Review of The Iron Lady (2011) by Alex D — 01 Jul 2018

It takes a true failure of a film to make me feel that Margaret Thatcher is being treated unfairly, and "Iron Lady" succeeds in being just that kind of failure. The film centers around her last days as a dementia-suffering widow, interrupted by flashbacks to her early life and career that are too brief and to far between to form a compelling narrative.

Time and again throughout the film, just when you're getting caught up in the history and politics, the film decides it's time to go back to the modern-day dim, dreary room in which the main character is trapped and in which we, the viewers, also become trapped.

This is neither biography, nor history, nor even good entertainment. Perhaps the producers imagined that generations of Thatcher-hating Britons would gleefully watch a film that focused on the Iron Lady brought down by senility.

Or that they would love to see how she eschewed traditional family obligations to pursue her political career (which is the subtext of much of the film, and which is nothing but sexist). Well, the producers were wrong.

The success of films like Stephen Frears' "The Queen" and "The Deal" show that Britons and Americans alike want to see hard-hitting political drama; the near-universal criticism (and box-office failure) of "Iron Lady" show that they were disappointed not to get it, and no matter how much many people may revile Thatcher, neither they, nor Thatcher's supporters, are particularly interested in seeing her life reduced to a cloying, condescending family drama.

Let's forget about "Iron Lady" and instead have an intelligent, unsentimental Stephen Frears-type drama about this woman who, her supporters and detractors agree, turned Britain inside-out.

Stephen Frears: are you out there? will you do it??