The Iron Lady

The Iron Lady could have been this year’s The King’s Speech. 

The British production company behind The Iron Lady were clearly hoping for this: opting for a January release date, bagging an Academy-friendly actress and offering a portrait of another twentieth-century figure who overcame adversity to lead a nation. It is a shame therefore that The Iron Lady is unlikely to achieve any of the critical acclaim or box office of The King’s Speech because the whole film is a huge disappointment.

The Iron Lady makes the mistake that sours many a biopic: trying to do too much. Screenwriter Abi Morgan has attempted to cover the full stretch of Thatcher’s life and, as a result, the story is constantly jumping back and forth in time, showing snatches of her childhood, political career and later senile years. As such, major events in Thatcher’s career – her first election, the Trade Unions, the Falklands – are reduced to montages and skipped over in minutes. Recent years have shown that successful biopics (Ali, Che, Milk, The King’s Speech) limit themselves to a few years or possibly a decade but never an entire life because you cannot maintain the quality of story-telling or drama.

Bizarrely, the story arc given the most screen time is Thatcher coming to terms with the passing of her husband Denis (Jim Broadbent). The film is therefore punctuated with hallucinations of her dead husband, which are over-used, distracting and eventually annoying. Why on earth the screenwriter felt the need to insert a fantastical and overtly-sentimental plotline into Thatcher’s life is a mystery. Thatcher is the first and only female Prime Minister, she went to war, won a war, ruled for a decade and her ruthlessness now lives in infamy – was her life not interesting enough?

But the jarring narrative is only part of the problem. 

The whole film reeks of made-for-TV blemishes: voiceovers, montages, lazy inter-splicing of documentary footage, bland set design and a litter of underused British TV stars with little to do. Olivia Colman could have been good as Carol Thatcher if it wasn’t for her laughable prosthetic nose. Generally, the film is lacking in cinematic presence: it has no style, no presence, no look. The director makes amateur decisions, such as placing the camera at a jaunty angle when events are turning chaotic. And there is a strangely-frequent occurrence of characters talking directly at the camera. Director Phyllida Lloyd, who brought us Mamma Mia!, has clearly overstepped. She should stick to the musicals.

All of this is a crushing shame because the filmmakers were onto a winner. Bagging both Streep and the rights to make a Thatcher biopic should have been cinematic gold. And sure enough, Streep is brilliant in the role. She nails all aspects of Thatcher’s character – the formidability, the vulnerability and the senility – which few actresses could pull off so effortlessly. There are even a few laughs up for grabs when the script finally allows Streep a witty one-liner, which she delivers like a whip-crack. It would be tempting to say this performance makes up for the shortcomings but this is not the case. Streep is limited by her material and even Meryl Streep can only do so much with shoddy goods.

There is little joy to be had from The Iron Lady. It could have been a dramatic history lesson about the eighties, a tour de force character study of an infamous twentieth-century figure or an inspirational tale of one woman’s fight against misogyny. It attempts all but succeeds at none. The terrible poster says it all: aside from Streep, this is any old iron. 

Oscar Season deserves better.

★★