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The Iron Lady Review
03 Jan 2012
Critics rating: 2.5 stars out of 5
Reviewed by Tom Charity , LOVEFiLM
The Iron Lady

Remember "The Strike", 1988?

Peter Richardson as Al Pacino playing Arthur Scargill, reluctant revolutionary hero of the NUM (that’s National Union of Miners, young uns – they used to dig coal out of the ground in this country). Jennifer Saunders played Meryl Streep as Mrs Scargill.

The Iron Lady

Starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Anthony Head, Richard E. Grant
Director Phyllida Lloyd
Genres Drama
Run time 105 mins Certificate TBC

Cast details

I don’t recall why, but the Comic Strip’s fantasy of a Hollywood movie inspired by the most debilitating, socially devastating and politically divisive strike of the late twentieth century excised Mrs Thatcher in favour of a male Prime Minister. Perhaps that was another symbol of Hollywood philistinism, or perhaps it was because they demanded a happy ending – victory for Scargill – and that would have been impossible to imagine with Thatcher in the picture.

But here we are, nearly a quarter century later, the mining industry no longer exists, and while Mrs T and Scargill have long since departed the political arena, and the Comic Strip too for that matter, Meryl Streep is still going strong and playing the old dragon in a British-made biopic, written by Abi Morgan (Shame), and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!).

Ms Morgan is no relation to the writer Peter Morgan, whose specialty has been the telling political vignette; in films like The Deal, The Queen, and Frost/Nixon he focused on a relatively brief episode in the lives of his subjects, but turned it into a prism through which we could see their accomplishments with fresh insight.

Abi Morgan’s technique here is altogether more conventional. The Iron Lady has a modern day framing device in which the former PM pootles about her home in her dotage, reminiscing sometimes comfortably, sometimes irritably with her deceased hubbie Dennis (Jim Broadbent), while her staff and daughter Carol (Olivia Colman) try to drag her back into the here and now – without much luck.

Meryl Streep

Cue flashbacks that take us back to Maggie’s childhood as a greengrocer’s daughter in Grantham, her first entry into politics, marriage, and the fateful decision to throw her hat into the ring when Edward Heath bowed out.

While it attempts to steer “the middle way”, The Iron Lady includes plenty that could irk both the left and the right. Simply by putting so much weight on the old lady in her semi-senility the filmmakers have guaranteed a less than glorious portrait – which is a bit of a cheap shot, this is not how anyone would want to be remembered. But at the same time socialists will bemoan the film’s lack of meaningful engagement with the defining characteristics of the Thatcher government, her crusade against union power, for instance, and her denial of “society”.

The Iron Lady does at least check off most of the high- (and low-) lights of her long era, but in a cursory fashion that sheds no illumination on these events. I guess you could say something similar about Frost/Nixon – ultimately the movies are more interested in the psychology of the character than the rights and wrongs of their political convictions.

Morgan and Lloyd are also interested in Thatcher’s distinction as the first female PM, and don’t hesitate to show the sexism she encountered both within her own party and at large. In many ways this material is the most effective in the movie, especially the scenes in which she is taken under the wing of her mentor Airey Neave (Nicholas Farrell) and groomed for the top.

The writing is pedestrian and the film feels like a string of incidents, it lacks a compelling dramatic arc.

But at the same time the film is surprisingly mealy-mouthed in its feminism: Maggie’s convictions are attributed wholesale to her father’s influence, and the framing device strongly suggests that she sacrificed her marriage and children in service of her ambition – again, something of a cheap shot that would probably not show up in a biopic about a male politician.

The writing is pedestrian and the film feels like a string of incidents, it lacks a compelling dramatic arc. For anyone who lived through those years, there is a certain pleasure in watching familiar but perhaps forgotten figures impersonated by the likes of Richard E Grant (Michael Heseltine), Michael Pennington (Michael Foot), and Anthony Head (Geoffrey Howe). And of course Meryl Streep’s performance is impeccable as we always knew it would be – steely, formidable, utterly devoid of self-doubt.

Perhaps she is a shade less shrill than the real thing, but by depriving her politics of any real context the film extinguishes most of what is important about this leader, whatever you or I may think of her. It’s a first-rate performance in a second rate movie.

The Iron Lady Reviews

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