Starring Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Richard E. Grant, Olivia Colman, Nicholas Farrell, Susan Brown, Roger Allam, Anthony Head, Julian Wadham, Pip Torrens, Nick Dunning, David Westhead, Angus Wright, John Sessions.
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd.
Classification: M (Mature themes and violence), 105 mins.
Official Site: http://www.theironladymovie.co.uk/blog/
London, 2008. In her well-appointed apartment, the elderly former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher prepares breakfast for her husband Denis, as she has every morning of their married life. It’s not until Margaret’s personal aide bustles in that we see that Margaret sits at the table alone. Denis is alive only in her imagination.
Once described in life as “always present, never there”, Denis is still present for Margaret. Is he a loving memory made flesh? A manifestation of her grief? Or perhaps her conscience, taking her to task? Locked in the infuriating inaction of retirement and battling ill health, Margaret is ambushed by memories. Fragments of her private life and of her premiership crowd in to her mind and she relives them in vivid detail. As she struggles to maintain her equilibrium, Denis teases and needles her. The struggle, the triumphs, the betrayals – in the end, what did she achieve? When all is said and done, was it worth it?
THE IRON LADY is the story of a woman who came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world. It is a film about power and the price that is paid for power, a story that is both unique and universal. THE IRON LADY stars Academy Award-winners Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and Jim Broadbent as her husband, Denis.