Iris [DVD] [2002]

Admittedly, there are the weepy moments when Iris adamantly vainly refuses to give in to this disease. There are the struggles with herself and her lover. The literary metaphors and ironies are abundant ("There is only one freedom of any importance, freedom of the mind") and the visual ones are somewhat cliché. Regardless, this is a fascinating work of acting by some incredible talents of our age. It's not always upbeat, but it makes you appreciate what you have and how little it takes to be happy.

Of the performances, Kate Winslet is radiance and intelligence personified and is absolutely believable as the gifted young author that Iris Murdoch was. Hers, incidentally is the most unsympathetic and verbose character-stretch, what with her wolfish appetite for men and words, but Winslet's luminous bare-all interpretaton has a feverish, unpretentious energy to it that makes it so compulsively watchable.

Hugh Bonneville as the younger Bayley [Murdoch's fiancee and later, her husband] hasn't got the best lines, but makes sure that his stammer makes every line he utters, momentous.

But of course, Iris is a freewheeling showcase of Judi Dench's intelligence whose performance as the Alzheimer-stricken Murdoch is so heart-felt and sincere, that you can almost touch her. Having worked with patients of Alzheimer's myself, I was absolutely shocked as to how much Judi's performance [right from her body language and her slow but definite detachment from the real world] struck home. Be it the last scene where she swings in the elderly home corridor or her reactions to Blair's speech on television or even the way she reacts when her last book is out-- each of those scenes will forever haunt me as some of the most honest moments I have encountered on screen.

Jim Broadbent is just as luminous as Dench and the scenes where he searches madly for Judi as she suddenly disappears or even his painful, frustrated outbursts are examples of what fine acting is all about. His chemistry with Dench [notice the scene where Iris tugs onto the tail of his sweater] is genuine and is what makes the film's message ring long after its over.

The script's brilliant, very taut and not even a single minute of the 86 mins running time is wasted in obscure sub-plots. The background music's suitably soothing and therapeutic complementing the film's mellowed tone and the way in which the build up of Murdoch's illness comes alive on screen [the very first scenes where she struggles with simple words to the scene where she suddenly forgets the thread while answering a question on a TV interview were hair-raising] as well as the way this tension is balanced with the screenplay meshing in her radiant youthful days all through... makes for a very thoughtful viewing.

The ironies between the two phases of Iris' life jolt you [esp. her quotes like "We have encountered all forms of goodness in its purest form before we were born, which is why we are drawn to it, unconsciously all the time" and "There is only one freedom of any importance, freedom of the mind"] but ultimately, the film's message about how exhausting a mental illness could be [both for the sufferer and the people around him/her] and how strong can a relationship be, is both grounding and fascinating.

It made me appreciate my existence all the more... hope it does something similar for all those who decide to watch it.

PS: The DVD, however, doesn't sport any worthwile extras which is quite disappointing for a film so critically acclaimed [atleast a behind-the-scenes featurette would have done some good] and other than a short commentary on Alzheimer's, the extras are as good as nonexistent.

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.