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| The Iron Lady (2012) () |
IMDB Rating: 6.2
Released: Jan 13, 2012
Rating: PG-13
Genres:
Drama,
Sub Genres:
Biography,
Running Time: 105 minutes
AKA: La dame de fer
Country: USA
Language: English
IMDB Link: The Iron Lady on IMDB
Official Site: Official Site
Views: 749
Plot: The film begins with an elderly Lady Thatcher buying milk unrecognised by other customers and walking back from the shop alone. Over the course of three days we see her struggle with dementia and with the lack of power that comes with old age, whilst looking back on defining moments of her personal and professional life, on which she reminisces with her (dead) husband, Denis. She is shown as having difficulty distinguishing between the the past and present. A theme throughout the film is the personal price which Thatcher has paid for power. Denis is portrayed as somewhat ambivalent about his wife's rise to power, her son Mark lives in South Africa in the present day and is shown as having little contact with his mother, whilst it is suggested that Thatcher had a strained relationship both with her own mother and with her daughter Carol.
In flashback we are shown Thatcher's youth working in her father's grocery store in Grantham, listening to his political speeches as Alderman, and her struggle as a lower middle-class young woman trying to break into the male-dominated Tory party and find a seat in the House of Commons. Her marriage to wealthy businessman Denis Thatcher, and her struggle to fit in as a "Lady Member" of the House, and of Edward Heath's cabinet are also shown, as is her friendship with Airey Neave (later assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army), her decision to stand for Leader of the Conservative Party, and her voice coaching and image change.
Further flashbacks examine historical events during her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom including the rising unemployment due to her monetarist policies and the tight 1981 budget (over the misgivings of "wet" members of her Cabinet - Ian Gilmour, Francis Pym, Michael Heseltine and Jim Prior), the Brixton Riots of 1981, the miners' strike of 1984-5, and the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the 1984 Conservative Party Conference, at which she and Denis were almost killed. We also see (slightly out of chronological sequence) her decision to initiate the 1982 Falklands War, and the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano and subsequent victory, her friendship with US President Ronald Reagan, and the economic boom of the late 1980s.
By 1990 Thatcher is shown as an imperious but ageing figure, ranting aggressively at her Cabinet, refusing to accept that the Community Charge (the "Poll Tax") is regarded as unjust, and fiercely opposed to European Integration. Her deputy Geoffrey Howe resigns after being humiliated by her in a Cabinet meeting, Michael Heseltine challenges her for the party leadership and her Cabinet colleagues force her resignation as Prime Minister, about which she is still angry and bitter twenty years later.
Eventually, Margaret is shown finally packing up her late husband's belongings, and telling him it's his time to go. Denis finally leaves her, and having dealt with her grief properly, she is left alone washing up a teacup in her kitchen - something she had promised Denis she would never do.
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| The Iron Lady Movie Review |
Source: Omar Moore , SF Indie Movie Examiner
Article: "Iron Lady" director Phyllida Lloyd does a wise thing in her film, which expanded its theatrical release today to San Francisco at the Presidio, the Kabuki and other area theaters: she starts her story in the present day, with an aged Margaret Thatcher as a figure of antiquity, withered and left behind by a new multicultural, short-attention spanned Britain, one very different from the one she ruled over as prime minister for more than 11 years from 1979 to late 1990. (I was born and raised in England, grew up there, and am very familiar with Mrs. Thatcher and the controversy and infamy she engendered.)
Ms. Lloyd makes Baroness Thatcher a sympathetic figure, one haunted by her own reverie, loneliness and singularity. "The Iron Lady", which is a series of flashbacks and memories in the mind of its chief subject, showcases a powerful woman as vulnerable figure, offering a side of Mrs. Thatcher that's either invented or one rarely displayed while in office as the leader of the Conservative Party at 10 Downing Street. "The Iron Lady" has a faded gloss even as it buffs up a shine on the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.
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Less an autobiographical film than a kind, rounded look at an independent-minded woman of ambition, passion, scorn and often withering indifference and insensitivity, Ms. Lloyd's drama covers Thatcher's political highs and lows as one of the Tories -- from her triumph and re-election as the only woman prime minister in Britain, to the garbage strike in the early 1980s, the Falklands War, her privatization initiatives, the tax-the-poor-at-higher-rates outrage riots against the "Toffs" in 1990 and beyond, the Brixton and Tottenham riots of the mid-1980s -- yet somehow manages to avoid the National Union Of Mineworkers strike and Arthur Scargill's fight against Mrs. Thatcher. The history of Mrs. Thatcher's political reign is something that is glanced at more than seriously examined, yet Ms. Lloyd is brave enough to even put a film like this on the big screen, and quickly spotlight the prime minister's many undignified moments, but I wish she had delved deeper.
Still, Meryl Streep is impeccable in the title role, a sly perfectionist at mimicry and timing down to every breath, cough and inflection -- and done so effortlessly that you submit once again to her greatness. Ms. Streep may have performed her best mimic here of those she's done prior, and while it isn't her best performance, it's one of her better efforts. Expect her to be called out as an Oscar nominee in eleven days' time. "The Iron Lady" -- in England the working class and poor called Mrs. Thatcher a lot worse than the film's title the Soviets coined for her -- travels in circular directions, and is a polite, generous and genteel-natured look at Thatcher's relationship with perception, reality, her own image and that of her relationship with best friend and husband Denis (played wonderfully by Jim Broadbent).
"The Iron Lady" covers the bases of her family background as a doer not a feeler adequately enough though not going beyond the surface. The film doesn't stretch its focus or ambitions beyond the shadowy recollections and ruminations of its central figure. In a way Ms. Lloyd's film is stuck in a time warp, although it recognizes that in many quarters in Britain Ms. Thatcher, even with the passage of time, is still a radioactive and polarizing figure. More than a few Brits, for example, expressed regret that Mrs. Thatcher escaped harm in a Brighton hotel bombing by the Irish Republican Army in 1983.
In "Shame" co-screenwriter Abi Morgan's script, "The Iron Lady" is less revisionist than romanticized, and any reverence it has for Lady Thatcher is shown in actual archival footage, off-screen voices and the thoughts of Ms. Thatcher herself. It is useful to remember that this film happens entirely in the mind of Mrs. Thatcher, and she is not necessarily its most reliable narrator. Students of history will be keenly aware of this, even if members of the current generation may not.
In a sense "The Iron Lady" plays like part of a travelogue through Ms. Streep's acting career. Ms. Streep has become more famous over the last 20 years for playing famous or real-life people ("Music Of The Heart", "Devil Wears Prada", "Manchurian Candidate", "Adaptation.", "Julie & Julia") than for playing character roles. Renewed adoration for her acting acumen is not without merit. Most interestingly, there's a scene in Ms. Lloyd's film in Mrs. Thatcher's early days in the House Of Commons during Question Time, where Ms. Streep looks not like the prime minister but like Ms. Streep in a baby powder blue suit and hat. This scene is one of the film's surreal moments, and feels like a tribute to the actress. If it's not the image of Streep's Thatcher playing Ms. Streep herself, it's pretty darn close. One may argue that Ms. Streep always plays herself first before her characters, but it's hard to deny that her technique achieves the results that count, for this film would be ever more lost without her grandeur.
Of the latest films to chronicle controversial or notorious political figures ("J. Edgar", "The Conquest"), "The Iron Lady" floats uneasily somewhere in the middle. Ms. Lloyd's film could do more with the events it portrays, but overall "The Iron Lady" lacks energy. You can feel the life of this film ebb away, scene by scene, growing more tired as Mrs. Thatcher grows old. |
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