Meryl Streep is the finest actress of our lifetimes, a fact reemphasized by her performance in The Iron Lady. Streep plays two Margaret Thatchers. In flashbacks, she plays Thatcher in her prime – seizing power and wielding it with complete confidence and absolutely without a nano whit of mercy. She also plays today’s elderly Thatcher, doddering on the verge of dementia. Streep is magnificent, which might be enough reason to see the movie.
It’s also always a pleasure to watch Jim Broadbent, and he teams with Streep as Thatcher’s hubbie. Alexandra Roach plays a third and younger Thatcher – forming herself in her early twenties. The fine actor Nicholas Farrell is also quite good as one of Thatcher’s mentors.
My problem is with the story. Now I’m no expert on Thatcher, although I have loathed her from afar for decades. To me, the most interesting aspect of Thatcher was her certitude – the absolutely deep and profound belief that she was always right and the will to impose her direction on everyone else. When her actions were creating widespread pain and she was hated (really, really hated) by a large percentage of her own people, why did she not doubt herself for a moment? The Iron Lady explains her conservatism as coming from her father, but leaves her certitude unexamined.
Instead, The Iron Lady‘s screenplay chooses to focus on her feminism, battling to make her way in an arena filled with men especially eager not to relinquish any power to her. (Her feminism seems to be entirely in practice, not theory, as she battles for HER due, but not to make the way easier for other women, whom she probably expects to pull themselves up by their own pumps.)
A lot of screen time is also devoted to her aged decline, which gives good fodder to Streep, but is not very important to understanding her career.
On the other hand, The Iron Lady does depict the very personal impact of the IRA’s campaign against her, with an assassination attempt and the killing of a close colleague. It also gives us an unsparing look at her bullying of friends and allies, which, of course, does not encourage loyalty. And there are telling glimpses into her family life, especially her longtime marriage.
But on the whole, The Iron Lady is long on Streep and short on understanding what made Margaret Thatcher the pivotal political leader that she was.