Movie review: The Iron Lady

Meryl Streep at her expected finest.

Meryl Streep is such a mainstay at the Oscars that it's almost easy to overlook her. In fact, for the past 29 years, the Academy has. After winning two out of her first four nominations, Streep has been nominated an additional 12 times since 1983 without taking home the gold even once more. She's widely accepted as the greatest living actor (if not best ever), yet she's been forced to "just be happy to be nominated" for much too long.

Her performance as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady is virtually guaranteed to nab her 17th nomination. It's also pretty much a given that it will result in her 15th loss, although that will likely be the fault of the film's overall quality and not that of Streep herself. The film purports to show Thatcher's rise to power and challenges that she faced during her tenure as Prime Minister, which encompassed the entire 1980s. However, instead of taking the straightforward approach and telling her story in a chronological manner, director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) and writer Abi Morgan (Shame) chose to use flashbacks, utilizing Thatcher's current condition (she's reportedly suffering from dementia) as a dramatic tool.

Thatcher absolutely made the blue power suit.

The device cuts two ways. Divorced from anything else, Streep is as astonishing as usual as the older Thatcher. The makeup, in which any vestige of Streep's real face disappears, is top notch. And the idea that Thatcher uses the smallest reminders to remember significant moments in her life is mostly an effective one. But Lloyd and Morgan aren't relying on any kind of source material to come up with the plot; they're wholly inventing it out of thin air. To intimate that they have any kind of idea what Thatcher, who has remained mostly out of the public's eye for several years now, is experiencing nowadays is unseemly at best, ghoulish at worst.

Aside from that, however, focusing on her later years and not her prime diminishes much of what Thatcher accomplished in her life. Becoming a member of Parliament in 1959 and Prime Minister in 1979 were extraordinary feats, and even though they're treated as such in the film, they're forced to compete with scenes of the older Thatcher, taking away some of their impact. In the hands of Lloyd and Morgan, Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister essentially boils down to a highlights package, with precious little insight into what really made her tick.

You do not cross The Iron Lady.

None of this is the fault of Streep, whose accent, delivery, and demeanor are as impeccable as ever. All of this, plus the help of prosthetics, fake teeth, and one enormous wig make her into the spitting image of Thatcher. Jim Broadbent ably portrays Thatcher's husband Denis, although because much of his role is tied to Thatcher's older, addled days, his role becomes a bit uncomfortable.

The Iron Lady is one of those films where the star elevates the material that she is given. There's no doubt that Streep's portrayal of Thatcher will go onto her personal highlight reel. It's just a shame that the movie that contains it couldn't match her performance.