Biopic of Thatcher’s life fails to satisfy
REVIEWER'S RATING: ★★1/2
Two powerful women — one an actress, the other a politician — and two talented filmmakers form the quartet that make The Iron Lady possible.
Starring in the based-in-fact but fictionalized The Iron Lady, Meryl Streep, America’s queen of accents, plays the United Kingdom’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.
Phyllida Lloyd, following a directing career of British stage and opera productions, including the internationally popular stage musical, Mamma Mia!, and 2008 film adaptation of the same, directed The Iron Lady. Abi Morgan, British playwright, TV writer and co-writer of the current film, Shame, wrote the film’s original screenplay.
Thatcher, first elected to Parliament in 1959, became leader of Britain’s Conservative party in 1975. She became the country’s first female prime minister in 1979 and won an unprecedented three terms in office.
The Iron Lady tells Thatcher’s story from her perspective as former head of state and elderly widow. In the film, she appears to be experiencing some dementia, or at least her constant conversation with her dead husband suggests so.
Following award-winning recent films about great Britons Queen Elizabeth II and King George VI, The Iron Lady gives Thatcher similar treatment. Despite Streep’s convincing transformation into the conservative prime minister during her primetime in the international limelight as well as declining but still feisty years, this latest project is the least of the three biopics.
Oscar-winner Jim Broadbent gamely goes about playing Thatcher’s late husband, Denis, but his character’s incessant presence quickly goes from confusing to annoying. He’s a storytelling device, a bridge to Thatcher’s past that distracts more than it clarifies.
Frequent, fragmentary flashbacks jumble things further. World-shattering events as well as simple actions trigger Thatcher’s memories. Signing copies of her memoir, for instance, she’s transported to a World War II bomb shelter. When her merchant-class dad, operator of a grocer’s shop in the small town of Grantham, wonders if the butter was left uncovered, young Margaret, played by Alexandra Roach, dashes out to cover it. Brave girl.
The script deftly splashes examples of her father’s influence upon Thatcher. An independent man, he tells his daughter to not follow the crowd. He’s in politics, too, an alderman on the borough council. And, of course, Margaret pulls her own weight at the family shop.
Thatcher’s memory of the past is much better than her memory of current events. Streep impresses in examples of that, portraying a fading Thatcher who forgets recent conversations with her daughter, Carol (Olivia Colman), but rallies at a social occasion, speaking with commanding clarity.
Responding to a woman who expresses appreciation for the former prime minister’s pioneering role for women, Thatcher says, “Well, it used to be about trying to do something. Now it’s about trying to be someone.”
The film’s flexible chronology returns Thatcher to her political beginnings and a testy exchange with her husband. It’s the right stuff.
“One’s life must matter, Denis, beyond all the cooking and cleaning and the children,” she proclaims. “I cannot die washing a teacup.”
But such insightful scenes don’t unite for a satisfying whole. Thatcher’s 11 years as prime minister are abridged to abstraction. Too often, too, the film functions at a stagy, Masterpiece Theatre level rather than cinematic scale. Streep’s powerfully measured performance becomes something greater than the film that holds it.