The Iron Lady
Nothing to sing about.
DIRECTED BY PHYLLIDA LLOYD
During the first part of Meryl Streep’s new Oscar-baiting The Iron Lady, there is a glimmer of hope. A young Maggie, played by Alexandra Roach (who looks nothing like Streep or Thatcher) has just lost her first municipal election. A young Denis Thatcher, played by Harry Lloyd (no one really knows what Denis Thatcher looked like, so we don’t need to be preoccupied with Lloyd’s casting) asks for her hand in marriage. As the music swells, the two begin to dance and for a moment, one precious moment, we think: “My god, they are going to make this into a musical.”
Now, being that The Iron Lady reunites director Phyllida Lloyd with Streep—both of them were involved with Mamma Mia, which was a success—this assumption is not that farfetched. Putting the IRA hunger strikes and the Falklands War to music is an intriguing enough idea—an idea, in fact, that ultimately proves to be more entertaining than the rest of The Iron Lady. (Which, no, isn’t a musical.)
As the film opens, in a lavish London apartment, albeit one supersaturated in grey (the easiest trick for visually denoting “sadness”), we find Thatcher in her later years, descending into a state akin to dementia, conducting conversations with her deceased husband (Jim Broadbent) which are interwoven with flashbacks of her life. The poor state of Thatcher’s health has been well documented, from her video eulogy at long-time friend and supporter Ronald Regan’s funeral to her inability to attend the Royal Wedding this year, which seems to suggest the film is bent on maintaining a certain realism concerning Thatcher and her legacy. To assume this, however, would be a mistake. Reviewing The Iron Lady is to thumb through a thesaurus, noting every synonym for “cumbersome” and “flat” along the way. After watching the whole thing, you know less about Thatcher, her politics, and her domestic life than you’d gather from a cursory reading of her Wikipedia page (which would take far less than time than the film’s 105 minutes).
That the film chooses to focus on Thatcher in her old age is not the issue. This allows for the trademark bio-pic present-to-past flashback technique—indulging the basic human fantasy that any of us are able to reflect perfectly on our own pasts. It would also seem to be the perfect device for reflecting upon the lasting impact of Thatcher (if not Thatcherism). In light of Tony Blair’s New Labour politics, England’s involvement in the Iraq war, and the country’s current economic situation, this would be topical.
Given the fact that no other Prime Minister (other than maybe Winston Churchill) has been so polarizing and at the same time so celebrated in popular culture, a bio-pic of the Iron Lady seems practically pre-written. So what does Phyllida Lloyd do with her subject? Very little. The film neither demonizes nor sympathizes with Thatcher. Instead, it reduces her to a bubbling, babbling old lady who must gain the courage to empty out her husband’s closet following his death. This is bound to be frustrating for viewers of all political stripes. Liberals won’t appreciate seeing Thatcher excused in her old age for her 1980s policies. Conservatives may not want to see her characterized as a batty lady. And nobody, regardless of their political leanings, wants to see Streep fumble around in oversized nightgowns, affecting a high-pitched British accent.
It is not only Thatcher who is flattened, but also her turbulent era. The film casually throws around references to the IRA, the Cold War, nation-wide union strikes and the 1980s economic recession before cutting back to modern day Thatcher waving out the window at a vision of Jim Broadbent in a yellow raincoat dancing in the street (really, this happens). It feels as though the script was half the normal feature length, and the producers filled it out with rapid montages of historical footage and sound bites from the real Thatcher.
Ultimately, The Iron Lady relies on Meryl Streep. She’s the leading American actress of our time, so for better or worse this movie will fare just fine at the box office (despite reviews like this one). It also will serve Streep well, because the role involves a physical uglification through aging (that aforementioned Oscar-bait), and also has that undeniable gravitas that inevitably comes with playing a historical figure. It’s just too bad she didn’t sing in the process.