Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Anthony Head, Richard. E Grant
Running Time: 100 minutes approx
Certificate: 12A
Extras: Trailers, Numerous Set Featurettes, Colours, Costume and Characters, From Script To Screen
If winter is awards season spring is most definitely the time awards-fodder is released on your favourite home entertainment format; kicking off a couple of months of Oscar-winning releases is THE IRON LADY (2011).
Telling the story of an extraordinarily polarising figure, the first, and only, female British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the film won Oscars for Best Make-Up and Best Actress In A Leading Role for Meryl Streep. Given the level of love and hate that spread, almost equally, across the country for Thatcher the film was always going to have difficulty in pleasing everyone, but how did director Phyllida Lloyd (MAMMA MIA – 2008) and Writer Abi Morgan (SHAME – 2011) do?
Well, THE IRON LADY has one massive problem, which is also its greatest success, Meryl Streep; she is truly incredible in the lead role and I found it difficult to imagine her as Margaret Thatcher, merely thinking ‘well that’s a tremendous impression of Thatcher right there’. You see, it is a film that in effect showcases Streep’s acting talents almost at a cost to everything else; the structure follows Thatcher in her later years, suffering from possible dementia, haunted by visions and interaction with her deceased husband Denis (Broadbent) with other aspects of her life told through flashback. It’s little wonder the production team approached the film in this manner; it is undoubtedly intended to gather sympathy for Thatcher and it just doesn’t work. I grew up in a home with a Labour dad and a Conservative mum, so I’m not ignorant to Thatcher’s era but I don’t have a full understanding of the suffering caused in this country during that time (other than taking my delicious milk). But I had trouble viewing this neurological decline in a sympathetic light, mainly due to the fact she’s painted as a whiter than white, almost messiah type. Watching the film I felt the correct approach would have been a simple biopic telling Thatcher’s story from birth to the day she resigned from office. Portraying events and not the person would have hopefully had much more emotional resonance, but alas no. However, the final ten minutes are heart-breaking, you forget who this ‘Iron Lady’ is and it is merely a person dealing with the loss of a loved one, if only the rest of the film had a tenth of the emotion it would have been so very effective.
Oliver Stone set the benchmark for political biopics with NIXON (1995) and it is a great pity Phylidda Lloyd didn’t study it before commencing work on this film. THE IRON LADY is everything it shouldn’t have been: it’s inoffensive, a little contrite at times and, in all honesty, pretty dull. A waste of a golden opportunity.
Extras: Very standard fare, the featurettes range from 2 minutes to 11 and this tells you everything about their depth.
THE IRON LADY is released on Blu-ray and DVD 30th April
