The Iron Lady Turns 15 This Winter, and Meryl Streep Carries Every Scene

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The Iron Lady opened in US cinemas at the end of December 2011, so it turns 15 this winter. Phyllida Lloyd directed it, and Meryl Streep plays Margaret Thatcher as an older woman who is losing her memory. The film divided critics, but the performance is hard to dismiss.

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Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 2012 ceremony, which was her third Oscar. The make-up and the voice did a lot of the heavy lifting, and some viewers found the wigs distracting, but she never loses the stubbornness that made Thatcher so hard to read.

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The film moves back and forth between Thatcher's present and her younger years. Jim Broadbent plays Denis, her late husband, in the scenes that linger longest. He is warm and gentle, which makes the grief in the film feel real rather than decorative.

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I think the film works best when it stops trying to explain politics and simply watches one person face her own mind. It is not a biopic that covers every decision, and that makes it more personal, even if some viewers felt it skipped too much.

Photo: Montclair Film, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Do you think Streep's Oscar was deserved? I still wonder whether the film would hold together without her, because she is in almost every scene.