The Iron Lady vs Evita

Every frame of Evita delivers on the intention of presenting Madonna as Serious. Serious about singing, serious about acting, serious about, I dunno, historical accuracy and tight hairstyles and covering the gap in her teeth that no serious actress would ever leave uncovered. And it worked. Madonna is good in the role of Eva Peron. Her costars, Jonathan Price and Antonio Banderes are good too, the latter exceptional, but the entire point of the movie, from the day Madonna was cast, was to make sure she didn’t suck. What would have happened if she did? Broadway geeks would have revolted? Or they would have celebrated? Evita being bad would have been a disappointment, I guess, but it being good was probably one too. Six of “I told you so” is worth half a dozen crow-eatings. So director Alan Parker made sure Evita was right down the middle: so classy, straight-laced, and by-the-book that no one could find fault with it; and so classy, straight-laced, and by-the-book that no one could truly get excited about it either. I get that casting a pop singer in a prestigious musical brought a certain amount of baggage, but I think the movie could have benefited from letting a little of it bleed into the material. Chicago, Moulin Rouge, and even Hairspray were successful because they embraced a more modern aesthetic, and were decidedly dark in tone. Evita, with its built-in music video star, could have broken new film musical ground, had it been directed by one of MTV’s 1990s’ auteurs, like David Fincher or Mark Romanek (both of whom got better performances out of Madonna than any of her film directors). Parker does a serviceable job, but plays it safe, as if adding any flash, irony, or humor to the movie would tempt accusations of distracting from his somber topic. Eva Peron was controversial because of her lavish lifestyle, political corruptness, and mankilling seductiveness, and she was played by an actress we’d all already seen hitchhiking naked. Why not turn up the volume, interpret the original piece, and make a statement on politics and celebrity (or at least film in a shade other than brown)? Oliver Stone tried for years to make Evita; now that’s a guy who would have pissed off the theatre geeks. Parker gained access to the actual palace balcony for Eva Peron’s speeches, and then frames it as if it’s a set. Filming on location, and you just set the camera in front of the balcony? Helicopter that shit in, Parker! Steadycam from down the block. Shoot from Evita’s point-of-view. And turn on some lights; come on dude, we know it’s a movie.

The Iron Lady has the opposite problem: It stars an actor commonly regarded as the very best, and puts her in a film prepared to distract from her at any given moment. You have Meryl Streep. Can we hold the camera still for a second?

The Iron Lady tells the life story of Margaret Thatcher, the only woman to rise to the position of British Prime Minister. We see her, non-linearly, at three stages in her life: from her teen years through her first political campaign; during her campaign for, and eventual tenure as, Prime Minister; and in her later, post-retirement years, staving off the symptoms of dementia. The first period is portrayed, quite well, by Alexandra Roach. The second two are handled by Meryl Streep, in a performance so detailed, it seems given by two distinct actresses, as if Judi Dench had played both periods of Iris Murdoch’s life in Iris.

Streep has played non-fiction characters before (Karen Silkwood, Julia Child, a thinly-veiled Anna Wintour), but none to such a meticulous extent as in The Iron Lady. Besides the age range represented (the movie spans around seventy years, with at least fifty of them portrayed by Streep), The Iron Lady checks off each shift in Margaret Thatcher’s persona. Thatcher underwent significant changes in the way her public self was perceived, including wardrobe and hair makeovers, as well as vocal coaching (shades of The King’s Speech) to give her a more commanding presence to voters and her peers. So Streep starts with being made over to embody Margaret Thatcher, and then Margaret Thatcher also gets made over. Did I say Streep was playing two versions of Margaret Thatcher? Make that three. Thatcher had, by the time she was Prime Minister, grown confident in her views, as well as the methods necessary to get them heard. Thatcher demanded respect, to the point of manipulating and humiliating her colleagues when necessary. By the end of her reign, she was perhaps drunk with power, more satisfied with getting her way than in making true progress. The Iron Lady is murky about a lot of its political details. Director Phyllida Lloyd never focuses on any specific moment in Thatcher’s career, jumping from one generic moment of gender discrimination or victory to another. Like Evita, The Iron Lady has footage (I think The Iron Lady’s is real) of crowds rioting in the streets, and as in that movie, not much is said to explain what’s happening. We’ll see Thatcher and her staff around a boardroom table, then cut to a violent protest, without ever being given any indication that it’s outside her window, or across town, or in another city altogether. The only situation that’s given any clarity is Thatcher’s ordered attack on Argentina in the Falkland Islands. This conflict would have made a strong film all its own. Historical dramas that focus on one incident in a politician’s life, think Thirteen Days or The Queen, often have a greater impact than one covering a character’s entire life. I mentioned this thing covers about seventy years, right?

Unfortunately, Lloyd remedies the problem of playing out seventy years in two hours by jump-cutting back and forth between time periods, often just as things start to rev up. Streep has done massive amounts of work here, and some of it’s breathtaking. Thatcher’s later years are especially well-crafted. Streep modulates carefully between Thatcher’s moments of lucidity and dementia. It never plays like she’s got some movie-contrived spell coming on. She’s never cartoonishly wonderstruck, or overly grizzled and curmudgeonly. The latter-day scenes have a warmth and resignation that don’t exist in the rest of the movie, in which Thatcher is driven by ambition. Jim Broadbent plays her husband (in the later scenes, he’s either a ghost or a figment of Thatcher’s imagination), and is a charming foil for Streep. Don’t get used to it. As soon as they settle in for tea and conversation, we flip back to a debate in Parliament. And as soon as that version of Thatcher gets worked into a lather of fierce rhetoric, look out, because we’re heading live to mounted police in riot gear, hosing down soccer hooligans. And when a scene is allowed to play out for any length, the camera spins around its subjects, or turns on an angle, or fuzzes to represent Thatcher’s tunnel-vision, with the sound coming and going. Meryl Streep is probably the greatest living actor, with no one disputing her casting in any single thing. We want a great director to tell the story, but if she has Meryl Streep on board, then the greatest storytelling tool is already in place, and tricks aren’t necessary. Save those for the pop stars.

The Iron Lady: B-

Evita: B-