It was refreshing, though ultimately problematic, that Phyllida Law’s “The Iron Lady” refused to follow the straight biopic trajectory to tell the story of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Although remnants of her career are told in flashbacks, these have a different flavor than those we saw in Eastwood’s “J. Edgar”: they don’t all piece together in a straightforward story from start to finish. Instead, they are reminiscences of an icy woman gone mad. And therein lies the problem with the film: Law and screenwriter Abi Morgan are so busy editorializing about Thatcher’s career and life that they leave no room for the audience to make up our own minds, to consider the controversy of Thatcher’s career without being told what to think. Worse, the editorializing often comes in platitudinous remarks, like when Thatcher’s colleague tells her “if you want to change this country, you need to lead this country.”

 

In the present, where we first meet Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep in her Golden Globe-winning performance), she is mad and alone, hallucinating about her dead husband and nostalgic for her glory years as prime minister. Her extreme ambition in her political career led her to alienate everyone in her life, from her children that she never had time for to her colleagues whom she frequently berated without restraint. Of course, Streep nails her tics and affectations and gives us a glimpse at the three-dimensional character that the film dances around but never fully explores.

 

Whenever Thatcher comes up with a wild political policy, it is her throng of male subordinates who tell her how crazy it is: whether it’s taxing everyone the same amount regardless of income or waging war to recover the Falkland Islands. Was there any logical reason behind any of these policies? The film doesn’t provide enough context for us to decide: the only information we are given points to her senseless decisions.

 

There’s a strange brand of feminism here. While the film has us admire her drive and success, it is constantly criticizing her for her lack of warmth and motherly affection: remember, today’s feminists, it seems to me, need to be superwomen that can do and have it all. Her ambition also causes her to treat all other women with disdain, frequently stating that she prefers the company of men, including that she prefers her son’s company to her daughter’s. There’s something altogether scary about a social-climbing woman from a lower-middle class family embracing conservative politics that simply label the poor as lazy. We aren’t really supposed to like her.

 

The most interesting part of the film lies in its heart: in the relationship between Thatcher and her husband (Jim Broadbent). Broadbent plays yet another clever, slightly goofy but kind husband of a strong and headstrong woman, not unlike the men he played in “Iris “or “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Her marriage to him was a helpful political move–he is a well-bred, respectable businessman; she is a grocer’s daughter with an Oxford education–but they really did love each other. When he proposes, she tells him that she needs a career outside of domestic life; he explains that’s exactly why he wants to marry her. Whether in the flashbacks or in her hallucinations, there’s a lovely tenderness between the couple, which shows a very different, almost inconsistent, side of the woman and just how much she depended on this loving man’s support.

 

It’s no secret that Margaret Thatcher was hated by many, at least sometimes for good reason. Law really misses an opportunity to delve deep into what makes Thatcher tick, settling instead to present her as a washed-up politician, an old lady who is crazy now and had crazy ideas in her heyday. The few glimpses into her domestic life are well-played and involving; it’s unfortunate that the rest of the film is largely a study in caricature and a small, albeit highly-biased, history lesson.