The Iron Lady tells the story of Margaret Thatchers life through flashbacks of a very old, frail and slightly senile Margaret Thatcher. Although it does not cover all of her life it does skim over the more important aspects albeit through tinted glass.
THE ACTORS
Meryl Streep is amazingly perfect in her role as both the geriatric Thatcher and also as Thatcher in her prime. She truly immerses herself in the role, becoming Thatcher instead of just playing her. She definitely deserved her Oscar win for this performance.
The rest of the cast are also equally brilliant with only a few questionable performances.
THE DIRECTOR
Phyllida Lloyd doesn’t stray too far from the normally dull directing style of many films of this caliber, The King’s Speech, etc. Yet Lloyd uses a fairly interesting mash of inserting archive footage into the film and although it adds realism, it took me out of the film, one minute is this pristine picture with Meryl Streep as Thatcher and then it will suddenly cut to archive footage from the 80’s which is grainy and low resolution.
I can certainly see why she did it, but it would have been better to digitally age shots instead of using archive footage.
Also, there are a few uses of fairly interesting camera angles in some scenes which do keep the film from being dull and bland at times.
CONCLUSION
This film tries to portray Margaret Thatcher as someone who appeared to be in control all the time but had a heart of gold. The film also tries to make you pity her by showing her in a geriatric state, having visions of her dead husband, however this comes off as severely tasteless and hinders the film greatly.
The script is very biased, the performances are fantastic, the directing is fairly standard.
MY SCORE
6/10