Streep’s Iron Lady Makes History
Before confronting Meryl Streep’s remarkable transformation as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, it behooves us to consider Thandie Newton playing Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in Olivier Stone’s W. Newton’s portrayal of a female public figure invading a masculine realm necessitated combining tenacity with feminine reserve—a rare sight, especially in the genre of biographical political drama. Stone’s ambivalent concept in W. constrained Rice—as well as Bush—between tribute and satire. Yet Newton trod an unmistakably original middle ground; it was a bold artistic victory in the face of media-wide scorn.
Jim Broadbent and Meryl Streep in Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady.
Streep and director Phyllida Lloyd achieve a similar take that! victory in The Iron Lady, going against prevailing liberal preconceptions: They humanize Thatcher’s rise in British politics with a specific understanding of (rarely seen) feminine tenacity. The Iron Lady doesn’t confuse its tribute because Streep and Lloyd (whose goofy Mamma Mia! collaboration grossed a fortune, thus gaining personal power) find a deeper core to Thatcher than her political achievements.
Streep and Lloyd emphasize a principled woman’s wily resolve. They give emotional detail to moments that define the character while also shaping an era (“Move to the right!” she instructs her daughter during a driving lesson; “Someone must force the point,” she tells political advisors). If this upsets liberals who can’t tolerate the opposition articulating a polemic, that’s too bad. Streep and Lloyd force politics to provide deep, rousing human insight.
The British, being Shakespeareans, are past masters of a tradition of replaying, if not reexamining, political history through the perspective of complicated heroism. It’s a distinct form of culture, unlike Americans’ current tabloid-partisan tendency seen in Stone’s W. and the wretched Frost/Nixon. Watching Streep’s Thatcher score points about the miners’ strike, equating the Falklands War to Pearl Harbor and disparaging pseudo-feminism (“Instead of doing something they want to be someone”) is theatrically thrilling as well as politically challenging.
Streep’s maturity (the hallmark of her socially attuned and underrated performances in Lions for Lambs and Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate) grants greater subtlety to her flamboyant gift for mimicry. Her old-lady tics and vocal lilt are as authentic as Dame Edith Evans in The Whisperers.
Lloyd provides delicacy and rapport worthy of such eloquent historical biopics as The Young Mr. Pitt, Becket and the recent Amazing Grace. But Lloyd also nimbly depicts the context of Thatcher’s passion in a clever montage of female high heels among male wing-tips, a speech from St. Francis and a syllogism about thoughts, words, actions, habits and character that allows Streep/Thatcher to really sing. The obtuse, however, will not sing along.
