WHEN IT FIRST EMERGED that Meryl Streep was to portray Margaret Thatcher on screen in The Iron Lady, the news provoked the predictable chorus of grumbles among Britain’s leading luvvies, who wondered, with mind-numbing predictability, why on earth an American should be portraying such a uniquely British icon.
The answer, as this movie makes blindingly clear, is because Streep is the best movie actress of her generation and is absolutely pitch-perfect in the role.
Moviegoers have long-since expected perfection in terms of accent and cadence – witness her polished Polish in Sophie’s Choice; or her unimpeachable Aussie as Lindy Chamberlain in A Cry in the Dark – but what sets her apart is not just her mimicry – brilliant in itself – but her precise artifice in inhabiting characters with astonishing dramatic conviction.
When we first see Streep as Thatcher her in the Iron Lady – suffering from early dementia and unrecognised at the corner store – we are impressed with her physical likeness. But when she speaks, her likeness to the Iron Lady becomes quite uncanny.
But the excellent nature of Steep’s peformance renders the film’s shortcomings all the more lamentable. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, best known over here for helming Mamma Mia, and written by Abi Morgan, the film is little more than a series of flashbacks and scenes-from-the-life that leaves the whole piece with a cold emotional temperature and the audience unengaged and ultimately unsatisfied.
As Thatcher sorts through the possessions of her late husband Denis (Jim Broadbent, marvellous as always), several articles prompts flashbacks back to her childhood as a shopkeeper’s daughter in Grantham where her political views took root. We see her rise from chemist to lawyer to neophyte MP, and her subsequent battles, not only with her sworn enemies on the other side of the political divide, but also with her own party, most of whom tolerated her during her halcyon days while quietly counting the days till they could stab her in the back.
For those of us who remember the tumultuous days of Thatcher’s premiership, the subject would seem to be a rich vein from which to mine dramatic tension; instead director Law gives us a treacly, sentimental approach to the lady’s personal life, and a heavy-handed, didactic handling of the key episodes of political life. By the time we hear the line “Politics used to be about doing something; now it’s about being something”, I for one was crying out for some lightness or wit.
But one area in which the film could use a more leaden approach is the editing, which is often dizzying and disorienting, and the music, which would be better suited to a provinical musical theatre production. In contrast to say, The King’s Speech, and despite Streep’s remarkable work, we never get the sense of a flesh-and-blood person, which ends up giving us no more insight to Thatcher than we had before. All in all, a waste of good work. Streep, like Thatcher, is so much more capable than those around her…..
– Mercedes Gray
Movie: The Iron Lady (opens December 30th)
Cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Alexandra Roach
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Running time: 105 mins. Rating: PG-13
Running time: 105 mins. Rating: PG-13
