Michelle Barber

Iron Lady

I’ll really go see anything with Merryl Streep in it these days.  She’s her own indomitable iron lady on the silver screen, taking on characters and roles that, once she touches them, I couldn’t imagine anyone else even trying.  Her latest film, Iron Lady, has her portraying British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

I read mixed reviews of the film and wasn’t sure what I was in for in the 105 minute movie, but I was not disappointed.  The film is set in the supposed present, with a Thatcher that totters more than we remember her, is still speaking to her dead husband and who is flashing back on a lifetime of intense politics juxtaposed, unfortunately, with her current life indoors under close supervision of family, caretakers and doctors.

I do take issue with director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan assuming a lot about the former PMs mental health, especially since she’s still alive at 87 years old. It’s publicly known that she suffers from poor memory and ill health, increasingly missing functions to which she’s been invited.  Assuming that she hallucinates, the darling presence of her dead husband, played by Jim Broadbent, is a bit much, although it serves as a useful plot device for the flashbacks on a life spent in politics.

No fan of those politics, I am still in awe of any woman who can enter and succeed in a hostile profession dominated by men.  It was fascinating to see how Thatcher’s philosophy informed her actions in such a true, consistent and steadfast way.  While ultimately her downfall, the woman stuck to her guns.

But let’s talk about the real show-stopper: the make-up and prosthetics.  After all, Merryl Streep is not an 87 year old woman.  J. Roy Helland did Streep’s hair and make-up; Mark Coulier was the prosthetics designer.  Both, rightly so, are up for Academy Awards for Best Achievement in Makeup.  Also, to watch Streep sit, walk and move like a much older woman was fascinating and only once, in the final scene, did I think she slipped a tiny bit by swinging her right arm a bit too easily.

The movie itself moved quickly, spanning 6+ decades.  The flashbacks didn’t feel like intrusions and were well integrated into the film.  We get a few scenes of Thatcher’s childhood, her entrée into politics, her courtship with husband Denis Thatcher.  We also see her rise to power through the ranks of the Conservative party, govern through bombs and riots, wage a war in the Falkland Islands and, ultimately, become too rigid for her own party and people and then her resignation as PM.

I do wish the movie would have included more related to her early years in politics, although I wouldn’t have chosen those scenes at the expense of others.  Also, despite her father being the foundation of her political and philosophical worldview, we lose touch with him shortly after Thatcher goes off to college.  I'm not unquestionably enamored with Streep either, despite this review.  In one scene, her eyes reveal the real Streep and not Thatcher.  These eye movements were also highly reminiscent of Streep's character in Bridges of Madison County.  This, however, is testament to the level of skill that Streep brings to acting: she is so excellent at her craft that only a few tiny seconds of eye movement distracted me from the character she was playing for an entire 105 minutes.

While other reviewers are giving Iron Lady a 6.2 on the IMDb and a 60% viewer approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I seem a bit more excitable, giving Iron Lady a 4 out of 5 stars on this scale:

1 – Just awful

2 – Sort of not good

3 – Neutral

4 – Many good qualities

5 – Stellar

Tellingly, Iron Lady isn’t up for any major awards, but Merryl Streep is up for the Screen Actors Guild Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.  I’m betting on her for both.

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Extremely Loud and Incredible Close

Oskar Shell is a precocious boy who lost his father in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.   But to find the lock to a discovered key his father left behind, Oskar must overcome his anxieties about trains, planes, buses, bridges, loud noises, tall buildings and strangers.

Thomas Horn stars as Oskar, the boy compelled to travel all over New York City to salvage some connection to his dead father, played by Tom Hanks, while growing distant from his mother, played by Sandra Bullock, and sometimes in the company of an odd, silent older man, played wonderfully by Max von Sydow.

This is a movie I wouldn't call stellar because I found it hard to identify with Oskar and his obsessive compulsive, sometimes mouthy, hold on the world.  Nonetheless, screenwriter Eric Roth and director Stephen Daldry weaved a story that I have not heard before, was not necessarily expecting and was full of human stories and surprises.  Roth and Daldry’s work was based on Jonathan Safron Foer’s 2005 novel of the same name.

Much like the reconnaissance expeditions father Thomas Schell often designed for son Oskar, this film takes the viewer on a journey through one boy’s emotional journey, also his mother’s, grandmother’s and grandfather’s, as well as through the lives of dozens of New Yorkers and the boroughs of New York with small dashes of history, geology, mathematics and mystery.

Of course, one can imagine that Oskar’s key will lead him nowhere or to an unexciting conclusion.  After all, many of us have mystery keys lying around.  But Oskar’s resolution is complicatedly satisfying, showing in a not too saccharine way that every person is connected, but distant and that, while nothing makes sense, it all sort of does.

The film is rated PG-13 for “emotional thematic material, some disturbing images, and language,” which is, besides the rating, an integral part of Oskar’s life experience.  9/11 was a traumatic event around the world and, especially, for US citizens.  Still, I cannot imagine how the images, sounds and losses that day affected children in NYC – and who had loved ones killed in the attacks.  This film goes a long way toward showing the emotional and practical impacts on one (fictional) child in particular.

The weakness of the film, unfortunately, is Oskar.  Roth and Daldry created a character hard to identify with.  His grief and behavior is absolutely understandable, but they took few opportunities to soften his rough edges.  For example, Oskar treats the doorman, played by John Goodman, terribly, often calling him names.  This extra touch was totally unnecessary, but repeated several times throughout the 129 min. movie.

The redeeming parts of the film are the exemplar of fatherhood that Tom Hanks played, the complexity of making an emotional journey manifest in real journeys and the ending, which was not too tidy, but satisfying enough.

Reviewers are not being kind to this film. It has a 49% on Rotten Tomatoes (a 68% from viewers)  and hasn’t reached $1 million gross.

I give this film 3-4 stars based on this scale:

1 – Just awful

2 – Sort of not good

3 – Neutral

4 – Many good qualities

5 – Stellar

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