The Iron Lady film review

The Iron Lady film review (c) 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (p) GoUK.com

What

The Iron Lady film review

When

January 2012

Where

At cinemas UK wide

The Review

Just released in the UK, The Iron Lady - directed by Phyllida LLoyd and starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent and Olivia Coleman as Margaret, Denis and Carol Thatcher respectively – is the film of the moment and yet, remarkably, one of the most non-film films to hit the cinema.

The Iron Lady chronicles the rise and fall of the 1980s UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and is told in a series of episodic flashbacks as recalled by the semi-lucid, enfeebled, grieving (for the loss of Denis), octogenarian Maggie.

This framing device is used repeatedly throughout the film, breaking it into a disjointed and lifeless mush. Through needless repetition, like hammer blows on an open wound, it swiftly becomes a mawkish and nauseating stratagem to manipulate the audience by derogating (however gently) Margaret Thatcher’s grief and illness in her latter years.

Seeing Meryl Streep as a fading Maggie once or twice is sufficient to give context. To repeat the long close-up shots of a frail, ill and broken-hearted Maggie without providing any meaningful character or plot development is just bitch-slappingly repugnant and unnecessary.

This failure in writing, directing or editing (or in all three) may or may not have been intentional, but it scars what is at best an anodyne, anaemic and plodding film.

The Iron Lady is a Blairite view of Thatcherism in a post-Blairite world. A suggestion that the filmmakers have a sneering admiration for Maggie, but that they are too ashamed to give anything more than a cursory nod to her place in history. Torn between respect that they cannot own up to, and the popular leftist view of Thatcher as a figure of hatred.

In the end, the film lacks integrity or purposefulness. An attempt at style. A failure of substance.

The film does nothing and says nothing. It might want to be an heir to The King’s Speech and The Queen, but it lacks both narrative and humanity.

The King’s Speech had a story to tell, a point of view, and well developed characters.

The Queen had a definitive frame of reference in being set at the time of the death of Princess Diana.

But The Iron Lady has nothing at all; perhaps because Margaret Thatcher is still alive and her story is unfinished.

The film is not a biopic.

It doesn’t laud Maggie. It doesn’t criticise Maggie.

It doesn’t lionise her legacy, or vilify it.

It doesn’t even give a clear factual account of her life, or any single part of it.

It is just an ill-conceived melange of scenes, and lacks the courage to take a view on Thatcher one way or the other, or to even invite the audience to form a view of their own.

It is not a film. Not a play. Not a documentary. Not witty. Not intelligent. Not engaging. Not eye-opening. Not challenging. Not demanding. Not entertaining.

It is nothing at all, other than 105 minutes of waffling guff and voyeuristic rubber-necking.

“Look, look. There’s a woman who was the UK’s first ever woman Prime Minister. She was a controversial leader: loved by some, loathed by others. She’s a unique figure straight out of history. So let’s spend as much time as possible saying little or nothing about her life but focussing unblinkingly on her illness and grief. Let’s gawk at her demise and get ready to dance on her grave before she’s even dead.”

Shame on the filmmakers for producing such dross.

The Iron Lady review rating

1 Star