The Iron Lady

The new movie the Iron Lady is horrible.  I got a chance to see it last night.   The subject matter, Lady Margaret Thatcher, should be a good subject for a movie.   She was a transformative figure in British politics.  She was able to get into and lead a "boys club" as the Prime Minister for eleven years.   Yet she was unceremoniously dumped by the same "boys club."  She seemed passionate about recovering a nondescript set of islands that no one else seemed to care about.   She was a good friend and ally of Ronald Reagan.  She was a leading figure in keeping Britain out of the Euro - a move that looks better and better but which she was criticized for at the time.  She took on the labor unions in Britain and substantially won her fights.  She did some transformative changes in local finances in her country.   But this picture dwells on her after she had left office and attempts some surrealistic lapses into the beginnings of dementia.   What comes off is a disappointing confused and non-informative movie that simply drags out.

Meryl Streep gives, at least, a good portrait of Lady Thatcher at her best, unfortunately, those performances are interspersed so haphazardly that one almost has to dig for the effort.   I will admit that for part of the performance I kept thinking about Julia Child (Julie and Julia) but her bio part of the role looked like it could have been pretty convincing.

Lady Thatcher was often a divisive leader.  How  could she gain and maintain her position in power, what drove her to take positions that she did and what were the consequences of those positions could be the interesting stuff of celluloid.   But what we were left with was a muddled haze of nonsense.  Avoid this like the plague.