I can’t imagine painting a cinematic portrait of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a controversial and important figure in history, would be easy. However, I’m almost certain that a fairer and more complete one that the one “The Iron Lady” presents can be forged. It’s less a portrait than a profile, meant only to show her dark side and highlight her demons rather than her successes.
While I’m definitely open to people finding innovative new ways to approach the tired and typical de rigueur biopic, screenwriter Abi Morgan’s solution doesn’t give us an overview of Thatcher so much as it gives us her opinion of Thatcher. By anchoring the movie in her declining years as she suffers from Alzheimer’s and the resultant hallucinations of her deceased husband Dennis (Jim Broadbent), “The Iron Lady” starts with the proposition that Margaret Thatcher is crazy. Director Phyllida Lloyd then complements this by giving these scenes the ambience of paranoid thriller as she slips in and out of reality, all the while wondering if her caretakers will take her away from home.
Then, once her spacey unreliability has been established, they begin the voyage into her storied past from her days as Margaret Roberts, the grocer’s daughter, to her rise in the Conservative Party all the way to the top position as Margaret Thatcher. The structure barely works as it stands because it shifts so abruptly, giving the movie the same uneven and rough feel that Lloyd bequeathed to her film adaptation of “Mamma Mia.” But the worst part is that, whether it came from Morgan’s script or Lloyd’s direction, the voices don’t go away and Thatcher is made out to be crazy even when she was totally in her right mind.
Marshall and the Movies 
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