I Am Iron Lady (Streep Re-Mix)

When producing a modern biopic filmmakers have to answer several questions. How much do they assume is common knowledge to the audience?  Should they concentrate on one major event or go the full Monty and attempt to tackle the subject's entire life? 



There are really only a handful of effective biopics. Films like "The Aviator,"  "Capote" and "Milk" work well because the filmmakers approach their subjects as film characters. This allows that the freedom to work from the inside out, rather than concentrating on complete accuracy. Other films like"Patton" and "Ed Wood" work because there is an unknowable quality to these figures that the filmmakers opt not to question.  Rather, they stand back and let us try to figure them out for ourselves.

Unfortunately, for every biopic that works, there are probably five that don’t.  For every "Ed Wood", there are two "Beyond the Sea." These films objectify the subject without delving too deep leading to a shallow almost exploitative viewing experience.  The filmmakers simply want to trade on their subjects’ recognizably, rather than actually saying something about them.

Phyllida Lloyd’s "The Iron Lady" is not totally in the latter camp, but is certainly not in the former.  In telling the story of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Lloyd displays an eye for detail and tone that effectively creates a political world that is an impenetrable bureaucracy.  The men at the heart of British government in the 1970s and 80s are portrayed as stubborn bulldogs. They’ve been doing this the same way for years and they just going to keep on doing it that way until they die.  In the midst of this comes a strong-willed, independent woman, who fights her way into the boys club and quickly takes charge. It is to Lloyd’s credit that the lead up to Thatcher’s reign is exciting and effective.  When telling the story of an important political figure, few things are more important than creating a strong context.  We need to get a sense of where and when this person lived, so that we might better understand how they might have decided to take certain actions.  Lloyd manages to go against the standard biopic stereotype and manages to tell a good portion of the story visually, rather than simply have characters sit around in a medium shot explaining everything to the audience.

Unfortunately, once Thatcher takes office, the film devolves into a story we’ve seen countless times before, albeit with the genders reversed.  Once again, the familiar trope of the unappreciated spouse complaining about not being a priority gets trotted out and we are given some token introspection from Thatcher.  Also, many of the specific achievements that Thatcher obtained while in office are skimmed over.  Perhaps Lloyd found the simple fact of Thatcher’s election to be inspiring enough.  Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable really delving into a figure as divisive as the conservative Prime Minister. Whatever the director’s reason, I think it is a major mistake to retreat from Thatcher's ideals. There are a few scenes when the audience is given a sense of this woman’s convictions, whether we believe in them or not, and these scenes are stirring.  There is the moment when she decides to go to war to defend the British territories, even though she is under tremendous pressure to simply let them go.  As we see Thatcher stand up to her advisers and even the American ambassador, we really start to feel like we’re seeing the real Thatcher in action, rather than a quick series of reenactments.

Ultimately, the choice to make a film about Margaret Thatcher at all is an interesting one.  Thatcher is a controversial figure, and there is no doubt a great film to be made about her.  Unfortunately, Lloyd and her screenwriter seldom seem very interested in going very deep into her character.

As with any biopic, good or bad, the vital element of the film is the lead performance.  And, thankfully, Meryl Streep displays a commitment to crafting not only a physically and behaviorally accurate performance, but one of substance.  Like so many other actors in these types of roles, Streep could have relied heavily on the exterior of the character; the part we are all familiar with.  Instead, much like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote", Streep creates a full-fledged, three-dimensional character with hopes, dreams, and fears.  Only after the character is finished does Streep layer on the cosmetic qualities.  

It has become such a standard position that Meryl Streep is a great actress that we sometimes forget why we think that.  Her performance here reminds us. At every level, she is committed to the performance.  She puts forth a great amount of effort into the role while making it all look so easy.  It would have been enough for her to skate through this role, throw on an accent, sound commanding, then go home.  But she doesn’t.  She invests herself in the role.  While watching the film, I not only forgot that I was watching Meryl Streep; I forgot that I was watching “The Best Actress of Her Generation.”  I wasn’t even thinking in those terms.  I was simply watching Margaret Thatcher.

It is Streep’s committed performance that makes me wish there was a better film surrounding her. She certainly elevates the film- along with the sturdy support of Jim Broadbent- but there is only so high it can go when it seems only superficially interested in its subject. Ultimately, the choice to make a film about Margaret Thatcher at all is an interesting one.  Thatcher is a controversial figure, and there is no doubt a great film to be made about her.  Unfortunately, Lloyd and her screenwriter seldom seem very interested in going very deep into her character

Seventies Spy

Director Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John le Carre's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is an uncommon movie going event. A intelligent, complicated film that requires attention and patience from the audience. It's the kind of movie we're always hearing they don't make anymore, until they do. And here it is.

The story is pretty standard stuff; a mole has infiltrated the highest levels of British intelligence, and must be flushed out. "There's a rotten apple," the agency head, known only as Control (John Hurt), tells his agent, Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong). "We have to find it." And with that, he dispatches Prideaux to Budapest to get the mole's name. The agent is promptly shot. Control is dismissed, but after his death, his deputy George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is asked to investigate the mole. He narrows it down to four men: new agency head Percy Alleline (Toby Jones) and his deputies Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), and Toby Esterhase (David Denick). And thus, slowly, methodically, Smiley sets out to find his man.

Alfredson, working from a tight screenplay by Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor, trusts the viewer to piece together who is who and who does what; in this regard, the distinguished cast of recognizable actors (which also includes Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch) is an indisputable asset. The film also offers the opportunity to watch some of the finest character actors squaring off, and working with more than the meager material they're sometimes saddled with in their small supporting turns. You've seldom seen this many fine British actors outside the Harry Potter pictures; there are so many good roles that even the smaller ones are filled by interesting young actors, like Christian McKay (from "Me & Orson Welles) and Stephen Graham (who plays Al Capone on "Boardwalk Empire"). The supporting cast performs admirably, with particular kudos due to recently minted Oscar winner Firth, who is doing some utterly extraordinary things in his final scene with Oldman.

Having this set of familiar faces in place allows Alfredson to just get on with things, indulging in the kind of elliptical storytelling--filled with flashbacks, detours, and dead-ends--that is le Carre's forte. The director's style isn't flashy, it's a deceptively low-key picture in which voices are seldom raised. Alfredson has a sure sense of exactly when to get in and out of a scene, and he can build tension with the basic tools of lingering close-ups and Alberto Iglesias's moody score. There are many scenes that build susspense from a simple phone ringing or a quick gaze. 

The filmmakers couldn't have a sturdier presence at the film's center than Oldman. The astonishing restraint of his performance will come as a surprise to those who remember the actor in full scenery chewing mode in films like "The Fifth Element" and "The Professional". But he works well in this minor key. This is not an aggressive character; he's so refined that he swims wearing his spectacles. But Oldman gives him a vibrant interior life, finding the characterization in the pauses rather than monologues. and when he is called to deliver he delivers in spades.

If you are one of the multitude who bemoan the death of intelligent adult thrillers then you owe it to yourself to seek out "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".

Spielberg's Horse Tale

"War Horse" is the first Steven Spielberg film to be edited digitally. He was the final holdout who manually cut actual film on a flatbed editing board. This move to the modern seems odd since everything else about the production feels like it comes from a earlier time. Handsomely mounted and utterly sappy, "War Horse" is the director's least successful picture since "The Terminal"; it has its moments, but they are undercut by a complete lack of faith in the audience not trusting them to find the emotiona beats but being lead to them by John Williams' bombastic score.

The film is based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, which also inspired the current Broadway play. It is the story of Joey, the war horse of the title, and Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the boy who raises him, trains him, and loves him. The film takes its time getting the horse to war; the first quarter or so of the film concerns the horse's formative time, as Albert attempts to make Joey into a plow horse, and thus save his family farm. In these village and farm scenes, nestled in lush, rolling hills, Spielberg is clearly aping John Ford's "The Quiet Man", but the lovely visuals are constantly undercut by Williams' musical swells.

As the parents, the venerable character actors Emily Watson and Peter Mullan give their stereotypical roles some weight. Dear old Dad drinks too much and allows his pride cloud his judgement. Mum is wise and steadfast. Due to various calamities the family is forced to sell Joey to the British army at the outset of World War I. We then follow Joey on his travels: from the British army to the Germans, to a French farmhouse, back to the Germans, and, well, you can probably guess the finale. It's one of those international movies where the German soldiers and the French peasants all speak English, rendering a line complimenting a German soldier's grasp of the language into a bit of a head-scratcher.

The film is visually gorgeous, every frame is a pretty picture; we'd expect nothing less of Spielberg and his regular cinematographer, the great Janusz Kaminski. They fill the film with elegant compositions (the shot with the windmill blades is masterful) and infectious warmth. But they're also altogether too reliant on the crutches of Spielberg's style: the hero angle and big, slow, low-shot zooms--there are probably as many of both.

The battle scenes are brilliantly staged, though once Spielberg gets to the trench warfare, he appears to be repeating cues from "Saving Private Ryan" over a dozen years ago but none of the sequences carry the weight of the earlier film. In addition, the stakes are far lower--the film is so conventional that we're fairly certain how it's going to turn out so there's not much suspense. There, and elsewhere in the third act, the film only shines in the pauses.

One of those pauses is the picture's best single scene, which finds a British and German soldier coming together in no mans land. This is a small, human, funny, and rather remarkable encounter, and it's so well observed and believable that it only draws our attention to how phony the rest of the film is. Some of that's the writing; some of it is the director's too-presentational staging. But much of that is Williams's overstuffed and nonstop music, which can take even the most finely-tuned encounter and slather it in so much string-assisted artificiality as to render it all into Hollywood pap.

There are moments, here and there; the way the Frenchman protects his granddaughter, the horse's climactic run and the real emotion worked up in the third act. "War Horse"offers many pretty pictures, some excellent scenes but falls short.