Meryl Streep as The Iron Lady - a movie review

The physical resemblance is amazing, the mannerisms, accent, and voice intonations are superb, and the acting performance is what I consider the best of Meryl Streep's facinating and varied acting career. Meryl Streep's portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is so spot on that if she doesn't win an Academy Award for this acting performance, I will never again have any belief in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Meryl Streep IS Margaret Thatcher. I am old enough to have lived through The Iron Lady's political career and years as Prime Minister of the British Isles. I remember the incidents of her time as prime minister as if they were yesterday. I remember seeing Margaret Thatcher in the news and on videos and Meryl Streep has captured her every move and nuance. It is incredible watching Streep as Thatcher because you think you are actually watching the present day Thatcher.

Surprisingly to me, as I hadn't heard a whole lot about the film, the movie opens with a portrayal of Thatcher as she is today - elderly, forgetful, and on the edges of dementia or alzheimer's. She is elderly, unrecognizable in her neighborhood as she purchases a few pints of milk, stooped over, cared for by an assistant and her daughter, Carol, who comes to visit and organize a dinner for her mother.

Streep's portrayal of Thatcher at this elderly stage of her life is poignant and heart-wrenching. I feel for Thatcher, today, elderly, vulnerable, and unpowerful - the greatest irony for The Iron Lady. To be so helpless and unnoticed after being at the pinnacle of power as Prime Minister for eleven and a half years in the British Isles, is heart-breaking to watch. But, it nonetheless, adds to the clarity of this biographical picture. It gives a true portrayal of what life is like when we will reach our 80's and 90's. Today, we say the age of 50 is like the new age of 30, but we see in this film that the 80's are the 80's. Nothing new and spunky about Thatcher's age today.

I really like how the film was made. I was expecting a chronological time film about Thatcher's life and found a suprise when Streep appeared at the beginning of the film as Thatcher in old age, today. The past powerful years for Thatcher are shown to us in flashbacks as Thatcher struggles with dementia, visions of her dead husband, Dennis, and scenes with her daughter, Carol which seems to have been, sadly, a distant relationship during their lives. We see Thatcher's time as prime minister as she talks to the vision of her husband, Dennis, who appears and gently and comically "harasses her" into remembering her past glories with all the ups and downs of being prime minister and struggling at times with an all male cabinet.

Also, through flashbacks, we see her in the beginnings of her life, helping out in the family's business, a grocery store, her acceptance to Oxford, and her first unsuccesful attemps at getting into politics, her meeting her future husband Dennis and his wooing of her and her "strong will" at such a young age. At this stage in her life, the younger Thatcher is portrayed by Alexandra Roach, who does an outstanding job of showing us Thatcher's will to make a difference in this world and her reason for entering politics.

As I watched the film, I saw Thatcher struggling to be the principled politician she had envisioned in her youth and also struggling to juggle being a wife and mother along with having a political career in 1950's and 1960's, long before the feminist movement struggled with these same issues. I saw the pain on her face, as her children cried and clung to the car, change to steely determination and principled will as she drove the car to parliment after being recently elected as a representatve for the first day on the job. All of these emotions were well-portrayed by Alexandra Roach.

But, it is Streep's absolutely principled portrayal of Thatcher as "The Iron Lady" we see as she reconstructs Thatcher's resolve and determination to keep the Fawkland Islands as part of the British Isles in the l980's even when the U.S. ambassador tries to talk her out of taking the islands back from Argentina. Streep catches Thatcher's magnificent and imperious nature and resolve so succinctly that I thought I was actually watching Thatcher, not Streep portraying Thatcher.

We see Thatcher's willful and strong resolve as she battles the IRA who uses car bombs and a hotel bombing where Thatcher and her husband were staying, to try to frighten Thatcher and her conservative party into submission. It doesn't work, and Streep, again, portrays Thatcher in her imperious resolve to stare down the IRA. She does the same when Thatcher must face the economic riots by the British middle class in the streets of London. She portrays Thatcher as the shrewd politician leading her conservative party to great heights during three elections and Thatcher's dignity when she resigns as prime minister shortly after her third election when the liberal party challenged her leadership.

And, it is also Streep's portrayal of Thatcher as elderly and trying to get over the death of her husband, Dennis and her visions of him that really catches the heart in this film. Just as her dominant will and determination served her well as prime minister, so it serves her well in her struggle to conquer her grief of losing her beloved Dennis and to conquer and end the visions she has been having of him. Thatcher has traveled back to the past and has survived. She is able to finally clean out Dennis' bedroom closet of all his clothes and shoes and is able to finally express the frustration she has had over the years in dealing with men.

Personally, I enjoyed and loved the present day elderly portrayal of Thatcher. I have read recently that her family is appalled at the film and at how Thatcher is portrayed in the waning years of her life. But, I felt the portrayal of her later years to be in keeping with her strong and willful personality and in facing down the visions of her husband and her determination "not to go mad." It portrays the wonderful will of a woman, who never wavers at any time in her life, to be principled and strong to the end. It takes great strength as a woman for Thatcher to wash the teacup at the end of the film, when as a young woman she informs Dennis she will never be the tea-cup washing wife she thinks he wants.

I will always remember Margaret Thatcher in the sunset years of her life as still strongly in control of her will and determination. It is that strong will and determination that, nothing, not even old age, can take away from Margaret Thatcher. And it is Streep's determination and strong will to portray Thatcher this way at any stage of her life that makes the viewer smile at both Thatcher and Streep melded together as one.

I highly recommend that you see this film!

Note: Meryl Streep did win the Academy Award as Best Actress for her performance as The Iron Lady - 2012 - 84th Academy Awards.

Meryl Streep has, incredibly, been nominated for Academy Awards seventeen times over her illustrious acting career. Here are some of her other films that are not to be missed:

1978 The Deer Hunter

1979 Kramer vs. Kramer

1981 The French Lieutenant's Woman

1982 Sofie's Choice

1985 Out of Africa

1995 The Bridges of Madison County

2002 The Hours

2006 The Devil Wears Prada

2008 Mama Mia

2009 Julie/Julia