Summaries

Synopsis

In 2008 against the backdrop of news of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing, an elderly Lady Thatcher (Meryl Streep) buys milk unrecognized by other customers and walks back from the shop alone.Over the course of three days, we see her struggle with dementia and with the lack of power that comes with old age, while looking back on defining moments of her personal and professional life, on which she reminisces with her (now-dead) husband, Denis Thatcher (Jim Broadbent), whose death she is unable to fully accept. She is shown as having difficulty distinguishing between the past and present.

Lady Thatcher can "see" Denis in the house and has active conversation with him, but nobody else can see Denis, thus confirming that he is a ghost, or a figment of Thatcher's imagination. Lady Thatcher is protected at her house by a security unit, perhaps her personal protection team.

Back at the house, overheard snatches of conversation make it clear that the staff are dismayed that Thatcher had escaped their oversight to make this impromptu excursion into the real world outside without an escort and thereby confirm that it wasn't a flight of fancy on her part.

Thatcher also reflects on personal price that she has paid for power. Denis is portrayed as somewhat ambivalent about his wife's rise to power, her son Mark (Martin Wimbush) lives in South Africa and is shown as having little contact with his mother, and Thatcher's relationship with her daughter Carol (Olivia Colman) is at times strained.Thatcher cannot reach Mark on Telephone, and Carol only visits occasionally.

As a girl, Thatcher survived an air raid in Grantham during WW II. She leaves the safety of the cupboard under the house, in her house to prevent some vegetables from spoilage. Thatcher is a socially isolated child, coming from a grocer's family.

In Thatcher's youth, she worked in the family grocery store in Grantham, listening to the political speeches of her father Alfred Roberts (Iain Glen), whom she idolized. It is also hinted that she had a poor relationship with her mother Beatrice (Emma Dewhurst), a housewife, to whom she announced that she has won a place at the University of Oxford.

She remembers her struggle, as a young lower-middle class woman, to break into a snobbish male-dominated Tory party and find a seat in the House of Commons. At a meeting, she is patronized and condescended to by the local Tory party grandees who clearly don't take her application to be the candidate for parliament very seriously, but she is unabashed. As a grocer's daughter, she points out, she knows the cost of living and how to budget and will thus appeal to the housewives in the electorate.Her rival is a military officer, and she says she also faced danger during the war.

Businessman Denis Thatcher proposes marriage to her. She accepts, but after telling him she will not merely look beautiful at his side and be a mere housewife and mother, which she sums up in the exclamation: "I don't want to die cleaning a teacup."

Her struggles to fit in as a "Lady Member" of the House, and as Education Secretary in Edward Heath's cabinet. Thatcher is quietly competent in her contributions but clearly a junior member of the government, seated as she is at the very far end of the cabinet table and having to lean forward to be seen by Heath who seems at first hardly to recall who she is.As a young Tory minister she chides opposition politicians who fail to respect her and lectures them on focusing on her words rather than the tone of her voice, which is high pitched and strict.

She was very close friends with Airey Neave (Nicholas Farrell) (later assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army). The explosion which took Airey's life was at the Palace of Westminster underground car park. Thatcher herself barely escaped when she moved away moments ago.2 party colleagues suggested that she stand for party leadership, which she initially rejects. Later, she decides to stand for Leader of the Conservative Party and eventually wins. She works on her voice coaching and image change. She is advised to deepen her delivery and inject authority.

In 1979 the news headlines are focused around strike action. Leicester Square in central London is piled high with rubbish bags and Thatcher witnesses people stopping in cars to throw theirs on the pile on the pavement in front of her as she walks by while those around express concern at the smell.

Further flashbacks examine historical events during her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after winning the 1979 general election including the rising unemployment related to her monetarist policies and the tight 1981 budget (over the misgivings of "wet" members of her Cabinet - Ian Gilmour (Pip Torrens), Francis Pym (Julian Wadham), Michael Heseltine (Richard E. Grant), and Jim Prior (Nick Dunning)), the 1981 Brixton riot, the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike and the bombing in Brighton of the Grand Hotel during the 1984 Conservative Party Conference, when she and Denis were almost killed.

During the miner's strike, a beleaguered Thatcher is driven away in her limousine through protesters holding placards bearing anti-Tory slogans as some hammer on the car's roof and windows, shouting angrily at her, faces contorted with rage and hatred.

At the Tory party conference in Brighton. Thatcher continues to work in her hotel suite on important papers late in the night as Denis retires next door to bed. There is a sudden explosion inside the bedroom and the rooms of the suite disintegrate. Thatcher is distraught and shouts for Denis who it seems must have died but he soon re-appears, unhurt and spirit unshaken, ruined shoes in hand (he had been putting them outside the door to be cleaned and thus avoided the blast).

Thatcher also made a decision to retake the Falkland Islands following the islands' invasion by Argentina in 1982. Thatcher has summoned the military top brass, determined to take the Islands. She was told that the action was inadvisable, but Thatcher was resolute. In a council of war she is given news of the Argentine ship the General Belgrano maneuvering in the vicinity of the Task Force. Advised that it is a threat, she gives the order to sink it.This leads to the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano and Britain's subsequent victory in the Falklands War.

Thatcher was good friends with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and emergence as a world figure, and oversaw the economic boom of the late 1980s.

By 1990, Thatcher is shown as an imperious but aging figure, ranting aggressively at her cabinet, refusing to accept that the Community Charge (the "Poll Tax") is regarded as unjust, even while it is causing riots, and fiercely opposed to European Integration. Her deputy Geoffrey Howe (Anthony Head) resigns after being humiliated by her in a cabinet meeting, Heseltine challenges her for the party leadership and her loss of support from her cabinet colleagues leaves her little choice but to reluctantly resign as Prime Minister after 11 years in office. A teary-eyed Margaret exits 10 Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister with Denis comforting her. She is shown as still disheartened about it almost twenty years later.

The elderly Thatcher speaks to a doctor and comments acidly on his modern phraseology. He asks her about symptoms of dementia, including hallucination. She is in vague discomfort as she says no, but her mental faculties seem acute enough; Thatcher is apparently now aware that she is imagining Denis. There is a doubt if she has either Alzheimer's or any other form of dementia.

Eventually, Thatcher is shown packing up her late husband's belongings, and telling him it's time for him to go. Denis's ghost leaves her as she cries that she actually is not yet ready to lose him, to which he replies "You're going to be fine on your own... you always have been" before leaving forever.

She is finally shown in her kitchen, alone, contentedly washing a teacup (a wifely role she had told Denis she would never accept), having finally overcome her grief.