Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5760 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-11-04
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A literary academic whose novels met with widespread commercial acclaim, the work of Iris Murdoch has a depth and elusiveness difficult to capture on screen. So for Iris, his first film as a director, Richard Eyre avoids the problematic novels and instead alternates the two phases of Murdoch's life as related by her widower John Bayley in his books Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for Iris. We see the headstrong and captivating Oxford undergraduate with academia at her feet, drawn to the gauche Bayley on account of his sincerity and understanding of what she needs to achieve for herself. Kate Winslet has the right combination of vibrancy and thoughtfulness for the young Iris, with Hugh Bonneville sympathetic as Bayley.

The other phase reveals Murdoch near the end of her life, struggling to complete what would be her final novel and fulfil her public engagements as she succumbs to the effects of Alzheimer's disease. Judy Dench has given numerous fine screen performances, but none as gripping nor so heart-rending as the ageing writer who withdraws into her own world--to the consternation, anger, then acceptance of her husband, movingly played by Jim Broadbent. Cameos from such actors as Eleanor Bron and Timothy West add to the overall quality, as does Eyre's lucid script, atmospheric location filming in and around Oxford, and an attractively low-key score from James Horner. Murdoch's novels may in future receive the kind of filmic presentation that does them justice. For now, this poignant insight into episodes from the life of a great modern writer is a must-see.--Richard Whitehouse

Special Features
English
Region 2

Synopsis
Based on the book ELEGY FOR IRIS, by John Bayley, this biopic tells the inspiring and heartbreaking story of the writer's 40-year romance with English novelist Dame Iris Murdoch. The film cuts back and forth between the young Iris and John (played by Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville), at the height of their romantic adventures as students at Oxford in the 1950s, and the elderly couple (played by Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent), struggling with Iris' decline, as her brilliant mind is ravaged by the effects of Alzheimer's.
Judi Dench gives an outstanding performance--her transformation from a prolific genius of the written and spoken word (Murdoch wrote 26 novels), to the infantile state of losing her language facilities altogether, is truly wrenching. Jim Broadbent is equally touching as her partner for life, who has adored the passionate Iris since they met, but was never fully able to possess her until the tragic end, when he declares in grief, I've got you now, and I don't bloody want you! Directed by Richard Eyre, artistic director of Britain's Royal National Theater, the film is uniquely sensitive and finely acted.

Customer Reviews

A Beautiful Mind
The premise of "Iris" is simple enough, but the history of Iris Murdoch and her long time lover John Bayley is a thing of fascination. Told through a series of flashbacks comparing the slowly ailing Iris to the younger courtship years of writers Iris and John Bayley, it's a masterpiece of editing. Iris is no sweet angel of the literary world, but a confrontative liberal progressive willing to explore every part of life she can indulge in. This proves a quandary for the young John Bayley (played by an amazing look-alike named Hugh Bonneville), whose is rather shy, but hopelessly in love with Iris. The acting is beyond superb with Kate Winslet as the young Murdoch.

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.

Iris--a heart-rending document on a life in crisis!
Iris is one of those few films that prove the extent to which cinema can affect you emotionally. A memoir of a literary academic who gets coiled up by Alzheimer's later in life, this simple film becomes something so devastatingly beautiful and ultimately unforgettable that its hard to resist repeated viewings. The credit for uplifting it to such Everest-ian heights goes to the performances by the lead actors and the sympathy in the film's tone.

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 destruction of a gifted mind by Alzheimer's disease
"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.