The Iron Lady Review

Posted 12 years ago by myetvmedia

6/10

“Iron Lady” is a movie that attempts to capture the essence of one of the most remarkable female leaders and iconic figures of our time. Phyllida Lloyd has chosen a movie narrative and direction to define Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain’s only female Prime Minister and longest serving (1979 – 1990) that is very curious. Margaret Thatcher began her political career in 1950 during one of England’s most turbulent political periods when very few women entered politics. She was a Member of Parliament for almost 32 years until 1992 when she entered theHouse of Lords. She was an Oxford graduate whose family was not from the privileged class. She was an independent thinker, a trailblazer, who valued hard work and intelligence not emotion as a guiding principle. The direction of the movie almost makes a mockery of the very principles that personify Margaret Thatcher.

Despite an award winning performance by Meryl Streep, the movie simply misses the mark. The narrative of the film follows Margaret Thatcher as an old lady slipping in and out of dementia and apparent reminiscence. We are shown glimpses of her past life thorough a series of re-interpreted vignettes. This alone requires the audience to take a tremendous leap of faith. It is so completely out of touch with our perception of this woman and in truth, the image we want to carry away with us. Margaret Thatcher was unique; a woman when gender was a detriment; a visionary, a leader, a role model, and a lioness for over 50 years in the public realm. Why should she be reduced to a shadow of herself, leveled to some slightly maudlin ‘senior’ who is shown doing the very thing she vowed she would not do – spend her time washing tea cups?  The metaphor is lost in the implausible cinematic reduction of our image of this remarkable woman.  Washing teacups and all the domesticity it implies is admirable but it is not the thing we care to remember about someone appropriately dubbed the ‘iron lady’.

Kudos to Meryl Streep, for carrying off the role of the much older, debilitated Margaret Thatcher in the most horrific hair and makeup. Initially it seemed that Leonardo DiCaprio might have to carry worst makeup for “J. Edgar” but in “Iron Lady”, Meryl Streep’s may have certainly out done him. Her hair (Margaret’s signature feature) pokes up at times in the most alarming manner (in one backlit shot it is more akin to something in a horror film), her eyes peer through a miss-shapened, oversized head verging on something from ‘Mar’s Attacks’.


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