The Iron Lady
Way back in the mists of time when this reviewer was a callow youth, he looked around and saw grave injustice in the World. This injustice was deep, it was callous and it seemed to be deliberately cruel. It’s not the time nor the place to discuss this injustice nor the manner in which the cruelty was gratuitously inflicted - but we are all products of our environment and history, and therefore I’d be grateful if the reader of this review bears in mind the inherent political bias that might just creep into the tone of the next 500 words.??
The Iron Lady isn’t an awful film by any means but from the outset make no mistake about it- it is a bad film. The purpose of this review is to explore why.
Well, from the start I was dreading a ‘Thatcher’ Hagiography - the sort of film that would have glossed over her many flaws and concentrated upon ‘Thatcher as icon’ and force for good (or bad); a sort of ‘Ali’ without boxing gloves or ‘Cash’ without his guitar. This film doesn’t do this - in fact, it might have been a better film if it had, as the end product is so insipid it doesn’t do that much at all! I blame this plot flimsiness firmly on the screenplay - if you cannot write a film about a subject as complex and controversial as Mrs T and make it interesting, let alone moving - it’s time to give up screen writing and move over for someone with talent.
I felt as if the writer and director had been given the vivid and exciting pallet of Vincent Van Gogh to paint their portrait of Maggie and had chosen only to use light blue and pink - it didn’t work. It ignored political controversy like my dog avoids baths - I’d liken it to making a film about the Titanic and leaving out ‘the bit in the middle with the iceberg’. Turning the film into a small scale character study of a character as huge and as fresh in recent memory as Mrs Thatcher was a blatant cop out and to be quite blunt - film making cowardice in the face of the enemy.
The best thing in the film is Meryl Streep in the lead role: Streep marinates herself in the essence of Thatcher. Her portrayal of her looks eerily accurate: she’s an astonishing mimic - but I’m left with a question - is effective mimicry good acting? I feel as if Streep carries this film from complete rubbish to just about tolerable; though Jim Broadbent provides a good foil as Dennis and several character roles were well played.
The early feminists used to say that ‘the personal is political‘ and I get the feeling that the screen writer was trying to play on this theme and use the narrative of the deeply personal proto-feminist struggle of Mrs Thatcher from grocer’s daughter to Number 10 as a focal point - and this could have worked with a stronger script. Instead, we’re left with a hollow film which fails to resonate any of Thatcher’s quarrelsome and some would say, domineering personality.
The film also manages to get several events spectacularly wrong; including Mrs Thatcher’s supposed feminism, the timing of certain well known events and the completely invented political stance of Thatcher not dealing with despots - (Oh yeah? tell that to Pinochet and the 1980s government of South Africa) ??
So, if you remove the blatantly Oscar hunting Streep from this film and what are you left with? Hardly anything that would qualify as coherent plot and virtually nothing interesting.
A film about Mrs Thatcher that becomes tedious and uninteresting - how the devil did they manage that...?
4/10 - take a good book
Edited: 10/01/2012 at 11:26
