THE IRON LADY

Maggie May

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Stewart Head

There have been no shortage of decent films centred around less-than-likeable protagonists; Oliver Stone seems to tackle something along those lines every three or four films. Such films are successful because they recognise that it’s okay for a character to be unsympathetic, as long as they aren’t uninteresting. Sadly, The Iron Lady fails to heed that axiom.

It’s clear from the outset that director Phyllida Lloyd’s biopic of Britain’s controversial female Prime Minister is nothing more than a heaped platter of steaming Oscar bait, every element designed to give its cast and crew the best possible shot a red carpet glory. The problem is that, by trying to cover all its bases, the film spreads itself far too thin, and what we get is a brisk, overly simplified run through of the Thatcher Years.

And what years they were. Margaret Thatcher (here played by Meryl Streep in a performance that veers weirdly from chameleonic to histrionic) wasn’t just Britain’s first female PM, she was one of its most controversial, a steely-eyed conservative who equated Unionism with Communism and steered the United Kingdom though one of the most turbulent periods in living memory. For unfathomable reasons, Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan fail to mill this rich grist into anything significant, ignoring the realities and complexities of the political situation - not to mention Thatcher’s often morally murky policies - and reducing her opponents and detractors to a gaggle of malcontents whose arguments are boiled down to gender and class prejudice against Thatcher herself; not for a second are we allowed to believe that her polices might be questionable, and her tough lover methodology short sighted or simply inhumane. In the context of the film, Thatcher is always Right, which means her adversaries are, to a man, wrong, an insultingly simplistic binary.

It’s that refusal to imbue the material with any kind of shading that dooms the film, reducing it from biography to mere hagiography, a decision that is bound to alienate at least half of its potential audience - it’s worth noting that, even today, Thatcher is a much-hated figurehead of the right, so anyone who leans leftward, politically speaking, is already predisposed to dislike the film. For all its desperate attempts to position Thatcher as a plucky underdog, the film never gives them a reason to change their minds.

Although Jim Broadbent puts in solid work as Thatcher’s husband, Denis, and cult favourites Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and Richard E. Grant (Withnail And I) crop up in supporting roles, this is without a doubt Streep’s show, and it’s a shame the even her powers can’t inject Thatcher’s thinly drawn character with even a modicum of depth.

Ultimately, The Iron Lady is an embarrassing shambles, so convinced of the worthiness and importance of the events it depicts that it never bothers to grapple with anything so gauche as meaning.

_TRAVIS JOHNSON