Streep commands the screen (and Britain) in Thatcher bio drama
In "The Iron Lady," the play's not so much the thing as the player, for Meryl Streep's uncanny channeling of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is the <I>raison d'être </I>for sitting through Phyllida Lloyd's awkward, lumbering biographical drama.
Streep, who will undoubtedly add one more notch to her lengthy Oscar nominations belt, slips into the pale skin and matronly hair style of the revered and despised woman who reigned as prime minister from 1979 to 1990.
"The Iron Lady" begins with Thatcher, an aging woman suffering from hallucinations, chatting with her perpetually agreeable husband Denis (an amusingly befuddled Jim Broadbent).
It takes a while for us to realize that she's speaking to a ghost. Her husband has been dead for eight years, and even Denis has to remind Thatcher of that fact occasionally.
This approach to Thatcher's bio drama - scripted by Abi Morgan - is a highly theatrical piece of artifice that might have played quite well in the confines of legitimate theater (along with opportunities for Thatcher to issue reams of soliloquies directly expressing her unfettered inner thoughts).
In the more literal format of cinema, the delusion/ghost hook smacks of desperation to pump up a plodding narrative flooded with montages of riots, strikes, Parliament fights, political campaigns and archival military footage as Thatcher's right-leaning politics take a back seat to her more personal side: her well-matched relationship with Denis (10 years her senior), her devotion to her two children and her constant grappling with the limitations of old age.
Whenever Streep's Thatcher starts looking into the distance - as she does frequently - it's a cue for "The Iron Lady" to lapse into flashbacks that whisk us through her humble beginnings as the nondescript daughter of a local grocer.
A young actress named Alexandra Roach plays the young Thatcher, Maggie Roberts, and she exudes energy and cautious ambition as a young working-class British woman navigating the sexist and classist society of the 1950s.
"My life must matter, Denis!" she almost weeps to her then-boyfriend Denis. She explains how she won't be content to be the typical, subservient English housewife.
"That's why I want to marry you," Denis replies.
He has no idea his beloved Maggie will eventually become Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, credited with helping U.S. President Ronald Reagan cripple communism in Europe, along with taking on British unions and pushing economic policies that hurt the poor.
"The medicine may be harsh," Thatcher says of her tough economic plans, "but the patient requires it!"
"The Iron Lady" evokes dim comparisons to last year's big Oscar winner "The King's Speech" when the novice politician agrees to take lessons to make her screeching voice sound more authoritative, part of a complete makeover by professional image consultants.
These sequences point out a crucial difference in the lead characters from "The Iron Lady" and "King's Speech."
The latter employed likable characters fraught with foibles. The former uses a steely character, a 20th century woman who did not have the luxury of displaying emotions or vulnerabilities, lest she be judged to be unfit as a leader.
Thatcher, perhaps because of Streep's eerie mind-and-body-meld with the character, comes off as a fairly tough, humorless bird to hang with for two hours.
Even her character isn't above being accused of loving her career more than her family, significantly, a charge usually leveled at men.
Lloyd, not having the luxury of falling back on bouncy Abba tunes as she did when she directed Streep in "Mamma Mia," puts together a respectable and somber biographical drama without much pluck or surprise.
This isn't her show anyway. Nor is it Thatcher's.
This "Iron Lady" belongs to Streep, who once again proves she's the prime minister of actresses, an acting phenomenon whose work transcends her characters.
“The Iron Lady”
★ ★ ½
Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Harry Lloyd, Alexandra Roach, Richard E. Grant, Olivia Colman
Directed by: Phyllida Lloyd
Other: A Weinstein Company release. Rated PG-13 for violence, nudity. 105 minutes