The Iron Lady

Alright, let's face it. Meryl Streep is playing on a different field from everyone else. She is asked to play the most diverse and difficult roles in current cinema and she consistently lives up to, actually exceeds expectations. This has been the case for more than two decades. Nothing new there. But sometimes great characters don't equate to great movies. Sadly this is the case with "The Iron Lady". You may have noticed that Streep is getting serious awards consideration. Did ya wonder why the film isn't being talked about for said awards? Well, I'm about to tell you.
"The Iron Lady" is a biography (of sorts) of English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a tough minded conservative who became the first women to lead a European Democracy. The story is told in flashback but it starts with Thatcher in her dotage, physically frail and losing a battle with dementia. She is seeing (and talking to) her dead husband (Jim Broadbent). This once powerful woman, the most powerful woman in the world in her day, has been diminished by nature. We see her early triumphs and troubles as fragments of an aging mind. And therein lies the problem.
This film is a patchwork of people and events sewn together from a faulty memory. We see them unfold with such fragmented speed that it's like watching a Margaret Thatcher highlight reel. We get facts and figures and results but we know little about the actual history. We don't know any more about The Falklands War or the IRA bombings, or Thatcher's rise to power than we did before the film started. The movie is a Cliff's Notes version of British History. It tells us little of the story and nothing of the woman who shaped the story. Scenes don't play out fully. And that is a crime. The finest actress in the English speaking world and she never really gets to play a full scene.
The film also wants to have it both ways in terms of the Thatcher legacy. It can't decide whether to play her as a feminist hero or a conservative villain, so they try to do both and they fail on each account.
Streep manages to rise above the the material, channeling Thatcher's authoritative bravado and stern will juxtaposed with the frailty of old age, her inner workings all visible through her face, lined with the limitations of her decline. In close-up, no one has ever been better. Is she really that good? Well, she makes a bad movie worth seeing, and that's no small trick.