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By
Todd Heustess
Iris, starring Judi Dench and Kate Winslet
as British author Iris Murdoch is a
beautiful, heartfelt and heartbreaking
film about Murdoch's battle with
Alzheimer's. Iris moves back and forth in
time showing a young Iris (played by Kate
Winslet) at Oxford as she is about to
publish her first novel and in the process
of falling in love with fellow writer John
Bailey, the man who would eventually be
her husband and in later life, her
caretaker, and an older Iris at the onset
of Alzheimer's. The flashbacks give us a
great understanding of the rebellious,
somewhat iconoclastic nature of Murdoch, a
woman who loves to drink, smoke, enjoy
life and a woman who presumably had many
suitors (and lovers), yet was intensely
attracted to the shy, nerdy, Bailey, a man
some seven years her junior. |
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Bailey was completely comfortable in
his wife's shadow, yet in the end it
was Iris who desperately needed her
husband as her brilliant mind was
being ravaged by Alzheimer's.
The
acting in Iris is sublime, with
Dench's performance the best by an
actress this year (Emma Thompson in
Wit excepted). You see and feel the
confusion, the anger and the sadness
in Dench's face, her expressions and
in her eyes, as Murdoch slowly
succumbs to the disease. Jim
Broadbent is her equal as her
husband who has to slowly watch his
brilliant wife lose her mental
acuity and clarity. His performance
is wrenching in its anguish and
sadness. There is no disease of the
week TV movie-style melodrama year,
no last minute cure or happy-ending
to make the audience feel better
about what we are seeing. There is
only the reality of Murdoch's losing
battle with Alzheimer's and the
terrible toll it extracts not only
on her but on her loving, patient
husband. Yet the film manages a
beautiful lyrical poignancy as a
celebration of love and devotion.
The film
(to quote Murdoch) sails into the
darkness with the audience but
manages to find some light in that
darkness, much like Before Night
Falls did last year in its portrayal
of the Cuban-author Reynaldo Arenas
and his battle with AIDS. Dench and
Broadbent deserve Oscars for the
beautiful, nuanced performances, and
the movie will hopefully enlighten a
new generation to the talents of
Iris Murdoch.
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