Streep Outshines the Fragmented 'Iron Lady'

After Julia Child and Miranda Priestly, Margaret Thatcher is another ideal role for Meryl Streep.

It won’t be long before the bio-pic genre starts to run out of iconic figures from 20^th century Britain to base films around. Already audiences have praised The Queen and The King’s Speech, both of which took home a vast number of honors in 2007 and 2011 respectively. Helen Mirren and Colin Firth brought to cinematic life to Elizabeth II and George VI; now Meryl Streep takes her turn in transporting another figure from the noble halls of government to the big screen as Margaret Thatcher. 

Portraying the only female British prime minister cannot be hailed as a cakewalk for Streep. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t tackle the fierceness of The Iron Lady. After all, Streep can play just about anyone from Julia Child to a staunch nun and even a devil in heels. The Iron Lady looks at bits and pieces of Thatcher’s rise to power, her prime and eventual decline, where Streep portrays the latter two eras of her life.

There’s really no starting place for The Iron Lady. Is it a story of power and politics? Or is it swamped with feminist ideals as Thatcher hangs equal to her male colleagues? Or it is one where the powerful end up powerless as a result of old age and living the ordinary life once more? Director Phyllida Lloyd meshes too many of those concepts together, leaving the audience with a film that consistently flashes from past to present with old age focused on the excessive side. 

Nearly twenty years out of office, Thatcher is battling with dementia, constantly triggered by memories of her deceased husband (Jim Broadbent) and pivotal moments throughout her career. Broadbent pops in and out of his wife’s deteriorated mind, utilized as a nagging voice of the past and present. The repetitiveness doesn’t know when to quit and what should be a sad to watch condition comes off as more as irritating and driving the need for something to trigger a memory. Too much of The Iron Lady plays off this dementia angle rather than spending the time examining the past, particularly for viewers not familiar with Thatcher.

Streep is fantastic as Thatcher in her prime, initially becoming a driving force in British politics to being someone who one minute is loved by the people then hated if something goes wrong. Streep’s commanding performance is The Iron Lady’s greatest asset, adding to the fact that her career is chalk-full of the greatest successes an actress could hope for. She manages to build upon previous performance to enhance what could be her finest performance in years. Streep is just one piece of the Thatcher puzzle. Alexandra Roach, who portrays a younger Thatcher from the late 50s merges seamlessly with Streep to create a role that doesn’t seem like two characters. However, one powerhouse of a character is not the solution to overweighing the unbalanced story.

This isn’t the type of film, where you expect to get an in-depth analysis of Thatcher’s term in office. The Iron Lady is a cliff notes version of Thatcher leading Great Britain, not really giving the details of even the most pivotal events of the decade-long term. If it wasn’t for the need to return to the present, Lloyd would be able to spend more time clarifying what exactly was going on at a particular period of time. 

The people’s opinion of Thatcher turning on a dime is hardly addressed. One minute she’s beloved by the people; the next it’s like the public opinion of several recent presidents. The same can be said about the Falklands War, which is brushed over without the slightest hint of intriguing tension. A war cannot be summed up in just a couple of minutes, particularly one that impacted the career of the person, who audiences have been following for over an hour. Still even the minor details that were hardly touched upon are adequate enough to get the gist of Thatcher as a person and a politician. 

The Iron Lady falls into the trap of examining the narrative through flashbacks and spending too much time on present day. Even though it’s easy to see how Lloyd intended to frame Thatcher’s career, there is not enough time devoted to the past. If anything from the The Iron Lady makes an impact on audiences, it’ll be yet another golden Meryl Streep performance topped off with Thatcher’s signature hats and pearls.

GRADE: B (8/10)
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