The Iron Lady

[hscope]

Streep is superb, but what a disappointing movie. A very superficial look at a rather amazing woman.

If you don't know much about her and the time she was Prime Minister, be prepared to be very confused.

[roscoegino]

I knew Streep was going to be superb. If she were a man they'd compare her to Brando and Olivier. Word.

[wcmartell]

Did you stay for the post-credit scene with Samuel L. Jackson?

- Bill

[roscoegino]

You gotta come out with Secrets of Comedy Screenwriting.

[Fortean]

Ouch!

I stopped the DVD player to see how much time had elapsed. A little more than fifteen minutes. I was still waiting for the story to really begin.

Meryl Streep, as a frail and elderly Margaret Thatcher, was providing a tremendous performance. She was having flashbacks. Jim Broadbent, as Denis Thatcher, was marvelous as her dead-but-very-talkative husband.

Then, I started having flashbacks!

I didn't remember seeing so many confused flashbacks used in a biopic, since Jim Broadbent played John Bayley, with Judi Dench portraying Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's in IRIS.

Thatcher's political career was summed up in about twenty minutes of flashbacks, and about ninety minutes of her struggle with dementia. One moment, she decides to become a candidate, and, the next flashback, she's already the Secretary of State for Education and Science, (a fifteen-year leap in time), followed by a decision to lead the Conservative Party, (which can be accomplished in a couple of flashbacks, without much struggle, beyond a few voice lessons). Flashbacks, for me, again, to THE KING'S SPEECH!

When Thatcher has had a character arc, from the daughter of a grocer to the leadership of a powerful nation, I felt cheated by a screenplay that focused upon her mental decline, with mere glances into her political decisions, her thoughts, and her character. One might as well summarize the political career of Julius Caesar in series of flashbacks while he was being knifed twenty-three times outside of the Theatre of Pompey.

The screenplay needed a re-write. A brilliant start of an elderly Thatcher shocked at the price of milk at a convenience store, and, then, not a hint about what the price of milk was, when she worked behind the counter in a grocery store, (nor any mention of her cutting "free milk" to most school children, while Secretary of State for Education and Science). There was no excuse for all of those ridiculous flashbacks.

[hscope]

I agree, Fortean.

I read somewhere that the original idea was for the film to be about the 20 days leading up to the Falklands War, which would have been much more interesting. As would a straight biopic.

Thatcher had such an incredible journey, this film was almost criminally negligent.