Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/15/12
Yes,
there are occasional gems, but January moviegoing has a bad reputation
primarily because of two kinds of films: the mainstream garbage studios
dump that wasn’t going to get it done the previous year and died-in-the-wool
“Oscar movies” that exist in the hopes of snaring a single nomination rather
than delivering an excellent product. When we all heard a year or
so ago that Meryl Streep would be playing Margaret Thatcher, everyone who
knows anything about the Academy Awards penciled in Streep for a nomination
and possible Best Actress win for The Iron Lady. But we also
probably all pictured something a little more akin to, you know, an actual
Thatcher life story than Lady, in which scenes from that biopic
fight for screen time with the “A" Story, the elderly Thatcher slowly sliding
into dementia in seclusion. Streep is good in the role, but it’s
far from her best work because Abi Morgan’s screenplay doesn’t give her
much to do other than be the Thatcher we all saw on TV. Phyllida
Lloyd’s film includes several strong performances and provides interesting
snapshots of England’s recent political history, but all in all, one keeps
waiting for a point that never materializes. Unless, of course, it’s
simply that the filmmakers really, really didn’t like Margaret Thatcher.
The
former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) makes a
rare public appearance… to buy a pint of milk at the local grocery story.
She returns to her home where her handlers are rather alarmed: the
old woman is losing her grip on reality and shouldn’t be outside alone.
She’s tended to by her daughter Carol (Olivia Coleman), but her most constant
companion is the delusional presence of her late husband Denis (Jim Broadbent).
Over the course of a few days, she remembers key events from her life,
starting with her youth when she (then played by Alexandra Roach) attended
political speeches by her father (Iain Glen), who was both a grocer and
mayor in their small town. After attending college at Oxford, she
sought a career in politics, where she met and married the young Denis
(Harry Lloyd). Thatcher finally won a seat in Parliament (and becomes
Streep again), then became the Secretary of Education, and finally decided
to seek the position as head of her Conservative party. She won,
and by 1979 was Prime Minister. During the next 11 tumultuous years,
she faced riots, war and the end of the Cold War. But all good things
come to an end.
I graduated
high school the same year Thatcher’s time as PM ended, so while I remember
her well as a public figure, I never knew much about the British politics
of her time. The Iron Lady (and my follow-up research) suggests
I would not have been a Thatcher voter (to put it mildly), but the forces
that first shaped the Western World’s first female leader and then thrust
her into office should be pretty interesting to consider. You get
a simplistic dusting of motivations here, but they mostly involve her Just
Being That Kind of Person, and her personal life gets so shortchanged that
a scene of family being upset that she’s ignoring their issues while she
runs for the party leadership seems to come totally out of left field because
we’ve never gotten to know her husband or children as anything other than
an extension of her. TV talking heads plow over public reaction to
her policies and we see footage of war and riots and stuff, but this is
probably the most gentile movie ever to include so much riot footage.
A recurring motif of Thatcher seated indifferently in her limousine while
protesters pound on the windows is probably meant to play differently than
it does, but ends up seeming like the movie desperately trying to get in
while Streep sits by writing her acceptance speech.
But
the primary reason the Cliffs Notes history lesson aspects of The Iron
Lady come up so short is that the movie’s heart isn’t in being a Thatcher
biopic, but rather a portrait of her declining days, which seem to have
been entirely manufactured for the movie’s purposes. Again, there’s
not much here, as Margaret goes through the motions of watching old home
movies, talking to her dead husband and refusing to take her pills.
I couldn’t help feeling, particularly at one moment in the final scene
that feels like a particular low blow, that Lady’s creators are
mostly interested in burying their subject for her Conservative policies
but too afraid to actually engage them. Instead, they seem to be
taking comfort in the notion that, like everyone, her final years are far
from her best. I puzzled at great length for any sort of conclusion
The Iron Lady might be drawing from the events of Thatcher’s life
and the best guess I could come up with was “Vote Conservative and you’ll
die alone and afraid!”
Politics
aside, the primary reason anyone’s going to see The Iron Lady is
Streep, and she does a mean Margaret Thatcher impression. But it’s
nothing compared to her work in Julie and
Julia, where she put so much meat on the bones of a woman we’d similarly
known only as a public caricature of herself. I never really felt
emotionally connected to anything that was going on with Thatcher because
the production doesn’t seem to know how it feels, and while Streep can
summon her, she can’t fill in the gaps in her material. I actually
thought Roach was more successful in that regard, but then she’s playing
a pre-public eye version of the character it’s easier to take liberties
with. Broadbent makes a fun delusion, although there’s not a lot
of depth to his living Denis. Coleman’s good at looking concerned,
the only thing the movie allows her to do. I enjoyed seeing old favorites
Anthony Head and Richard E. Grant as two members of Thatcher’s cabinet,
they do a lot with a little when it comes to fleshing out their characters.
So,
The Iron Lady is a whole lot of not much of anything. Steep
completists will certainly enjoy her work here, and people who don’t know
anything about British politics will get some sense of the relevant talking
points of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. But it doesn’t even approach what
it wants to accomplish… so much so that I’m still kinda puzzled as to what
it is trying to accomplish. Margaret Thatcher came, saw, ran England
and got old, all of which I knew before buying my ticket. But, hey,
Meryl Streep will certainly get that Oscar nomination and maybe that’s
all the point The Iron Lady really has after all. |
