Streep is brilliant in ‘Lady’

January 20, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

From the moment her name and the subject of her next film were announced, you knew Meryl Streep’s performance as/ impersonation of Margaret Thatcher had Oscar written all over it. And true to form, the Academy might as well emboss her name on the statuette now.

It’s an uncanny turn by the screen’s greatest actress, an acting job with towering bombast and marvelous subtlety. She nailed the look, the tone, the speech patterns, the little snap of the head of the imperious British prime minister. Bloody brilliant.

What’s stunning about “The Iron Lady” is what a good film surrounds her performance. Phyllida Lloyd, Streep’s “Mamma Mia!” director, cast this to perfection, putting Streep toe to toe with the A-list of British character players, from Jim Broadbent (as Thatcher’s husband, Denis) to Richard E. Grant, Roger Allam and Anthony Head as her political confidantes. Lloyd finesses a deft script of brisk, quick strokes by Abi Morgan (“Brick Lane,” “Shame”) into a terrific entertainment, and a film that both celebrates and to a far lesser degree criticizes a woman who inspired a generation of conservatives, at home and in America, to refuse to compromise, to turn every debate into a battle over “principles.”

Morgan’s framing device follows the elderly Lady Margaret, long-retired, losing her sanity in tiny increments. She still chats with and fusses over her long-dead husband, still manages to slip out to the local grocer’s — unrecognized. And at times, she thinks she’s still prime minister. Streep’s mastery of little-old-ladydom is perfect in most every detail, and she maintains it from first scene, vaguely displeased at a rude businessman who cuts in line in front of her at the convenience mart, to the moment when she, vaguely lost, dodders out of the frame before the closing credits.

Morgan’s quick-stroke telling of the story amounts to Maggie’s Greatest Hits — her first political victory, her standing up to the establishment in her own party, her party’s victory in 1979, and the riots, IRA bombings and hard times that greeted it.

Streep conveys the tactless bullying that characterized Thatcher’s rule, decrying “weak, weak, weak men” who show their political cowardice at every turn, upbraiding friend and foe alike.

Bu the film is far more of a celebration than an even-handed accounting, not dwelling on her failings and her failure. And showing her as a very old woman tends to sentimentalize someone who didn’t allow room for that emotion herself.

Streep had better start polishing her Oscar speech now.