The Iron Lady | Review

Just as a corporation is legally an individual, The Weinstein Co. should be considered a person, and a prolific one at that: The Company has written, directed, and edited two features released this fall, both biopics, and both set in England (a double “prestige” whammy!): ‘My Week with Marilyn’ and ‘‘The King’s Speech’-meets-‘Julie & Julia’,’ also known as The Iron Lady. The latter manages to be relentlessly generic despite its unique subject: former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose strict conservative policies made her one of the most divisive political figures of the last quarter century. Streep is lively, precise, and inventive in her mimicry (much like Kenneth Branagh, the lone standout in the torturous ‘Marilyn,’ was with his take on Olivier) but ultimately The Company’s entertainment commodity finds its joys only in cheap sentiment, broad laughs, and packaged triumphs. Scenes are not constructed to explore the complex inner contradictions of a woman of power and strength, but only to illustrate simplistic feminist bromides and to repeat fatiguingly familiar melodrama tropes.

‘Marilyn’ and ‘Lady’ could be twins. Both feature famous actresses giving stunt performances as historical figures (Streep has technique, and finds a way to be human and engaging; Williams is never more than a glass-eyed cipher). Both are so beholden to demographic testing and audience anesthetizing that the only major dramatic conflicts they introduce are clear-cut and quickly resolved. Neither movie is constructed or edited with regard for the overall, unifying shape of the story; instead, it’s as if each sequence is meant to be watched on its own, the chronological order irrelevant. In other words, it’s designed to be something you can have on the TV in the background while you’re busy in the kitchen making dinner for Phil and the kids.

At worst, this is the infomercial version of female empowerment. At best, if ‘Lady’ qualifies as some form of “feminism,” it is operating at the lowest level of “role model” propaganda.

Streep is far more physically enticing now, in her menopausal giddiness, than she ever was in her aloof youth. Her busty vitality complicates preconceived notions of Thatcher’s steeliness. In a less patronizing context, her gleeful energy and effortless range might have produced a truly complex and captivating heroine. But despite its glib feminist clichés, the movie never shows Thatcher the true respect of honoring and excavating her flaws (as such, it is decidedly not, as The Company’s PR team would have it, “’King Lear’ for girls” — though the marketing catch phrase betrays The Company’s designs on infantilizing its female audience).

Though admirably refusing to pander to trendy industry (and target audience) anti-conservatism, the movie continuously fumbles its historical oversimplifications. The choice to leave politics in the background and instead focus on a the personal psychodrama of a ruling titan has much potential, but then why inflict on the audience slapped-together “80’s Britain for Dummies” B-roll montages? Authoritative male newscasters (the Brit accents tell the audience: on this you can rely) bring us up to speed with buzzword-laden sound bytes: Unions are upset, the sanitation strike is smelly, and “the IRA has taken responsibility for the bomb…”

Which bomb, which causalities, what circumstances contributed to it — all irrelevant for writer/director The Company. All we need to know is that things are “unsettled,” which is merely the set-up for the predictable punch line: The Martha Stewart of politics is sure to whip things back into shape in no time.

The Company has taken as its model for Thatcher’s relationship to husband Denis (possibly the movie’s most extraordinary achievement is to make you forget for two hours how great an actor Jim Broadbent really is) the relationship between Streep’s Julia Child with husband Paul, played in ‘J&J’ by Stanley Tucci. Rarely has spousal affection been captured with such depth, warmth and respect for idiosyncrasy as it was by Streep and Tucci. In ‘Lady,’ however, Broadbent is die-cast as the neglected spouse on the sidelines. He’s even given the perfunctory scene (pointedly staged in a kitchen) where he complains about how his wife’s career ambitions have turned him into a secondary priority. “Great Man” biopics usually give this thankless role to the wife; here the husband’s the nag. The Company uses this crude switcheroo to score feminist points, but really it’s just banal dramatic technique. It’s the same old formulaic game, no matter which side of the field the coin flip puts you on. Is this really how “feminist” movie art should be operating in 2011, satisfied simply to be sliced up by the same rusted cookie-cutters as the men?

The one-dimensional portrayal of Denis Thatcher is more then just lazy — it undermines the movie’s basic organizing conceit of the flashback framework. A retired Thatcher, teetering on the edge of Alzheimer’s, is haunted by her husband’s ghost. She must re-live all of the important moments of her life, the movie goofily implies, to move on from his death and “let him go.”

Margaret Thatcher with scrambled brains roaming the empty corridors of the house she is kept locked up in, haunted by the ghosts of her past sins and loves. That could have been a great movie (Polanski as director, maybe? ‘The King’s Speech’-meets-‘Repulsion’?). But it certainly isn’t this one.

Rating 2 stars