Review: "The Iron Lady" is a Gorgeous Portrait in a Broken Frame

Jim Broadbent and Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady

As a biopic of one of the most powerful women in world history, The Iron Lady is a ridiculous mess - a jukebox biography more concerned with Lifetime Original Movie-caliber heartstring-tugging, goofy hallucinatory imagery and period hats than with the actual nuts and bolts of its central subject's life. But as a piece of entertainment, this handsome and proudly quirky bit of fluff - anchored solely by the stunning central performance of Meryl Streep - is a rather engrossing guilty pleasure.

In other words, if you dont' give a hoot about the particulars of Margaret Thatcher's actual career but are more than interested in watching Streep rattle around a handsome apartment in old-biddy drag as she is besieged by the ghosts of her past like a whiskey-soaked Ebenezer Scrooge, this is the movie for you.

The Iron Lady begins in modern-day London, as Thatcher totters to the corner, unrecognized, to buy a pint of milk. When she returns to her lushly-appointed home it's clear from the ensuing fuss that she isn't supposed to be popping off to the shops like that. It also becomes evident from the several conversations that she has with her dead husband (a wonderfully chipper Jim Broadbent) that her mind is not what it used to be.

How, then, did her mind used to be? After a considerable bit of time watching Thatcher putz around the house, we do eventually get around to her modest upbringing as a grocer's daughter who, inspired by her father's zeal as a small business owner, aspired to a life in politics.

Early on the seed is planted that Margaret's ambition was largely reactionary; we see her flash back several times to the image of three well-dressed girls snorting at young Margaret (played by Alexandra Roach) as she swept up outside the shop, and her mother's lack of ambition to be anything other than a grocer's wife and mother was clearly an embarrassment to her. The suggestion throughout seems to be that her rise in the Conservative ranks was due more to her disinclination to back down to the party's boorish men than it was to any actual political acumen or personal ambition.

I don't even need to go into the fact that Streep nails the part like a union rally flier to a telephone pole. Sure, she's pegged every nuance, tic and trait of the real Thatcher and executes her rendition with thoughtfulness, genuine emotion, and electrifying energy. But no one really doubted that she would, did they? And thanks to some excellent prosthetic and makeup work, she effortlessly disappears into the character over several decades (oh that the folks behind J. Edgar had called up this makeup team instead!).