Film Review: The Iron Lady

The Iron Lady. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 105 minutes. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Screenplay by Abi Morgan.

Not since Charlize Theron’s brilliant performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003) has an actress disappeared so completely beneath the skin of their character. But where Ms Theron was equally immersed in a compelling drama about increasingly desperate personal circumstances, Meryl Streep’s superb Margaret Thatcher is adrift in a movie that fails, entirely, to equal the sum of not insignificant parts.

When we first meet Ms Streep’s elderly Baroness Thatcher, she is shuffling about in a corner store buying a carton of milk – the price of which, she later bemoans to the ghost of her dead husband Dennis (Jim Broadbent), has gone up. It’s a curious and domestically banal introduction to a film about one of the most powerful, ambitious and divisive political leaders of the 20th century – and Britain’s first female Prime Minister.

What follows are lots of MTV-inspired clips of a glamorous Mrs Thatcher striding around surrounded by lots of men, grainy stock newsreels of the ugly, violent, civil unrest (the infamous “Poll Tax” riots, the 1984 Miners’ Strike and 1981’s Brixton riots) that accompanied a good many of Prime Minister Thatcher’s social and economic reform-driven policies. Brief engagements with her younger self (played by Alexandra Roach), the 1982 Falklands War, a very long button sewing-on sequence, and some idle chatter about the emergence of the single currency we now know as the Euro, round out the determined political unconsciousness of it all.

Ms Morgan’s reductivist screenplay and Ms Lloyd’s (Mamma Mia!) undisciplined camera seem happiest when their star is moping around in the dark – scratching about the place for some semblance of the commanding influence she once wielded on the world stage. What might have been useful would have been a script that stopped fluffing around in the kitchen and explored the vast wealth of potential an intelligent film about Margaret Thatcher might have exposed. Meryl Streep’s performance in that film would truly have been something to behold.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

DVD Review: Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia. 123 minutes. Rated PG. Written and directed by Nora Ephron. Based on the books by Julie Powell, Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme

Before Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay, there was Julia Child: an American chef, author and television personality who not only pioneered the concept of 'the celebrity chef', but who, with her seminal culinary work Mastering the Art of French Cooking, introduced the wonders of French cuisine and cooking techniques to the English-speaking world.

It is 1948, and diplomat Paul Child (The Lovely Bones' Stanley Tucci), is assigned to Paris by the US Foreign Service. His wife, Julia Child (a formidable Meryl Streep), finds herself in Paris with nothing to occupy either her time or her marvellously adventurous curiosity. Finding herself constantly frustrated by the lack of English language recipe translations of her beloved French cuisine, Julia sets out to study and explore the culinary landscape.

It is also 2002, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a young writer, trapped in a clinically bland call centre answering telephone calls from victims of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. To provide some respite from her harrowing day job, Powell decides to set herself a monumental challenge: to cook every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days.

Ms Ephron's (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle) long and reverential split-narrative script makes for really hard going – especially in the faintly-drawn contemporary sequences where Ms Adams (and Chris Messina as her husband 'Eric') really have their work cut out for them eliciting any continuing genuine interest in their comparatively boring relationship and Ms Powell's, essentially, entirely pointless undertaking.

Fortunately, courtesy of Ben Barraud's gorgeous art direction, Mark Ricker's flawless production design and Stephen Goldblatt's (Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief) outstanding cinematography, the film looks absolutely beautiful. While, in real life, Julia Child summarily dismissed Ms Powell's endeavour, it would have been fascinating to hear what she had to say about this imagining of her life. I imagine she would have 'loved Meryl and Stanley' but wished for 'a lot less of young Miss Powell'. Touché … and bon appetit!