THE IRON LADY

THE IRON LADY
Written by Abi Morgan
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent and Alexandra Roach


Margaret Thatcher: It used to be about trying to do something. Now it’s about trying to be someone.

In 2009, Margaret Thatcher attended the unveiling of her own portrait as British Prime Minister, held at her former office, London’s 10 Downing Street. Phyllida Lloyd’s THE IRON LADY supposes it knows Thatcher’s frame of mind in the time leading up to this event. The presumption is that Thatcher’s later years are spent mostly in solitude, facing her own mortality and inevitable dementia, whiling away the hours looking back on her life. There is some element of truth to this portrayal (Thatcher’s daughter has mentioned memory loss in the press), but the question is not whether the device is appropriate or not. It isn’t even the doors that it opens that matter most. THE IRON LADY hinges on but one thing - who walks through those doors and how she walks through them.

Meryl Streep, not surprisingly, is THE IRON LADY. Her performance, as Thatcher both during her rise to power in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and during her later years, is so focused and so commanding that she seems at times to be carrying the entire film in a cart behind her with a rope over her shoulder. Not that there aren’t other standout elements of the film, the most notable of which being Jim Broadbent as her deceased husband who has come back to her life through the power of hallucination, but just that Streep’s caliber of talent is clearly in full force as this iconic political figure. It is as though the breadth in Streep’s performance somehow became entwined with Thatcher’s stature as a politician to form a cross-generational super power of feminine strength. Does Lloyd know what to do with this though?

Lloyd does spin the film a little too often in the all too obvious feminist direction unfortunately. Yes, Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister and yes, she had to fight her whole life to be taken seriously in the relentless boy’s club that is the British Parliament. When she likens her struggle as a woman to those of a soldier in battle though, I’m less inclined to take her as seriously as she deserves to be. Abi Morgan’s screenplay, which misses no opportunity to be dramatic, operating in stark contrast to the bare bones work she did on Steve McQueen’s SHAME, pits Thatcher more often against her male detractors and herself, than the very real political issues she faced during her 11 years in office, sometimes glossing over major events. While this may not make for a great biography in then end, it still makes for some fairly compelling drama. And not one moment of Streep’s performance should be missed.

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ANOTHER YEAR

Written and Directed by Mike Leigh

Starring Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville

Gerri: Change is hard, isn't it?

Janet: Nothing changes.

Aging is one of those human experiences that, if we’re fortunate enough to get up there that is, is essentially universal in theory. In practice though, some of us age much more gracefully than others. Some of us age while our dreams come true around us, while others do so while watching each of their dreams fall victim to time. Unfortunately, we don’t always get to choose how well life works out for us, so when the years continue to pass, each one has the potential to reinforce what we do or don’t have in our lives. ANOTHER YEAR is British filmmaker, Mike Leigh’s, specific look at one of these years and, in its delightful and touching execution, it contemplates the cruel little imbalances life has to offer.

There is a lot of eating in ANOTHER YEAR and all the glasses at the table are quite distinctly either half empty of half full. The table itself belongs to Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), a couple who have been together for more than 30 years, who are still just as adorable with each other today as the combination of their names suggests they should be. They are joined more often than not at their table by old friends like Mary (a heartbreaking Lesley Manville), who tells herself she is happy alone but drinks to forget she is actually alone whenever she can, and Ken (Peter Wright), who cannot fathom retiring because then he truly won’t have anything at all to do with his time. Sometimes their son, Joe (Oliver Maltman) stops by too. At 30, he hasn’t met anyone special yet and with such a great example of long lasting love to live up to, you know he knows he is missing out. The dinner conversation is never boring and, thanks to the incredible ensemble, always fascinating and enlightening.

Tom and Gerri garden together. ANOTHER YEAR follows their planting cycle from the planting itself to the period of growth, through the harvesting in the fall and finally the inevitable death in the winter. They have been planting in this garden for years, just as Leigh has been making movies for years. And if the relaxed, subtly aware tone of Leigh’s latest work tells me anything, it is that he too knows that all you can do is plant the seed and hope it grows to be strong, tall and surrounded by flowers.

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