Here is a little tip from one writer to another: when you can't get started on what you're writing, write anything, even if you know it is a lousy idea, and let it kick start your imagination. Then dump it once the work is flowing. That is what the screenwriter Abi Morgan, she wrote "Shame"as well, did here Only she forgot to dump the anything portion.
"The Iron Lady" -a biography of former English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is terrible and it is terrible because it is rushed and it is rushed because half of the movie is spent in the present day with Thatcher haunted by her late husband Dennis.
Huh?
Has Thatcher gone on TV and announced that she has been hallucinating about her husband. If so, there may be a reason for including it in a movie bio. But even so, not for half the movie. If not, it is a waste of time and energy and an insult to the viewer. Why, with so much documented information about Thatcher available, write a ghost story? Because of this stupidity every thing seems a little skimpy and never goes much further than the story as write of the shopkeepers daughter who believed people should fend for themselves. There is no real political insight, no explanation as to how she actually managed to become Prime Minster, no real explanation of how the Labor Unions, who had crippled the UK, came to cave (it was pretty bad -film from the time shows it, but they don't explain how she won). Or why her party turned their back on her and she was forced to resign.
Streep is superb in the title role, the great Jim Broadbent pretty excellent as her husband.
But with its clumsy structure, relentless flashbacks and restless short hand story telling, it is simply not a very good movie as history, psychology, or biography.
Musically, Rodgers And Hammerstein's "Shall We Dance" plays as leitmotif, and during the rioting, OI bands play on the soundtrack.
Movie: B-
Music: B-