The Iron Lady (2012) - 1/13/2012

The Iron Lady was a movie I was really excited for.  I wanted learn more about Margaret Thatcher, learn more about English politics, etc....yeah, didn't happen.  I was so unimpressed with this movie because of who it was about, I can't even begin to describe it.  As a note, I was unimpressed because there aren't movies about Margaret Thatcher, really, and this was not a story to be artsy with.  The acting was incredible with the main actors - Meryl completely blew me away with her portrayal of an 80+ woman kind of losing her mind and Jim Broadbent was awesome as this cute, dorky husband every girl would love.  And I can appreciate the artistic take, but it shouldn't have been done with a movie on Margaret Thatcher - not right out of the bat.  This blog is about writing, since I'm a writer, so I'm not focusing on the acting as much.  Sadly, I felt the weakest part of this movie was the writing....In a sentence, here's how I sum up this movie:

The point of writing is to take an ordinary story and make it feel extraordinary; this movie took an extraordinary story and made it feel ordinary.


Things I liked:

• The acting.
• The flashbacks from modern to past - I do like that method, you see them now and you see them then...but just do it to where it makes sense.
• A few of the Parliament scenes were very well done.

Things I didn't like:

• The story was all flashes and basically consisted of a woman hallucinating about her dead husband.  The flashes, when done well, tell stories in a great way, but this didn't connect things.  You didn't get why she and Denis fell in love, you just saw them meet, him be impressed with her and the next thing you know he's proposing.  It shows her campaign, then she's in Parliament....just very disconnected.
• The relationships weren't well established in the flashbacks.  You get that Denis was her rock...but they didn't really show WHY he was.  I didn't feel anything from their romance.  Nor did I feel anything about her rise.
• It didn't convey the incredible rise this woman had.  You felt like...okay, she fought and won.  It didn't really show much of her getting "beaten" down by men or anything.  There were like 2 scenes where she's looked down on...that's it.
• The ending was so anti-climactic.  

Overall, I was very unimpressed with this film.  It took a story that could have been incredible and made it into a weird movie that made her a normal, old woman.  Sad, but in my opinion underwhelming.