The Iron lady (2012)

Going into this film, I had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was. Oh I know she was Prime Minister, I know she is considered as both the best and most hated Prime Minister of all time, but I had no idea who she was. I like how ‘The Guardian’ calls Thatcher a warmonger. It’s not like any Labour Prime Ministers sent Britain to war...apart from Clement Attlee (Korean War) and Tony Blair (Iraq War/War in Afghanistan).

Personally, I like Margaret Thatcher, I think she was one of the best Prime Ministers ever; alongside Winston Churchill, Tony Blair and David Cameron. She orchestrated the defence of the Falkland Islands from the invading Argentineans (by the way Argentina, the Falklands are ours, stop moaning about it), she stood up to the bullying trade unions, and brought us an economy which, with a few blips, in the long term was extremely strong until a certain Labour party ran it into the ground.

Sorry I’m going into politics. Anyway, as I went into this film, I liked Margaret Thatcher. As I left, I admired her.

The acting talent was superb, everyone was perfect. I was worried about Meryl Streep at first, not because she’s an American playing a former British Prime Minister I don’t care about that, but because everyone was saying that she’ll get an Oscar for her performance. I didn’t feel she was doing an Oscar worthy performance at first, but boy was I proved wrong. She brought so much character to Margaret Thatcher, it was hard to believe she wasn’t Thatcher. It’s still early days, but she has to be at least nominated for an Oscar.

We also have that guy whose name you can’t remember Jim Broadbent as Denis Thatcher, bringing both laughs and stern moments, as well as Richard E Grant as Michael Heseltine, who was effectively what Gordon Brown was to Tony Blair. We also have Olivia Colman (who you may remember from ‘Hot Fuzz’ and ‘Peep Show’) as Thatcher’s daughter, Harry Lloyd (‘Doctor Who’, ‘Game of Thrones’) as a young Denis Thatcher, Anthony Head (‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘Merlin’) as Geoffrey Howe, and Ian Glen (‘Doctor Who’, ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Resident Evil: Extinction’) as Margaret’s father. We have such a great pool of talent here, there’s hardly any fault.

Actually, the only problem with all this talent is that they’re hardly used. With the exception of Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent who dominate the screen, everyone else has probably ten minutes of screen time. It just seems a waste of great talent.

The main problem for this film though, is, how should I say this...the plot I suppose. For a film that’s an hour and forty five minutes, it’s slightly uneven. How? Well first of all roughly forty to sixty minutes of the film is taken up by the post-resignation Thatcher story, in which her daughter is trying to help Margaret empty her closet as it still has Denis’ clothes in it; Denis at this point has since passed away. Margaret however is hallucinating Denis, occasionally having conversations with him.

Now, there’s where the concern is. In ‘The Iron Lady’, Margaret Thatcher has some sort of mental illness, whereas in real life, she doesn’t. Well, at least I don’t think she has, her private life is...well...private. But I don’t know where this came from. Then again, I suppose it wasn’t a mental illness at all, it was just Margaret not letting go of the person she loved. As I said, she talks to him quite a bit, but she eventually tries to ignore Denis, but he keeps coming up. This is just Margaret’s way of keeping his memory alive, even though it’s destroying her health.

But then comes the point when she finally throws all his clothes into black bags in order to give away. She then packs Denis’ bag, helps him put on his coat and hat and kisses him goodbye. As Denis walks down the corridor to move on to the next life, Margaret calls for him to come back, but Denis refuses, walking into the light. Yeah, Margaret spends all this time trying to cure herself, then when the time comes to move on, she tries to fall back into the madness (shall I say), she doesn’t want to lose Denis, she doesn’t want to be alone; which in all fairness is how we all feel at times. This was a pretty heart wrenching scene! I almost cried!

Apart from that, the remaining runtime of the film, less than an hour, tries to cram in, not only Margaret Thatcher’s eleven and a half years as Prime Minister, but the years before then, when she was a greengrocer’s daughter going to Oxford and campaigning to become an MP.

But the film glances over pretty much everything. We see Denis proposing to Margaret, then the next plot point is of them having kids. She campaigns to be the MP for Finchley, we get a voiceover saying she won the 1959 election and it jumps to 1970 where we see that she is now the Secretary of State for Education and Science. The Falklands War gets about fifteen minutes maybe, when a lot more detail should be given. Heck, events like the Lockerbie Bombing and the Westland Affair aren’t even mentioned. Thatcher’s relations with the Soviet Union are only mentioned once; she is only called ‘The Iron Lady’ once in the film.

 

I can understand that it is difficult to cram more than eleven years in less than an hour, otherwise we were going to get ‘The Iron Lady 2: The Miners’ Strike' But the trailers give the impression that we were going to get more of an insight into her political career.

Instead the film focuses more on how Margaret Thatcher fought her way, tooth and nail, from being a simple greengrocer to being one of the most powerful and influential figures on the planet, as well as on how she is trying to cure her failing health. While the first seems rushed at times and the other fictional, it still manages to drag you in. The flashback sequences show her determination, her thoughts and processes, her human side in trying to run the country. It doesn’t condemn or praise her, it just shows her tenacity, intelligence and perseverance, the reasons why she did what she did. Meanwhile the post-resignation storyline draws you in with the sadness and the fact that she is trying to lead a normal life, but her hallucinations of Denis are destroying her. They are both really good storylines, BUT, the problem is that the film is too short to incorporate them both at the same time.

A flawed film yes, but a bloody brilliant one at that, truly inspirational. I can’t wait until it comes out on DVD, it certainly makes me want to go read a biography on Margaret Thatcher, to learn more about her. Then again I still need to read Peter Mandleson’s ‘The Third Man’.