Guest Author - Peggy Maddox

If you search IMDb for a movie with the title of IRIS, you'll find ten of them--two of them made in the year 2001.

The Iris I'm writing about is the one about Iris Murdoch made in 2001 by Director Richard Eyre. The story, told in flashbacks, leaps back and forth over a period of some 60 years in the life of novelist Iris Murdoch (1919-1999).

Because the story covers such a long time period, the principal characters are cast in sets:

Iris Murdoch - liberated (libertine?) woman; author of 26 novels, 5 books of philosophy, 6 plays, and 2 books of poetry.

Young Iris.....Kate Winslet
Old Iris.........Judi Dench

John Bayley - professor of English, novelist, husband to Iris Murdoch for 43 years.
Young John....Hugh Bonneville
Old John........Jim Broadbent

Janet Stone - a friend of Iris from university days
Young Janet.....Juliet Aubrey
Old Janet..........Penelope Wilton

Maurice - surname never given; one of Iris's many lovers
Young Maurice....Sam West
Old Maurice.....Timothy West
'
The casting of this film is extraordinary for the resemblance between the actors playing the young and old parts. For awhile I thought that Bonneville and Broadbent were the same actor distinguished only by make-up.

Winslet looks as if she could grow to look like Judi Dench in old age.

The two Maurices should resemble one another: Sam West is the son of Timothy West. Unfortunately, the older West, one of my favorite actors, makes only a cameo appearance when he brings the wandering Iris back home to her husband.

Although the acting is top-notch, the screenplay does not offer a satisfying look at the amazing life of Iris Murdoch.

The screenplay by Richard Eyre and Charles Wood is based on John Bayley's memoirs of his wife: Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for Iris. As I've read neither, I can't say if what is missing in the film is the result of the original books or the adaptation. (It can't have been easy for Bayley to write about his late wife's sexual appetite for both men and women.)

A viewer looking for information about Murdoch's accomplishments as a writer and thinker will be disappointed. The only story is this:

Iris Murdoch had a brilliant mind and lost it when she developed Alzheimer's disease. Her husband of 43 years took care of her until she had to be institutionalized. And then she died.

What makes Iris a film not to miss is the acting.

Broadbent won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Winslet was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Dench was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but lost out to Halle Berry. I haven't seen Monster's Ball (2001), so I can't compare performances. All I can say is that Berry must have been sensational to top Dench's performance in Iris.

One more word of praise must go to Trisha Edwards for set decoration. She wasn't nominated for an Oscar, but her creation of the house in which Murdoch grew old is as much a character in the film as any of the people. In its epic disorder it mirrors what is happening inside the mind of the once-brilliant human being that was Iris Murdoch.

Don't miss it.