Tuesday, September 5, 2023 – A television
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Film with Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Roger Allam, Susan Brown (II), Nick Dunning, Nicholas Farrell, Ian Glen, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Head. Genre Biography – UK, 2011.
Chester Square today. Eighty-year-old Margaret Thatcher, a former British prime minister suffering from increasing dementia, speaks to her long-dead husband Denis as she resists having to shed her male wardrobe and struggles together to lose her immense strength and the relentless march of time. Known for her ultra-conservative politics and controversial national and international decisions, Thatcher is described in the film as a woman who sacrificed herself and her personal life for political ambitions. If one can only admire a talent that is not diminishing, and even probably growing, like Meryl Streep’s, here, in a performance that will make her an icon elevated to the second level, the rest of the film balances such enthusiasm and unfolds on a track that is smoothly biographical: in fact Phyllida Loyd’s direction and Abi Morgan’s screenplay are flat, perhaps better on TV than on film.
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