The Iron Lady

Name: The Iron Lady
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Richard E. Grant
Length: 105 min
Year: 2011

The Iron Lady is the somewhat controversial offering about the life and times of Lady Margaret Thatcher, first and only female Prime Minister of England (for those of you who don’t know). I came to this film as a political novice, knowing little about her life, and without being alive at the time of her ‘reign’, and I think this had quite an effect on my opinion.

Putting the 'Great' back in 'Great Britain'

The structure is one of retrospection, as ‘Maggie’ (Meryl Streep) looks back on her life and career, sometimes with fondness, and at other times without intention. A photograph, tune or news report will plague her with the recollection of a tough day in the office, and all she has left to comfort her is the hallucination of her late husband, Dennis (Jim Broadbent).

It is these hallucinations about Dennis that have caused a bit of a stir as they are speculative – the real Dennis apparently never spoke out about his wife, so the depiction of their relationship is mostly fictional. Furthermore, the portrayal of Margaret’s dementia-driven hallucinations hardly seems sympathetic given the fact that she is still alive.

Despite this, I personally felt I learnt a lot about the political decisions Thatcher had to make, why she made them, and what the outcomes were. Live footage of events was cleverly interspersed with Meryl’s top-notch acting (the Oscar is in the post, I’m sure).

Short scenes subtly open your eyes to aspects of Thatcher’s personality, for example when being thanked by a young female politician for being an inspiring role model, instead of encouraging the chosen career path of her admirer, Margaret states that one feels like one must ‘do something’. She didn’t take on the most difficult job in the country with the intention of opening doors to young women like herself; she did so purely because she wanted to change the country. And she did just that, which does make her rather inspiring.

Not perhaps the Thatcher film that some have been waiting for, as it is more of a character picture than a political chronology, but after all it is a film, not a documentary. I’m sure several more mature viewers will be disappointed with the lack of politics and the omnipresence of dementia, but as a film, it was very well done – something reflected by the applauding audience!