The Iron Lady (Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent) – If Meryl Streep doesn’t win the Oscar for this transcendent, impeccable, resplendent performance, she will probably never win another one. The verdict has been in for several years that Meryl has surpassed Kathryn Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Davis as the greatest actress ever (only Kate Winslet has a chance to challenge Streep and that will take her another 25 years). Streep’s portrayal of Margaret Thatcher seals the deal again. Not only is she pitch perfect as Thatcher the Prime Minister but she is uncanny as the aging Thatcher who is suffering from the effects of early dementia, depicted here as she hears, sees and talks with her late husband, Denis (Jim Broadbent in what could also be a Supporting Actor-nominated performance),
Phyllida Lloyd, who directed Streep in Mamma Mia!, chose to portray Thatcher in flashback. As the film opens, we see the failing Thatcher talking with her husband. It takes the audience awhile to find out that Denis is dead and Margaret is struggling with the task of cleaning out his closet. As the older Thatcher, Streep is positively amazing. Thanks in part to unbelievable prosthetics, fantastic make-up, and hair stylings, Streep adds 20+ years to her looks. But in her uncanny way of enveloping a character, she becomes an old woman before our eyes. She walks and shows the physicality of an octogenarian while exhibiting the mannerisms in a way so amazing that you cannot help but marvel at the talent.
We then see Welsh actress Alexandra Roach as the young Thatcher from the time she is a teenager working at her father’s grocery store, through Oxford, as a young wife, a failed candidate and, ultimately, an MP. Streep picks it up from here as she moves her way up the Conservative Party to the Prime Minister position where she endures strikes and riots as she reduces spending and insists that all citizens pay taxes. Losing popularity, she regains her stature with her signature achievement, the controversial war over the Falkland Islands following an invasion by Argentina.
As Thatcher at her prime, Steep becomes Thatcher at her determined, stubborn, self-assured, idealistic, conservative best.
The only way Lloyd could have filmed this movie was to shoot it in three segments – the old Thatcher, the vibrant world leader, and the young Margaret. Thatcher, who served as the only female member of Parliament at the time of her election in 1959, served for 11½ years as Prime Minister before losing the confidence within her own Conservative Party. The film does a great job of showing Thatcher as a pioneer, stateswoman, ideologue, and bully in her formative years and as a troubled, frustrated, spicy, doddering senior. Could any other actress pull this off with such believability?
Unfortunately, the film has a pace problem. Some might call it a self-inflicted wound by Lloyd for focusing as she does on the old Thatcher. Like J. Edgar, which suffers from too much personal biography and not enough commentary on the times, The Iron Lady leaves the viewer wanting more about Thatcher’s experiences and relationships (with Ronald Reagan, with other world leaders, her Labor opponents, and her children). The movie only hits its stride during the Falklands’ segment.
This may not be a great movie even though I enjoyed it and wasn’t bored for an instant, but it is worth every dollar you pay to see Queen Meryl. An Oscar nomination is certain for the actress but perhaps not the film.