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Iris
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Dench
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By Dave DePino
Most of us have probably never known actual geniuses who so inhale all the splendors of life that they are oblivious to the mundane. The absentminded professor, a term we have heard before, comes to mind. These folks often find themselves functioning quite well in the mysterious worlds of the sciences and the arts, creating and discovering the greatest of things; but don't ask them to boil an egg. The film Iris is about a man and a woman who seem to fit into this strange group of preoccupied thinkers. But it is the woman, Iris (Judi Dench and Kate Winslet as elder and younger), more so than her husband of 40 years, John (Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville as elder and younger) who encompasses all the pleasures and toils of living to the max in some kind of other world. Her husband explains it quite neatly, "It's like living in a fairy story. I'm the young man in love with a beautiful maiden who disappears to an unknown and mysterious world every now and again but who always comes back."
The woman is the renowned, prolific novelist, lecturer, and philosopher Dame Jean Iris Murdoch and her husband is literary critic, John Bayley. Their carefree days of youth and discovery lighten the heart and deepen the desire to take pen to paper, while the glories of nature, love, and sex; the exuberant philosophies of good and evil, metaphysics and reasoning are earnestly sought. However, this bohemian lifestyle which often accompanies those of more lofty thoughts and purposes can sometimes leave its participants ill-equipped for life's actualities. The young do get old and the old do get sick. What more devastating a fate can be put upon a person who lived for her love of thought, language, and words than to take away her mind? This time, when the beautiful maiden disappeared, she didn't come back the same.
Murdoch and Bayley were forced to confront something as ordinary as facing Iris's mortality. The sickness crept into her speech and then into her memory. In time she was unable to be cared for at home by a loving husbandbut was moved to Vale House where, in 1999, Alzheimer's Disease took her life.
This fine production is seamless. You get the light and flighty, carefree roots of the heroine and the intelligent yet oafish, go-along husband who stood by her side until the end. The first hint of disease is subtle, and its progression is realistically handled. The thought of two well-respected, well-to-do people living in squalor without the help they could so easily afford to hire is saddening.
The performances are astonishing and exquisitely rendered under the direction of Richard Eyre. The story is shown in two time periods as performed by the marvelous elder and younger players. Dench doesn't seem to be able to do anything wrong. Sharing the role, Winslet holds her own quite well. The zest and relish set up by the younger is carried over to the elder, and the intensity of the elder comes early on with the younger. They seem to really be the same person. Broadbent is wonderfully fluttery. Bonneville looks amazingly like Broadbent in both appearance and performance.
In realizing Gemma Jackson's production design, cinematographer Roger Pratt captures much of the story almost claustrophobically as the couple's world -- as universal as it seemed to them -- was really quite small. The condition of their home in the ending scenes is a good indication of their inattentiveness to the everyday until it came crashing. Editing the two different eras without so much as an artistic ripple is no small task, and Martin Walsh does fine work here. James Horner's compositions and Joshua Bell's violin solos add atmosphere.
On the minus side, and a fairly blatant omission, is the actual artistic style that made Murdoch so special a writer. There is not very much shown to identify the woman by her work. To some degree it is assumed everyone is aware of Murdoch's writings and philosophies, which isn't really the case here. A more defined glimpse into the soul of the artist might justify her mark on history as more than just a delightful and spritely intellectual. Eyre and co-writer Charles Wood loosely base their script on documentaries, photographs, assorted memoirs, and Bayley's own highly subjective accounts of his life with Iris from his "Elegy for Iris" and "Iris and Her Friends." Even so, the telling of the tale and the breathless performances are worth the time.
A video suggestion would be a similar walk into the unknown taken by Henry Fonda in the 1981 film adaptation of Ernest Thompson's stage production of "On Golden Pond." The performance won Fonda his first Oscar. It was his last film before he died. Coupled with Katharine Hepburn as his loving wife, an elder patriarch comes to terms with mortality through his friendship with a young boy. He also opens a door of friendship for his estranged daughter played by his real daughter, Jane. Though a drama, the piece has a lot of humor.
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