she said fine. Another studio head would have said “eugh! Why? Let’s get somebody 16 years younger”. She was great with it. And Sherry Lansing runs Paramount, and she has kept me in work in The Hours, and The Manchurian Candidate and Lemony Snicket. I guess I’m her blood sister or something. I think it’s harder for male studio heads to be interested in stories featuring women who resemble their first wives!

Is a good critical reception to your films important to you?

The work is the most fun thing. It seems illicit, how much fun it is. But the critical reaction is satisfying too. When other actors like you, that’s really good. And I’m really happy when young people like my work. It’s very gratifying to have that recognition.

With your body of work, and reputation for such high standards, have you found that people have been wary of offering you quirky, left field stuff that might otherwise have appealed to you?

I’m sure there’s been that inhibition in getting things to me. I don’t have ‘a staff’, or an office of any size. But I like it that way, I like it simple. The amount of things that I’m offered seems to be too much to read and go through. Maybe I’ve missed opportunities, but I’ve been grateful for the ones I’ve had, so I can’t complain.

Do you ever revisit your earlier work?

I don’t. But last June I was honoured by the American Film Institute and they had a televised retrospective. It’s so horrifying to see how young I was, and how I didn’t appreciate it then. Just seeing those clips reminded me that it’s been a really long, interesting journey with a lot of amazingly talented people. And the sad thing is how many of them are gone. I’m thinking about Karel Reisz, Alan Pakula and Nestor Almendros, Joseph Papp – people who really made my career in the early days but are all gone. I can’t properly thank them, so it was great to be able to thank the people who are alive and who were there. That’s nice.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE opens in the UK and Ireland through United International Pictures on November 19.

LEMONY SNICKET opens through United International Pictures on December 17.

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