If you have tears, prepare to shed them now (Iris (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Iris (DVD)
Date:	18/01/02 (132 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Performances

Disadvantages: Some niggling mismatches, could have been more adventurous, Kate's breasts for the 198th time

I'll admit it, if it wasn't for the fact that I had tickets from the Radio Times and was seeing 'Iris' for free, I probably wouldn't have bothered. Despite the classy names (Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, the sublime Jim Broadbent), I probably would have made excuses, and persuaded Mrs Lazenby to see something violent and silly instead. Biopics never fire my imagination, and the idea of an Altzheimers movie, however well made, doesn't exactly make you leap from your chair and grab your coat. Degenerative Brain Disease - The Movie: admit it, you're not exactly foaming at the mouth to see it, are you?

So OK, I went, and not seeing 'Iris' would have been a profound mistake. It's a genuinely very good film. It tells you almost nothing about Iris Murdoch (her books are probably too cerebral for their qualities to be communicated effectively in a movie anyway), and it has a few obvious flaws we'll deal with in a minute, but the world probably needs a few movies like this.

First, the flaws. I'm sick of seeing Kate Winslet's breasts. I'm sorry, but there you are. I haven't yet seen a film which was improved by Kate stripping off, and 'Enigma' was none the worse for her keeping her bra on. Not profound, but worth mentioning. You may see this as a recommendation, but frankly, if you're willing to sit through a very depressing film just to see her assets once again, you need to get out more.

Perhaps more seriously, Richard Eyre is a theatre director, not a film director; like all theatre directors of his generation (Trevor Nunn, Peter Hall, Adrian Noble), he should stay in the theatre. 'Iris' is a very polite, unobtrusive film about a woman who was anything but, and I think someone with a bit more verve should have made the film. His quiet, static filming style doesn't spoil the film, but it doesn't enliven it either.

Thirdly, and worst of all, the film's
central conceit slightly flounders -Winslet and Hugh Bonneville play Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley when young, and Dench and Broadbent play them as older people, so the stories of their meeting and the effective end of their relationship can be intercut. But while the two actors playing Bayley are absolutely seamless - to the extent that Broadbent has been congratulated on his skill at playing Bayley when young - Dench and Winslet don't marry sufficiently well. Each individual performance is superb, but I wasn't entirely convinced that they were one and the same person. 'Last Orders', which is also out now and a film I'll be reviewing soon if you're bothered, has similar flashback sequences which work brilliantly, and a film which makes such a big deal out of its past / present structure should have been a bit more polished.

But this doesn't ruin the film either, it's the difference between a very good film and a classic: 'Iris' is the former, not the latter. Everyone will rightly concentrate on Dench; I have met people who are in the later stages of this kind of brain disease, and her performance seemed absolutely perfect. She's entirely without vanity and communicates Murdoch's frustration with her gradually failing faculties with enormous humanity. But in the end, it's as much about Bayley as anything, a man who has to deal with an immensely brilliant but impossibly complicated and sophisticated woman with whom he has fallen madly in love, and then much later, has to cope with losing that woman, even though she doesn't die.

Broadbent is marvellous in a potentially impossible part - in a radical turn away from the standard Hollywood disease movie, he's actually allowed to depict the anger and frustration that carers frequently feel towards their charges, and the guilt that always follows swiftly on from that resentment.

It's a very humane film, cherishing the ma
gic of Murdoch and Bailey's love for each other, and underlining without a heavy hand the appalling consequences that something like Altzheimers has on the sufferer, and on the people who care for them. You will, no doubt, come out of the cinema wanting to find an envelope for an appropriate charity, and rightly so. But this isn't a dry, hand-wringing film, not like I was dreading. I think an author like Murdoch deserved something a bit more adventurous than the careful, almost TV-style that Eyre adopts, but then again, maybe this story is strong enough meat without the stylisation.

I don't know whether sales of Murdoch's books will rocket as a result as the movie - this would be no bad thing - but it's a film that I urge you to go and see, even if you're as wary as I was. Purely for the beauty of Dench and Broadbent's efforts, it's worth your time.

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