The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd) **

There aren't many politicians in modern history that are further from my ideology than Margaret Thatcher. As Prime Minister of Great Britain, she took a hard line against labor unions, slashed government spending on social programs and education, introduced a flat tax policy to pay for local services, and forged a strong working relationship with Ronald Reagan. Yet my problem with Phyllida Lloyd's film The Iron Lady, which is a biopic about Thatcher's life, is that it focuses too little on her politics. This is a woman who completely changed the political course of an entire nation and the filmmakers have taken the most safe, generic approach in doing a movie about her life. It's a frustrating decision that wastes the terrific casting coup of having Meryl Streep play Thatcher.

The Iron Lady tells Thatcher's story through a framing device. We first see her later in life, after her political career has ended and her body is weakening. She still sees images of her late husband talking to her. Her political career is seen through flashbacks as she remembers important points in her life. We see her initial failed attempt to win a seat in Parliament, followed by her later successes, while fighting sexism all along the way. The film also shows her courtship and eventual marriage to Denis Thatcher, who liked her specifically because she was an ambitious woman that wanted more for her life being a housewife.

The framing device is a pretty terrible idea. Margaret Thatcher is one of the most successful politicians in history, yet most of the movie focuses on her later years where she begins to lose her grip on reality. It's a disservice to a woman who accomplished so much. The dramatization of her political career is reduced to a timeline. We see bullet points - she's MP, then she's Education Secretary, then she's Prime Minister, Falklands War, IRA bombing, etc. In between each of these moments we go back to the framing device and more nonsense where she talks to her dead husband. This editing strategy robs the story of gaining any dramatic momentum. It also robs Streep, whose astonishing and fiery performance in the flashback sequences is far more impressive than in the present day scenes where she's buried under mountains of old age makeup.

It really feels like the problem is that the film was made by people who were uncomfortable with Thatcher's politics. Therefore, the story was designed to feature them as little as possible. Sure, we see her every now and then blasting unions and talking about how everyone should pay equal taxes, but these are mere soundbites and any scene where there is a political discussion is kept very short. There's very little about her close ties with Reagan and in fact, the US is dismissed as a nuisance during the Falkands War sequence. Her arguments in defense of her policies essentially amount to her refusal to compromise. There's nothing wrong with doing a movie about someone you disagree with, but at least show that or even provide a balanced perspective of the individual. Simply glossing over the positions of such an important political figure is a dramatically inept way to tell a story.

Another problem is that the casting of Streep seems to have influenced how they told the story. I really liked the few scenes with Alexandra Roach, who plays a young Margaret Thatcher at he beginning of her career. Some of the things that happened during this period are very important, but barely given any time in the story. She meets Denis Thatcher once, then the next scene with him he proposes to her. She decides to run for parliament, the next scene she loses her election (we see nothing of whether her gender, her politics, or anything had to do with her loss), and then the next scene she finally wins. There's barely enough time to show her first term, because we flash forward immediately years later where she is now the Education Secretary and Streep is in the role.

I admire Meryl Streep as one of the best actresses of the last three decades. I admire Margaret Thatcher for her accomplishments, if not for her ideology. The combination of the two should've been a slam dunk for a terrific movie. However, director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Abi Morgan ruined this dream combo by playing it safe and taking the most boring route through Margaret Thatcher's life. "The Iron Lady" was a very controversial politician, but there's nothing controversial about this bland Hollywood biopic.