Marie Phillips

My expectations of The Iron Lady were pretty low - I only went because friends were going, and for lovely Harry Lloyd (who was a delightful Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations and did a memorable turn as a villain in one of my favourite Doctor Who two-parters, Family of Blood.) Usually I’m a Meryl Streep fan too, but I wasn’t sure I could take her Thatcher seriously having seen Jennifer Saunders as Meryl as Thatcher in Strike! (astonishingly the whole episode is available on 4od via YouTube here).

In fact I really enjoyed it. It’s a beautifully-made and, particularly, beautifully-performed film - Streep is as good as they say, and I only got an attack of the Saunders in one scene, when Maggie’s at the ballot box. The supporting cast are all fantastic too. (Harry Lloyd as young Denis is as edible as hoped. What a smile.) I loved the structure of the film, which is centred on Thatcher’s decline into senility, and the general effort made to show her as a human being, wife and mother as well as politician.

But at first it seems weirdly, perversely pro-Thatcher. To the point that whenever there is any criticism of her - on the TV, say - it is talked over or switched off. Even those who love her acknowledge that she is an incredibly divisive figure, and it just seemed so one-sided. But because of the framing device, this is Thatcher’s story as Thatcher remembers it herself in her old age: where she is the heroine, the centre of everything, the saviour of the country, pioneering feminist, great war leader and so on. She is the only female MP we ever see, even though historically there were others. The British public are only ever shown as crowds - greeting her with adoration or rioting: rabble who need a firm hand. She is frequently found at the very centre of circles of surrounding men. Denis is the perfect, loveable, bumbling househusband, with no visible work or life of his own. Carol (in the past) is little more than a petulant teen. Mark is only ever seen as an adorable child and never the weak, embarrassing adult he grew up to be. Any criticism, as I mentioned, is deliberately muted, obscured or erased. And when she finally leaves Downing Street, the staff gather and weep. This is Thatcher by Thatcher: we are presumably not meant to take this version literally.

The problem is that, although the Thatcher doing the remembering is senile, and memories are fallible at the best of times, there are very few explicit indications that the way she remembers it might not be exactly the way that it was. The lack of female MPs is one, a moment where the elderly Thatcher walks into a cabinet meeting in the past is another. There is some horrifying archive footage from riots showing police brutality that is at least seen, even if never mentioned. Aside from that, there is no hint that we should interrogate this version of events. You only know to do it if you already have some knowledge of Thatcher. If you don’t, you get little help here.

What we gain from this approach is sympathy. Thatcher is not a heartless ogre. She feels. She cries. The portrayal of her dotage, in which she struggles to rid herself of the comforting hallucination that Denis is still with her, is a moving depiction of the loneliness and fear of anyone’s old age.

What we lose is rigour. Does this film have anything interesting to say about Thatcher, other than that she was a human being with feelings, which I think all but the most virulent of Thatcher-haters would concede? There’s almost no attempt to interrogate the controversies of her leadership at all - the miners’ strike, sinking of the Belgrano etc are presented, but never explored in any depth. Any time there is a risk that we might doubt Maggie, the stirring music comes on and she makes a speech about the good of the nation, and you’re encouraged to think she did the right thing under difficult circumstances. That’s how Maggie might want to remember it, but what about the rest of us? The Thatcher years deserve a complex treatment - not hagiography, not hatchet job - and they don’t get that here.

In the end, I think I’d have enjoyed this an awful lot more if it had been fiction.