Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Meryl
Streep) now in her eighties is struggling with dementia and has difficulty
distinguishing the past from the present. As she potters around her home she
tries to place herself but continues to struggle with the reality that her
husband Dennis (Jim Broadbent) has passed away. As Thatcher attempts to come to
terms with her loss she slips back into the past, remembering her lower
middle-class youth and subsequent rise to becoming the world’s most powerful
woman. With Dennis by her side she finds it difficult to let go of the past and
realise that she no longer has the power she once had. As an ageing woman she
realises that she has virtually no power at all, not even over her own life.
I have really mixed feelings about The Iron Lady. On the one hand it features a career defining
performance from someone who is already one of the most distinguished actresses
in history but on the other hand it is a biopic about one of the most divisive
people in recent history that somehow manages to treat a neutral line. There is
surely no one in Britain
who has neutral feelings towards the former Prime Minister. People either love
her or loathe her yet the film appears to brush over both the best and worst of
her character and time in office, leaving a fairly mundane story in its wake.
