The Iron Lady

What a waste! The makers of the Iron Lady had a perfect gem of a performance from Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher to work with. One of the greatest actresses of all time providing a flawless impersonation of one of the greatest and most interesting women of all time, and they did not have a clue as to what to do with it. The focus of the movie seems to be that an aged and disoriented Mrs Thatcher suffers from delusions that her deceased husband is still with her. Is that really the most fascinating element of her life? Is the fact that she has grown old and frail really the most interesting thing about the life of the first female Western leader, the first female Prime Minister of Britain, the woman who transformed the UK economy, one of the most loved, hated and controversial characters of our age, the most important British Prime Minister since Churchill? The film makers had a matchless treasure trove of story material to work from. They have done nothing with it. The telling of historic events is done in a listless, lazy manner, cobbled together with grainy news footage. The present day story of the aged Mrs Thatcher is dull and irrelevant. The mechanism of using conversations with Dennis to move along the story of past events is amateurish. It brings to mind the sort of hastily assembled biopic you might see on the weaker moments of the History Channel. This is a shameful waste. We can only hope that we will see a future, better attempt at telling Mrs Thatcher’s story. Sadly, that would have to be without the wonderful performance by Meryl Streep. Her Oscar nomination is deserved and I’m confident she will walk off with the prize. The writers and directors of this weak effort should apologise to her and realise that they are forever in her debt for rescuing their pathetic effort from complete obscurity.