A look at the life of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a focus on the price she paid for power.
Awards should be coming Streep’s way; yet her brilliance rather overshadows the film itself.
Not Iron Man’s mother, but an adroit if flashy tribute to Mrs Thatcher’s ascent to power. Sly satire and a sublime Streep should tempt in more than the party faithful.
The Iron Lady could have been a cultural talking point, but it reiterates more than it reveals.
Phyllida Lloyd’s direction and Abi Morgan’s script are about as deep as George Osborne’s treasury coffers, with Thatcher’s decimated Britain of strikes, riots, unemployment, terrorism and war reduced to glib I Love the 80s-style montage.
What a spectacular waste of time.
Streep gets everything right.
Almost hysterically inadequate.
Some viewers may be disappointed that a Thatcher biopic lacks an explicit political agenda, but the film succeeds as a drama for that very reason. Lloyd and Morgan have no intention of immortalising their subject: in fact, they do just the opposite, which those with an axe to grind will find even less palatable. They make her fully human.
Morgan’s script would lend itself well to a one-woman stage show, and is consequently the ideal showcase for Streep’s towering performance.
The uncritical nature of the film, its acceptance of Thatcher as a self-made legend, will infuriate those who remember the 1980s as a bitterly divisive era. But I don't think anyone will be unmoved by Streep's performance.
Poignant and touching though it is in places, I can’t help feeling Thatcher and her family would find this portrayal invasive and cruel while the factual accuracy seems highly debatable.
Basically, this is a defanged, declawed, depoliticised Margaret Thatcher, whom we are invited to admire on the feeble grounds that she is tougher and gutsier than the men. Yet on the rare occasions when the film does allow her to become nastily political, this Margaret comes alive.
It's just about worth watching thanks to Streep's performance. Beyond that, The Iron Lady is fit for the scrapyard.
Great performance...pity about the film.
One of Streep’s finest-ever performances. But beyond that — whatever Morgan and Lloyd’s intentions — it’s little more than a myth-enshrining exercise.
Forget Maggie: The Musical, this is Maggie: The Missed Chance.
Holding it together is Streep’s mesmerising performance, much more than just an impersonation, although the voice is amazing and the make-up helps.
Streep’s performance is outstanding, managing partly to obliterate some of the flaws of the film itself: it is worth seeing for Streep alone.
Breathtaking in its detail and nuance, its subtle gestures and inflections, this multifaceted jewel of a portrait is altogether grander than the commonplace setting of the film.
Meryl Streep is superb, but the story is of one woman fulfilling her destiny rather than the pell-mell of politics.
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Photo Credit: Alex Bailey / Courtesy of Pathe Productions LtdGeneral release. Check local listings for show times.
Dominion, Edinburgh from Friday March 16, 2012, until Thursday March 22, 2012. Screening at 13.50, 16.15 and 19.50.. More info: http://www.dominioncinemas.net
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