The Iron Lady

I maintain that Meryl Streep should not have been given an Academy Award nomination for The Iron Lady. How dare I! And I would tend to agree. Streep never turns in a half-assed or bad performance, and her technique is beyond words. And, yes, she is a paragon, a veritable living monument to what great acting can be, should be, and is. But the film fails to completely use her as a resource. Granted, she does wear the old age makeup wonderfully and acts through it (think of a movie like J. Edgar which featured actors caked in bad makeup unable to project through it), and she does project a steeliness and adopts a perfect accent. But I always felt like it was a great bit of mimicry, and not that impressive a piece of acting. This has to do with the script.

The script trots out her cabinet members, children, (deceased) husband, and other various members in her life and flashbacks when convenient to move the narrative forward. I couldn’t distinguish one member of her inner-circle from the other. Names, if they were mentioned at all, don’t register because no one is ever developed beyond the briefest and quickest of sketches. Especially egregious is the treatment of her family members. Her daughter drops in early on to take care of the elderly Thatcher, and promptly disappears for long stretches throughout the rest of the movie. And, worse still, Jim Broadbent, a fantastic actor, is given practically nothing to work with as the specter of Thatcher’s husband, Denis. His character is not consistently written, and some of that could be attributed to the fact that he’s mostly viewed as a ghostly presence to torture Thatcher in her old age and prompt her flashbacks.

Perhaps if the film had taken a point-of-view on Thatcher, good, bad, or otherwise, or had a more overall message to deliver about her and her life, it would have been immensely better. As is, Thatcher seems to have sprung up fully formed and to have never changed or grown as an individual. Her questionable policies and decisions are only briefly touched upon. It’s like a Cliff Notes version of a current politician who deserves a longer, more fully developed treatment. But Streep has made a point lately of working with directors, and a few projects, well below her talent-level. The Iron Lady was directed by the same woman who did Mamma Mia!, that should be all you need to know.