The Iron Lady
Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher would seem to be an ideal cinematic match of talented actor with fascinating historical figure.
Yet as versatile as Streep is, she can’t rescue The Iron Lady, a curiously ill-conceived biopic of Thatcher that provides only a partial glimpse into the life of the former British prime minister whose tenure was historical for multiple reasons.
The main problem lies in the structure of the film, which is set close to the present day, with Thatcher (played by Streep) as a frail and lonely woman in her 80s suffering from dementia, which leads to hallucinations involving her late husband Denis (Jim Broadbent), who died in 2003.
Flashbacks reveal most of the details of both her private and public life, which included her becoming not only the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but by the time her 12-year tenure ended in 1990, its longest-serving leader in more than a century.
As a portrait of a woman’s sad descent into dementia, The Iron Lady achieves some powerful moments. But when that woman is Thatcher, it seems like a missed opportunity to give audiences — even the large segment of which vividly remembers her days in the headlines — what they might want to know about one of the most influential female politicians of the 20th century.
What’s missing is much of an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at Thatcher’s career. It covers the highlights of her rise to power within the British conservative party and her unlikely election to the country’s top political post in 1979. It also spends some time on some of her major policies and achievements while in office (focusing in particular on the 1982 Falkland Islands conflict and threats from the Irish Republican Army), as well as her deteriorating relationship with those in her party that eventually led to her resignation.
The film is redeemed partially by a typically substantive performance by Streep, who spent plenty of time in the makeup chair to portray Thatcher at various ages, but she also probes beneath the surface of a woman who is widely perceived as being businesslike and stubborn.
Director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia) and screenwriter Abi Morgan (Shame) might be trying to defy audience expectations, but they’re also defying narrative necessity, and the result is a biopic that too heavily compromises historical context for private-life intimacy.
Rated PG-13, 104 minutes.