The Iron Lady :

Survival of the fittest

Ruwini JAYAWARDANA

Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady frames the life of British political icon Margaret Thatcher’s life in a series of flashbacks from contemporary life. It depicts the decline of an elderly widow as well as the rise and fall of a politician.

Thatcher went down in history as the first female prime minister in European history, following the steps of Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike and India’s Indira Gandhi. That itself is a feather on her cap and one that she looks on with pride.

Thatcher’s main plus point is her ability to convince others. Though she herself does not believe that she will be elected to lead the country, her unwavering will power goes beyond family bondages and duties. She introduces conservative policies to the government which later becomes known as Thatcherism.

Meryl Streep is convincing as the conservative politician. From the moment she makes it to the scene as the confused and aging Thatcher, she holds our attention till the end. She displays the knack of changing minds and bringing on the cheers effortlessly. The irony of this is that though the society on the reel adorns her and is carried away by her energy, the observant spectator sees the underlining rigid ignorance of her policies in just the right moments. Such instances are seen in her speeches made to slash public spending and sending troops to die in the Falklands War. Though this is the case in most instances, Streep’s Thatcher impresses us by towering above all and blocking out other voices except her own. This certainly deserved the Best Actress award that she walked away with at this year’s Oscars.

Other characters who stand out are Jim Broadbent as Thatcher’s deceased husband, Denis, and Alexandra Roach as young Margaret Thatcher. They too deliver good performances but are only given a few minutes of screen presence.

Another plus point is how Lloyd had used objects instead of words and human facial expressions to drive home the message.

One such instance is in displaying Thatcher’s pair of heels amid countless wingtips and the blue-clad figure of the woman shoving her way through a sea of black coated males.

The film does have its share of drawbacks. It stretches on and is somewhat confusing at times on whether Thatcher is actually moving into real life scenes or undergoing hallucinations.

It also comprises a few scenes which seem unnecessarily inserted into the story. One such instance is the home video that Thatcher watches of a family holiday. The continuous hallucinations she has of her late husband too seems overdone.

Such scenes only lengthen the movie without adding to the facts that we already know. It merely glides through some of the milestones of the protagonist’s life rather than analyze whether she makes correct judgments or errors.

This has its plus points because delving too much on politics can be tedious to the audience but the drawback is that it tends to merely touch upon certain incidents where the director could have delivered an extra punch to the storyline.

Director Lloyd had taken a complete different path in The Iron Lady to that of her first movie, the musically entertaining Mamma Mia!. Though both movies have only Streep as the protagonist, they are poles apart in themes and essence - the latter being more of a lively musical with a story inserted to flow along with the songs while the former embodies a serious attitude and is based on real life incidents and characters.

The Iron Lady is a fascinating portrait of the aggressively determined woman struggling to make it in a field which was once considered as a man’s zone.

It is a surprisingly fair picture for it traces Thatcher’s humble upbringing as a daughter of a politically active grocer. In this light The Iron Lady shows us the humane side of the lady who changed the course of history with her noble pride, purpose and humane shortcomings.