A frail, elderly lady leaves the house she's been confined to, unnoticed by her personal security. She enters an avaricious, society-less society which she once helped spawn, but now barely recognises. Returning, she prepares breakfast for her husband, berates him as usual ("Much too much butter") and then selects an appropriate suit for his day ("Yes... definitely the grey," she enthuses). Bizarrely, a huge amount of Phyllida Lloyd's portrayal of Britain's first and only female Prime Minister is set in this stultifying present-day scenario, with Baroness Thatcher stumbling around a largely empty house, half-pissed, haunted by hallucinations of her long-deceased husband, and suffering flashbacks triggered by a simple phrase or an inanimate object. The fact that career 'highlights' are randomly recalled through the fog of dementia obviously affords the director an artistic license, but whilst distorted truths and factual inaccuracies can be vindicated, this horribly disjointed film avoids an uncomfortably large amount of the more unpalatable aspects of Margaret Thatcher's divisive politics.
"I cannot die washing up a teacup," a young Maggie warns uncompromisingly to Denis, and her ascension into government is depicted as one of rags-to-riches, as if to demonstrate that she wasn't assembled from scrap metal by Satan himself, or that she, I dunno, married a millionaire or something. The grocer's daughter and dutiful housewife is meticulously re-packaged before us and her makeover into an electable leader is covered in some length. But from here, 'The Iron Lady' skips clumsily from the slow-paced scenes of senility, grief and paranoia in her latter years to galling blink-and-you'll-miss-'em montages of both turmoil and triumphs, usually overlaid with heroic-sounding speeches and much flag-waving. Most resemble a Greatest Hits medley or a sort of "OK Mags, let's have a look at your best bits" compilation.
What's most astonishing is what's not in it. There's no room for such prominent figures as Kinnock, Lawson or Scargill. There's also no mention of Westland, Greenham Common, mass privatisation, the selling off of council housing, and no "The lady's not for turning" either. The Northern Ireland hunger strikers are barely mentioned ("You watched ten men starve themselves to death and never even flinched," is one of the few remarks included from the Labour front bench that isn't merely a sexist gibe), and nor is Section 28 (“Children… are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,” she once warned us, as her government allowed already disgraceful child poverty rates to soar). There's no mention of her denouncing Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, nor is there room for her friend Augusto Pinochet; a man who presided over mass executions, torture and rape. It's also largely bereft of the dismantling of entire UK industries, her brutal slashing of public spending, wholesale privatisation, deregulated greed and opportunism, and even the consequences of her assault via a militarised police on trade unionists and working people. There's some brief coverage of the strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, but nothing of the communities she crippled. There’s no context, no debate, no aftermath. It's a bloody mess in more ways than one.
The Falklands War and, in particular, the chilling moment that the fate of the Argentinean cruiser The General Belgrano was sealed is granted more airtime. "Sink it," she hisses callously. She's exonerated moments later, of course. The IRA bombing of the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton and her attempted assassination becomes an actual LOL moment as Dennis emerges in slow-motion from the debris of a bathroom, post-blast, frazzled and clutching an obliterated shoe in each hand. And rather than investigate her hostility towards Europe, the irreconcilable differences between Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe and his subsequent resignation manifest themselves during a humiliating bollocking in a cabinet meeting over sloppy wording and spelling errors, with Mrs T behaving like a psychotic headmistress. "I wouldn't have spoken to my gamekeeper like that," mutters one minster afterwards.
The Iron Lady is quickly melted down. The ability to recite the current retail price of Lurpak wasn't quite enough to convince anyone she was even on the same planet as her electorate, let alone 'in touch' with them. The Poll Tax was her most blatant attempt yet of waging a class war, and this time even her spineless sycophants had had enough. Civil disobedience was organised in defiance of her selfish ideology, and as Thatch is wheeled through the middle of yet another violent demonstration, you conclude that where there was harmony, she really did bring discord. The end of her tenure is predictably Dianafied. As she exits Number 10, it's on a carpet of rose petals and Tory tears to the sound of 'Casta Diva' (it translates as "pure goddess") from Bellini's Norma, and sadly not (although it does briefly appear elsewhere) the Notsensibles 1979 hit 'I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher'. As one reviewer has suggested, "This depiction of The Iron Lady is as deeply nuanced as you would expect from the director of Mamma Mia!" If we're re-writing history, you wonder if this is merely the first draft. What's to be next? 'Maggie: The Musical' by Ben Elton? Don't laugh.
'The Iron Lady' is a massive missed opportunity. You shouldn't profess admiration for a political leader based solely on their gumption or obstinance, anymore than you should elicit sympathy for them now because of a decline in their mental health. You simply cannot depoliticise Thatcher. Surely it's the repercussions of her actions on her public on which she should be judged, and those are greatly overlooked here. Voices of dissent are relegated to scraps of archive footage. Any alternative to her own agenda is seen as resulting in chaos and bloodshed.
Sure, she had to overcome deep-rooted prejudices and snobbery, but Meryl Streep's Thatcher would not, you suspect, be impressed with being revered as an icon either.
"It used to be about trying to do something," she replies to a dinner guest who has referred to her as inspirational. "Now it’s about trying to be someone."
As a depiction of the devastating affects of Alzheimer’s on a reclusive widow, it's strangely moving in parts. But as a political biopic and an examination of Thatcherism and her legacy? No, no, no. It's not quite a whitewash, nor is it a hatchet-job. It's just a bit... well, nothing.
And nothing is very much what's left at the end. The ghost of Denis has literally been packed up and carted orff to the knackers, and she's left alone at the kitchen sink, no longer needing to activate every household appliance to drown out the voices of ghosts. Birdsong is now all that is audible to her. Washing up a solitary teacup, you're almost convinced she's human.
