Iris

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant British Film Sadly Flawed by Choppy Editing
Review: I have read several of Iris Murdoch's earlier novels but was finally forced to give up the ghost half way through The Book and The Brotherhood (one of England's great Doorstopper Tomes). Iris Murdoch wrote brilliantly, she was the jewel in Britain's literary crown, about the one subject she knew best...the English, with a capital E. She did not write entertainingly as does Robert Barnard who also captures the English in the crosshairs in the odd murder mystery, some of them outright hilarious.

In any case, most of the previous reviewers address all that is good and great about Iris. However, I am in total agreement with the reviewer who brings up the fatal flaw in this film, the chaotic editing, wielded with all the subtlety of a woodchopper's axe and producing the reduction of the viewer's experience to a matter of tolerance. Gasp!

Rating:
Summary: The realisms of Alzheimer's disease
Review: The writers displict the realities of living with Alzheimer's disease as well as the real livings of the philosopher/author. Yet, "Iris" is about love. The two issues blend nicely. The mountains of life with this disease are real for the victim and their families. Heavy heart and soul was written so powerfully that when sadness booms, the audience cries. When anger booms, the audience's heart beats in raging speeds. When happiness booms, the audience's sense of hope arises.

Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent are an amazing duo as husband and wife fighting the battle of love and care vs. rage and turbulation. This is what makes a "disease based" movie so unique. Dench displicts how such a battle changes one's life like the real-life philosopher. She is one of few modern actresses who can express such soul in a movie. Broadbent, in his deserved Oscar winning role, displicts why one needs such hope and why it's important to never surrender. Kate Winslet shows how such life outlook begins. As the young Iris, she proves that one doesn't have to have the perfect beginnings to have a near perfect ending. Winslet was the perfect casting choice as she proves that she'll be a legendary actress within the next few years. None of these three actors hold back a drop of emotion for a second.

One will have to watch the movie to know what I'm talking about. If I reveal everything now, it'll ruin the movie's theme for the first-time viewer. I can write by experiece about Alzheimer's disease; therefore, don't think for a second that "Iris" overdramatizes it like most movies. My grandmother passed away in 2000 after her ten-year battle. She may not have been a philosopher, but the battles in her life and family were similar to the movie.

For some, it may take a second viewing of "Iris", but they will leave fulfilled and inspired.

Rating:
Summary: Winslet & Dench shine in this moving film about Iris Murdoch
Review: Kate Winslet and Judi Dench both do wondrously in this film about the British novelist Iris Murdoch, the noted writer who late in life faced the ravages of Alzheimers disease, and with it the slow and sorrowful withering of her once brilliant intellect.

Winslet as the younger Iris absolutely shines.. her freedom of self, her strong and vibrant personality, her utter love affair with life all come through to the viewer, clear and bright. In turn, Dench's acting truly inhabits the character of Murdoch, as she slowly loses touch with the world around her, with the thoughts that had once come so quickly and effortlessly and creatively.

Broadbent shines here too, as Murdoch's husband, the writer John Bayley (who himself had only good things to say about the film, upon its release). Broadbent won the Best Supporting actor Oscar for his performance here as the patient yet all too human husband, content with a life somewhat in the sidelines, of watching the brilliant light of his wife shine on him, standing by her during her youthful indiscretions and all along their lives together until her Alzheimers began to invade their lives like an unwanted guest overstaying its welcome. As their house grows more and more messy, disheveled, confused, and their lives more and more removed from those they had once known, of intellectual examination and full-hearted vigor, Bayley remains noble in his love for Iris, loving her faithfully until the end, despite the occasional outpouring of sadness and even anger that his beloved has to endure such undue suffering. In fact, what is most touching here is the fact that though the two once shared all, experiences, thoughts, themselves together and alone, as only those who co-habitate for decades can do, this passage was one which they would both experience so differently, both utterly alone in their experience for the first time since they met, even though physically near each other. (Murdoch, in one of her moments of clarity, seemed to show she understood what was happening to her, but these moments didn't last long, and the darkness soon enveloped her more fully). I think this was the most tragic part of the film, seeing Broadbent/Bayley try to come to terms with not being able to cope with her illness together in any sort of real sense as she slipped away from him. He had to be her anchor and rock, and had no one doing the same for him, as he guided her through her last days.

The scenes of the young duo here, on bicycles, and swimming in the British summer sun, are truly beautiful, and will stay with the viewer long after the credits start to roll.. this is one of those rare love stories, imperfect, true, painful at times also, but rarer still is that it was real, and that it lasted through a lifetime of ups and downs, triumphs and sorrows, even throughout illness, and never faded away. Indeed one could say it grew stronger through the rainy days, and changed, as real and true love so often can... As Bayley became more of a parent and less of a lover/husband, his love shone on in a different way, and the comfort he gave to his wife, who needed it so very much, was immeasurable.

I recommend this film to fans of Murdoch, Winslet and Dench, and to those in the mood to see a lovingly crafted portrait of lovingly crafted lives. 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Iris
Review: One who watches "Iris" will be fortunate to view not only one great performance, but four gifted and talented actors in a deep emotive and true movie.

"Iris" is irish writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch's biography, based on a book written by her husband, John Bayley. The movie is divided in two parts, one placed in the fifties, with Iris played by Kate Winslet and Bayley played by Hugh Boneville (from "Notting Hill"). The other part is placed in the nineties, with Judi Dench as Iris and amazing Jim Broadbent as her husband. Scenes from the two timelines are shown one following the other, but this never leave the viewer confused, because director Richard Eyre was able to relate the scenes from the 50s and the scenes from the 90s in an intelligent way.

The movie is very simple, leaving room for the outstanding performances by the four mentioned actors. Boneville and Broadbent are both great as Iris' husband, even to the point of being physically alike. Both are excellent depicting the shy, merry and sometimes naive John Bayley. Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, are competent as ever, playing Iris Murdoch. The director and both actresses do a very effective job in portraiyng Iris' transformation, from a bold, forward young woman (at least for 1950 standards) into a serious, independent and, finally, Alzheimer's afflicted older lady.

In short, a movie based in a beautiful, though very sad story: Iris Murdoch'and John Bayley's story, their life together, Iris' passion for words, her desire to write meaningful novels based on her true emotions and life experience.

Grade 8.7/10

Rating:
Summary: "Nothing matters except loving what is good." --Iris Murdoch
Review: When I saw that this DVD comes with an Alzheimer's-themed PSA featuring David Hyde Pierce, and a clip from an Alzheimer's Association honors ceremony, I feared that this might be one of those movies in which the disease is the star. But as Pierce and Jim Broadbent hasten to point out, this movie is not so much about Alzheimer's as it is about love. It is also about how to be free and how to be good. Surely it is no coincidence that those are the three themes Iris claims for her first novel early in the movie.

That Iris would list a series of abstractions in answer to the question "What is your novel about?" illustrates her evident preference of ideas to people. Even her sexual affairs seem motivated less by an interest in sex than by an interest in the intellects of those she has sex with. She seems to consider sex itself - hence sexual fidelity as well - rather trivial.

The strength of this movie, however, is its focus on the people themselves. What makes the onset of Alzheimer's especially tragic here is not that a person has a terrible disease, but that THIS person has THIS disease. She who claimed publicly that "there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever - that of the mind" is shown gradually losing her mind. And her husband, who no doubt fell in love with her for her intellect as well as for her exuberance and spontaneity, must suffer as he sees all of that slipping away.

John, in fact, is the real protagonist of this movie. It is he who remains aware of all that is happening to Iris and who is faced with choosing to be good and choosing to love. He certainly thinks his own suffering is greater than hers, claiming that she has no idea whether or not she's being made fun of, and saying at one point, "She's in her own world now. It's perhaps what she's always wanted." To John, Alzheimer's is the final grim suitor who snatches Iris away long after he thought he had triumphed over all the others.

A situation like the one this movie portrays is already so rife with emotions that we in the audience are expected to have that there's little need to manipulate us with the music and cinematography. Occasionally this movie does that, as in the scene where Iris jumps from the moving car as the music swells, and John is suddenly seen from a worm's-eye view, chasing after her. For the most part, though, the photography remains very stark, the music suitably subdued.

Both Kate Winslet and Dame Judy Dench have that combination of articulateness and self-confidence that projects a powerful intelligence on screen, absolutely essential in portraying a character like Iris Murdoch. Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent are so much alike in their portraits of John Bayley that I had to check the credits to be sure that these were indeed two different people. Sure enough, there was a fourth star, unjustly left out of all the praise justly heaped on the other three. I did notice that both actors' stutters come and go, but for all I know that may be accurate, and at least it isn't obtrusive. The actors both come across as gentle and likeable here, yet I found myself wondering if that was enough to make Iris want to marry John. Judging from this movie, I would guess that what most appealed to her was his sheer dogged devotion. John may do his share of complaining, but he nevertheless sticks around.

Rating:
Summary: A fine piece of cinema
Review: The real life author Iris Murdoch - who wrote among other novels The Sea, The Sea -- is played by Judi Dench and this film depicts her slow decline from Alzheimer's. It closely examines the jolting effect it has on a strong and loving marriage. The scenes between Broadbent and Dench are powerful a piece of cinema as you could ever see.

Of particualr note, Jim Broadbent won many plaudits and he deserved everyone of them for his portrayal of the sensitve caring Bayley as he despairs of taking care of his wife.

The film also looks back to their romantic beginnings and the triumphs of their life. It is very hard to see how they could have impoved the linkages between the scenes when they growing up and when Murdoch had gained widespread acclaim. In particular, Kate Winslet plays a very strong younger Iris.

I would have liked a little more on the books and a little less interest in Murdoch's sex life, but that seems to be focus of everything these days.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful, convincing performances
Review: There is no question about it: the extraordinarily convincing performances by the four principal actors in this film are the reason the film succeeds. Not just their acting, but the way the two pairs of younger/older performers mesh with one another. In particular, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville are amazingly believable as the same character. Bonneville (whom I primarily knew as "Bernie" the inept stock broker in NOTTING HILL) is the least well known of the quartet, but more than holds his own as the young John Bayley. Jim Broadbent, who is one of the seven acting marvels of the modern world (doubt me? Watch him back-to-back in this film, MOULIN ROUGE, TOPSY-TURVY, THE SECRET AGENT, and NICHOLAS NICKLEBY--it doesn't seem possible that the same actor is in each film), won a well-deserved Oscar as the mature Bayley (even though he was around 20 years too young for the role, being only around 53 at the time of filming). Kate Winslet manages to communicate the charisma that so many felt in the young Iris Murdoch, while Judi Dench is extraordinary in registering the onset of the loss of self that Iris Murdoch felt as the Alzheimer's gained more and more control of her.

I do have one complaint, one felt by the person I saw this with. It seems to end too abruptly. All films have, or ought to have, a rhythm. Any experienced film viewer can usually sense how much is left in a film. At the point where IRIS suddenly ended, however, I would have guessed that there was at lest 15 minutes left. At it was, it seemed to end two or three scenes too quickly.

A personal note. I actually knew a person fairly well who makes a very, very oblique appearance in the film. The young John Bayley accidentally discovers Iris having sex with a man she later describes as a prominent professor of ancient history who lives in London with his wife. I won't reveal names (for that, read Peter Conradi's excellent biography, where the professor's identity will be made fairly obvious). No longer living, he used to live part of each year on the campus where I attended grad school, at the faculty club where I was graveyard shift desk clerk. Each evening he would come in from the library and we would talk about one subject or another. We actually discussed Iris Murdoch one night, though I didn't know, and he didn't reveal, that he knew her. I was reading BRUNO'S DREAM, and I complained that she didn't seem to understand male psychology. Knowing what I know now, I marvel at that conversation and wish it had taken a more respectful form.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece.
Review: Every time I find Judi Dench in a film, I have to buy, see it or rent it. For many years, I have been a Judi Dench fan. She was at her best in Iris, and I thought her best was The Shipping News. But when Iris came along, I see now that she just gets better in each film. The biography of Iris Murdock is told in such a kind and joyous way. You must see this film, it will make you a believer in dreams.

Rating:
Summary: A Love Story, Young and Old, Sweet and Bitter, in Oxford
Review: On Feburary 28, 1999, one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century died. It is Iris Murdoch, the Iris of this tender, but at times very bitter film. But don't be put off by her name or profile; you don't even have to tell Oxford from Cambridge because "Iris" is a story of love. And the acting is really great.

Iris Murdoch met her future husband John Bayley at Oxford. Vivacious, free-spirited Iris was teaching philosophy while Bayley was a teacher of English literature. Iris is gradually attracted to shy and sincere Bayley, and one day confesses that she is writing a novel, showing him a manuscript. They get married in 1956, to live together happily for long years to come.

But around the year 1997, they find something is not quite right. Iris starts to forget the spelling of words, or the name of the prime minister. And they find that she suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Bayley continues to support her, but it is obvious that the time is near when they cannot live together as they did any more.

The two parts of the real-life events are depicted one after the other; the young John Bayley is played by Hugh Bonneville while the older Bayley by Jim Broadbent. The young Iris Murdoch is by Kate Winslet, and the older, by Judi Dench. Kudos to those actors; all of them are so convincing as the characters that you get uncanny feeling that Hugh Boneville has really grown up to be Jim Broadbent, who had to play the person in fact about 20 years older than himself. And about these female players, we don't need any superflous praise; Judi Dench is great, so is Kate Winslet. That's it.

However, there is one minor setback. The double-plot development the film employs is surely heavy-handed and damages the whole work, undermining the potential of the story based on the truth. Too frequent flash-backing/flash-forwarding is just annoying, and makes the film like a long train of vignettes. The vignettes themselves are well-crafted, but joined together, they somehow alienate us, the viewers, who want to get inside of these characters. And by the use of the double plot, the minor characters lost their functions in the film; you see one character "Maurice" played by off-screen father and son Timothy West and Samuel West, but that does not work at all, or we simply forget about this person who is buried among the maze of the script.

The camera is beautiful, the music is good, but the director Richard Eyre betrays that though he is good at inducing the actors to play their best, he is a director for stage, not for film. (And he is famous as stage director.) Like "American Beauty" (of which director, as you know, comes from stage origin), the film is a blessed moment for actors, but not necessarily for moviegoers especialy when they, like me, prefer the dynamic power of story or well-chosen dialogues. I do not say "Iris" is bad; just not for all taste.

All in all, "Iris" is a fantastic experience to get to know one of the most charming couple among the literary world. After all, the film may change the stereotyped profiles of Iris Murdoch such as I quoted before: like, "most acclaimed novelist and philosopher' etc. And I believe the real Iris is as much an enchanting person as this film shows, or even more.

Rating:
Summary: The destruction of a gifted mind by Alzheimer's disease
Review: "Iris" was a most disturbing film for me to watch, although I know exactly why it affected me so. Ever since I learned that H. L. Mencken spent the final years of his life incapacitated by a stroke that made it impossible for him to read and write (or to remember nouns), the idea of losing my mental faculties has been pretty much the worst of all possible fates for me. Similar ground is covered in "Iris," as the novelist Iris Murdoch has her mind, her marriage, and her life destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. Of course the film makes me uncomfortable; it should make anybody uncomfortable to watch a human being's life come undone like this.

The screenplay by Richard Eyre and Charles Wood, based on the books "Iris: A Memory" and "Elegy for Iris" by her husband John Bayley, attempts to convey cinematically what has been lost. Consequently we cut back and forth between the present, as John (Jim Broadbent) struggles to take care of his beloved Iris (Judi Dench), and disjointed scenes from the past, as young John (Hugh Bonneville) and Iris (Kate Winslet) meet and fall in love. Sometimes they are brief glimpses, other times extended scenes, combining to provide a disjointed pictures of these two lives.

I was surprised that I do not especially remember Iris Murdoch as a novelist; I know that I have never read any of her books. So my sense of what a great mind was lost is based entirely on what we see of Iris at the top of her game in the film. Clearly "Iris" is a film that presents these lives in fragments and pieces. We never fully understand why Iris decides to marry Jim; it must have been a superb meeting of the minds, but that is not the sense we get from the film where Jim is pretty much an amiable fuddy duddy. "Iris" is about the end and the beginning of a relationship, with a giant gap in the middle. Still, this film is about the growing gaps that appeared in the lives of this couple, so it is hard to say such an approach is unjustified. Again, if "Iris" is an unsettling film, then we have to remember that it should be.

The acting by the four principles is first rate, although I want to make special mention of Hugh Bonneville because he was the only one of the quartet not to receive an Oscar nomination. Bonneville does as fine of a creating a younger Broadbent as Kate Winslet does a younger Judi Dench, but apparently that is a thankless job.